230 
RURAL HOURS. 
brow of an abrupt bank, looking in the distance like an old French 
auherge. It is the county poor-house, and rising in the midst of 
a prosperous country, tells us that even under the most favora- 
ble circumstances, within a young and vigorous society, there must 
be poor among us, some the victims of their own foUies or vices, 
some the victims of those of others. 
The valley becomes broader and more level about four or five 
miles from the village ; a hamlet has grown up here about an 
Academy, founded early in the history of the county, by a Lu- 
theran clergyman, who has left his name to the spot. Farm- 
houses and cottages are springing up here along the highway in 
close neighborhood, for a mile or more. Many of these, painted 
white, with green blinds, and pleasant door-yards, and a garden 
adjoining, look very neat and cheerful. Green-house plants, ge- 
raniums, callas, cactuses, &c., &c., are seen on these cottage 
porches at this season ; they are much prized during the long win- 
ter, and something of the kind is found in many houses. A very 
broad field, remarkably level for this part of the world, lies on 
one side of the highway ; sugar-maples line the road here, and 
they bear marks of having been tapped for the sap, thus serving 
the double purpose of a pleasant, shady avenue, and a sugar-bush 
where the trees are close at hand. A burying-ground lies at one 
corner of the broad field, and a little meeting-house at the far- 
ther point. But the great edifice of the hamlet is of course 
the Academy, a brick building, colored gray, flanked by wings, 
with a green before its doors, and a double row of maples, 
planted in a semicircle, forming its academic shades. The in- 
stitution was endowed by the Lutheran clergyman, a German by 
birth, who was the original owner of a small patent covering this 
