II. 



TAKING REINS IN HAND. 



Around the House. 



ALTHOUGH possessing all the special requisites 

 of which I had been in search, yet the farm was 

 by no means without its inaptitudes and roughnesses. 

 There was an accumulation of half-decayed logs in 

 one quarter, of mouldering chips in another, being 

 monumental of the choppings and hewings of half a 

 score of years. Old iron had its establishment in 

 this spot; cast-away carts and sleds in that; walls 

 which had bulged out with the upheaval of I know 

 not how many frosts, had been ingeniously mended 

 with discarded harrows or axles ; there was the usual 

 debris of clam shells, and there were old outbuild- 

 ings standing awry, and showing rhomboidal angles 

 in their outline. These approached the house very 

 nearly, so nearly, in fact, that in one direction at 



