THE PLACE AND THE PROSPECT 3 



lock boughs as they walked about under the 

 drooping evergreens, agreed that this was right 

 for a home, regardless of what might be inside those 

 shuttered French windows. The outdoors had 

 called, and we, city-tired, were answering accord- 

 ing to our blood. 



I have often thought, since, of that first day, 

 and of the good fortune that was ours in coming to 

 "the place" under the most depressing conditions, 

 in the worst weather of that season which Bryant 

 — who must have had mental malaria at times — 

 calls melancholy. Melancholy! We couldn't find 

 reason then, nor have we ever found reason since, 

 for melancholia concerning the passage of any of 

 the seasons here at Breeze Hill. Even that first 

 winter was certainly a season of loveliness. Never 

 a day but brought its own beauty in the trees, of 

 sky and cloud, even of rain and fog, of frost and 

 wind. The snow was always making pictures for 

 us, on the pines and hemlocks, along the hedges 

 and plants; and the occasional sleet outlined more 

 completely the loveliness and the symmetry of the 

 tree twigs. 



And if I may exercise the writer's privilege of 

 sudden change of time, I can say now, after a haM- 

 dozen growing-garden years, that spring and sum- 

 mer are each a new joy, each always better than 



