THE OLD HOMESTEAD. 



35 



the old place as I loved it years ago, surrounded with 

 its evergreens and maples, in its rural simplicity ex- 

 pressive of all that is good in life. I think of the cool 

 water as it courses down the long trough. I carve my 

 initials on the barn door. I am a boy again, happy and 

 free, and the squirrels are playing and barking in the 

 trees, calling me to them. Ah, I loved the old place ! 

 Yet I can not see that I love it any the less now. I 

 think of it as of no other spot. It has changed, as 

 have all things, in the years ; but, within its ivy-entwined 

 walls — where the good old mottoes, "Live and let 

 live" and "Make friends and keep them," are prac- 

 ticed in the every-day hospitality of life, and where 

 plain living and high thinking are not the exception, but 

 the general rule — here, then, still dwell happiness and 

 old-time living. The atmosphere of the place is one 

 of rest, and quietness, and simple ways. Here one 

 may live in comfort and seclusion, and at peace with 

 the world. 



Alice Gary has a beautiful poem entitled "The 

 Old Homestead," and I shall give a stanza or two of 

 it, as, in her fine poetic gift, she has expressed what 

 can best be said in verse, after all, and is therefore 

 a fit tribute to that halo of love and of mystery which 

 still surrounds the homestead of these memories: 



" When skies are growing warm and bright, 



And in the woodland bowers 

 The Spring-time in her pale, faint robes 



Is calling up the flowers, 

 When all with naked little feet 



The children in the morn 

 Go forth, and in the furrows drop 



The seeds of yellow corn ; 



