i v FOREWORD 



throbbing and crowded city and the whirl of 

 factoryville, not near enough to either to sense 

 their inconveniences. Ruth often quotes: 



"Not wholly in the busy world nor quite 

 Beyond it, blooms the garden we love'' 



Our plat of ground or "lot" as New Eng- 

 enders call it, is 200x400 feet, marked out on 

 a generous scale when land was cheaper, and 

 successive owners have refused to lessen it, and 

 hence kept intact. The house and land fit each 

 other and never will we make the misfit. Trees 

 and shrubbery and a compact cedar hedge push 

 the street a good way off and somewhat hush 

 the everlasting rush of trade and travel. 



Within these old home-walls, where books 

 have grown into life and life has poured itself 

 again into books or into people, apparently 

 nothing more than memories may remain, but 

 they unconsciously haunt every spot within and 

 without. Imagination comes to the rescue and 

 restores and invests former scenes until the 

 very atmosphere seems instinct and tremulous 

 with the great souls once dwelling here. Hard- 

 ly a week passes but some one calls bearing in 

 memory the olden days when hospitality was 

 so generously dispensed, either upon them or 

 some former loved one. So an old home is 



