OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES 



mon! The great charm of privacy is gone 

 utterly; and no device of shrubbery, or hedge, 

 can make good the loss of some little wicket 

 which will invite approach, and be a barrier 

 against too easy familiarity. The creak of 

 the gate-hinge is a welcome to the visitor, and 

 as he goes out, the latch clicks an adieu. 



But there are all sorts of gates, as there are 

 all sorts of welcomes; there is, first, your 

 inhospitable one, made mostly, I should say, 

 of matched boards, with a row of pleasant 

 iron spikes running along its top, and no 

 architectural decorations of pilaster or panel 

 can possibly remove its thoroughly inhos- 

 pitable aspect. It belongs to stable-courts or 

 jail-yards, but never to a home or a garden. 



Again, there are your ceremonious gates, 

 of open-work indeed, but ponderous, and most 

 times scrupulously closed; the very opening 

 of them is a fatiguing ceremonial, and there 

 is nothing like a lively welcome in the dull 

 clang of their ponderous latches. 



Next, there is your simple, unpretending, 

 rural gate, giving promise of unpretending 

 rural beauties — homely in all its aspect, and 

 giving foretaste of the best of homeliness 

 within. And I make a wide distinction here be- 

 tween the simple rurality at which I have 



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