WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 133 



When a homestead, like this, has been owned and 

 occupied by the same family for six or seven genera- 

 tions, it seems to possess a distinct personality of its 

 own. A history grows up round about it ; memories 

 of the past accumulate, and are handed down fresh 

 and green, linking to-day and seventy years ago as 

 if hardly any lapse of time had intervened. The 

 inmates talk familiarly of the " comet year," as if it 

 were but just over ; of the days when a load of wheat 

 was worth a little fortune ; of the great snows and 

 floods of the previous century. They date events 

 from the year when the Foremeads were purchased 

 and added to the patrimony, as if that transaction, 

 which took place ninety years before, was of such 

 importance that it must necessarily be still known 

 to all the world. 



The house has somehow shaped and fitted itself to 

 the character of the dwellers within it hidden and 

 retired among trees, fresh and green with cherry and 

 pear against the wall, yet the brown thatch and the 

 old bricks subdued in tone by the weather. This 

 individuality extends to the furniture ; it is a little 

 stiff and angular, but solid, and there are nooks and 

 corners as the window-seat suggestive of placid 

 repose : a strange opposite mixture throughout of 

 flowery peace and silence, with an almost total lack 

 of modern conveniences and appliances of comfort 

 as though the sinewy vigour of the residents disdained 

 artificial ease. 



In the oaken cupboards not black, but a deep 



