1 66 W SPRING. 



there may be seen a substantial stone mansion, 

 built in 1708. Woe betide the tall man that en- 

 ters it carelessly in the dark ! The ceilings are 

 unaccountably low, Evidently there were few 

 giants in those days, at least among the early 

 Quakers. And, looking east, can be seen yet 

 another house, nearly as old, built of huge oak 

 logs, the ceilings of which likewise threaten the 

 careless six-footer. Surely, if my ancestors were 

 tall, they must have been painfully stoop-shoul- 

 dered ! By the kitchen doors of all the original 

 houses there were open wells ; and the sweep ap- 

 pears to have been the first apparatus in use for 

 drawing water. From the doorstep to the well- 

 curb extended a rude pavement of flat stones 

 and, if all poetry was not smothered in the old- 

 time peoples' breasts, there was an elm, or droop- 

 ing birch, casting a delightful shade in summer 

 over all. Later the weeping-willow became the 

 favorite tree. Such was the pretty picture seen 

 upon every farm ; compare it with the ugly wind- 

 mills that now rear their hideous nakedness 

 against the sky. 



From the general to the particular, from the 

 past to the present, There still stands a cottage, 

 off a by-road, mossy as a prostrate oaken tree, 

 hedged with gooseberry-bushes and a clump of 

 lilacs ; and, better than all else, there is the well 

 and its sweep. I could never learn when the 



