326 A DECADE OF WORK AT HOME.  [1844, 
of Dr. Peck had been occupied for a while as a board- 
ing-house, and later by Dr. and Mrs. Walker. He 
moved into it in September, and there remained until 
the end of his life. He had a great attachment for 
the house, as the only one in which he had resided for 
any length of time; and it saw the gradual growth of 
his hesheriink needing before many years the addition 
of a wing to give more room, until, having overrun 
all possible places for its accommodation, it was re- 
moved in 1864 into the fireproof building which now 
holds it. 
The garden was laid out by Dr. Peck in 1808, and 
the house built for him was finished in 1810. Mr. 
Nuttall, the botanist and ornithologist, who boarded 
in it while giving instruction in botany, left some curi- 
ous traces behind him. He was very shy of intercourse 
with his fellows, and having for his study the south- 
east room, and the one above for his bedroom, put in 
a trap-door in the floor of an upper connecting closet, 
and so by a ladder could pass between his rooms with- 
out the chance of being met in the passage or on the 
stairs. A flap hinged and buttoned in the door be- 
tween the lower closet and the kitchen allowed his 
meals to be set in on a tray without the chance of his 
being seen. A window he cut down into an outer 
door, and with a small gate in the board fence sur- 
rounding the garden, of which he alone had the key, 
he could pass in and out safe from encountering any 
human being. 
The garden, though small, was planned with much 
skill, and when Dr. Gray first lived on the place was 
much more filled up in the centre with trees and 
shrubs, so that since one was unable to see from one 
path to another, it seemed much larger than when 
