OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES 



creeper— an ample hall of entrance, with 

 quaint stairway climbing to some landing lit 

 with an oriel — a blue chamber, a green cham- 

 ber, an oak chamber — rambling corridors 

 opening upon yet other chambers — a great 

 dim garret with the sunlight flashing in 

 through some dormer window upon roof- 

 beams hung with dried herbs and gone-by 

 clothing and wreck of discarded furniture — 

 porches that invite and protect and throw wel- 

 come shadows on the door — little mantling 

 rooflets of windows that temper the glare of 

 day, and at dusk break the dark mass of build- 

 ing with picturesque outlying angles : I think 

 I have indicated some of the features which 

 belong to most people's ideal of a country 

 home. But who makes them real? who 

 reaches their ideal in anything — whether in 

 home, in reputation, or success of any sort? 

 But as regards the country home, what is 

 in the way? We will suppose that our friend 

 Mr. Urban has possessed himself at last of the 

 fifty acres he sought for; there is wood, there 

 is water, there are meadows, and withal there 

 is an old farm-house, the home of the out- 

 going owner, with its clumps of lilacs, its 

 bunches of syringa, its encompassing mat of 

 green sward. Its site is not, may be, precisely 



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