Impressions 



defeat, life for the few and death for the many, 

 was being retold. I hurried to a leafier glen 

 where yet a gray light lingered. It was more 

 in accord with what attracts me. There are 

 many trains of thought so pleasant, I never 

 tire of thinking, but they wisely shun the red 

 light. That is the signal of war and I am a 

 lover of peace. 



The attics of old houses have been pretty well 

 ransacked — in imagination usually — but cellars 

 have been overlooked. Now, as a matter of 

 fact, cellars in old days were something more 

 than square holes in the ground and meant more 

 in household economy than now. They were 

 divided into rooms and the milk-cellar, the pro- 

 vision cellar and the general cellar each had its 

 peculiar and deep significance to the colonial 

 housewife. Modern methods have done away 

 with all this and to-day, the cellars of the few 

 old houses that remain are more often recep- 

 tacles for rubbish than aught else. So much 

 the worse for the health of the household: so 

 much the better for the lover of such old scraps 

 as have escaped destruction. At least, I the- 

 orized in some such way. 



97 



