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AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



July, 1 9 13 



The kitchen is fitted with old-time accessories 



Copyright by G. H. 



passing, no relative to shed a tear, filling a foreign grave. 



It seems the irony of fate that he who cherished such a 

 deep fondness for home, should so early have been de- 

 prived of its blessings. Yet that heart felt lay, born of 

 the homing spirit in the grave of disappointed hopes and 

 stifled ambitions, of which he expected least return, was 

 the one that brought him home at last and induced the 

 United States government finally to make fitting reparation 

 and bury the writer among the Nation's dead. 



We Americans are a home loving people, perhaps because 

 our forefathers purchased theirs along with their liberty, 

 in a new country at such a price, so, it is not strange that 

 we should turn with loving hearts to the childhood abiding 

 place of John Howard Payne, whom we might justly call 

 the Apostle of Home. And yet, curiously enough, this 

 picturesque cottage, the inspiration of the world's most 

 perfect idyl of home, which should rightly stand in the 

 hearts of the American people side by side with Washing- 

 ton's Mt. Vernon and Abraham Lincoln's humble log 

 cabin, would have been wantonly destroyed a few years 

 ago, but for the intervention of a man, to whom Payne 

 has ever been one of his boyhood heroes. 



It remained for Mr. G. H. Buek, of Brooklyn, to lead 

 the fight to save the historic spot, and who eventually pur- 

 chased the property to care for and preserve it. And 

 although it is now nominally his Summer home, it is much 

 more than that to the American people, for it stands as a 

 monument to the memory of John Howard Payne, sweeter 

 and more precious than any of marble or stone, for it is 

 a shrine to worship at which annually come scores of 

 pilgrims. 



It has been the owner's sacred obligation — a self im- 



posed task — to restore it, so far as stranger may do, to its 

 old time livableness. Measuring by the extent of his own 

 devotion to the memory of Payne, the interest of others, 

 the owner has set aside one day a week when strangers are 

 welcome to visit the cottage and view the rare collection 

 of Payne mementoes he has gathered there, as well as a 

 large personal array of Colonial relics of the same period. 



Early in the history of the country when Payne was a 

 boy, it took three days by stage to reach Easthampton from 

 New York City; now it takes barely three hours by train. 

 Much of interest fills the journey. Toward the end, the road 

 is very picturesque, carrying you as it does, through broad 

 sweeping meadows, past gray weather beaten houses with 

 now and again a glimpse of soft gray sand dunes, their 

 whiteness broken by the stiff marsh grass that skirts their 

 edges. Passing Shinnecock Hills, the home of William M. 

 Chase and the Chase Art Colony, you catch sight at 

 Southampton of the homes of wealthy New Yorkers; 

 farther down the Island the scene is broken by quaint 

 Dutch wind wills, outposts of a former civilization. 



Easthampton is like a New England village with its one 

 broad street and wide spreading elms, the birth place and 

 boyhood home of many famous Americans. If you follow 

 the main street as it makes its way toward the sea, you 

 come to a number of quiet moss grown cottages that had 

 their birth when the country was young. Covered with 

 hand made cedar shingles, now weathered soft and lumin- 

 ous by the action of time, they stand as silent sentinels of 

 an age that is passed, but as staunch and true as the sturdy 

 men and women who have dwelt in them. 



At the far end of this row of relics, stands one more 

 embowered than the rest. It is a two-story cottage, simple 



