The Turnpike Road. 123 



Nature is a house breaker. She will pull the windows 

 out, knock down the doors, topple over the chimney, and 

 will finally have the clap boards off, or the stones from out 

 the wall. 



These old broken down buildings, along the road, were 

 erected mid great expectations, and their blank, dark win- 

 dows, now look solemnly across the sunny fields. They 

 lost their soul when they lost their tenants. The smoke 

 from a chimney seems to tell more of life to us, than even 

 the swallows that fly swiftly from its flues. 



Sometimes these houses are partly inhabited, one or 

 two rooms will be occupied by an individual, who seems 

 to have borrowed his character from the domicile to be 

 as forlorn as the structure in which he lives. The red- 

 peppers and seed-corn are hung under his porch, and the 

 family dog and cat, and the chickens, bask in the sunshine, 

 on the warm dry boards by his door. He will tell you 

 stories of long ago, when he was a young man, which he 

 says, "wasn't yesterday." He was jolly and gay then, 

 for he used to visit Cedar Grove nigh every night with 

 David Playmore. He could fiddle, and there wasn't any 

 fun without music. But alas, for these orgies, David's 

 head began to twitch he was always a nervous fellow 

 and the doctor, who was unfamiliar with Cedar Grove, said 

 he tied his necktie too tight, it stopped the circulation. 



So the old man chuckles ; the memories of his revels 

 amuse him still, and yet he is half ashamed of them, does 

 not speak so openly as when he tells of the cut on his 

 hand, which he got while chopping wood. 



It is pleasant at lunch time to seek the sunny side of an 



