418 
THE KURAL. NEW-VORKER 
Making a Country Home 
By Marietta Holley—“Josiah Allen’s Wife” 
___________ (Concluded from page 367) 
• • 
CHAPTER III. 
CLEAR brook ran along a little way 
below the barn which seemed as if 
made for the convenience of her ducks, so 
Alice said, for she announced that she 
would take charge of the fowl department. 
They found in one of the out-houses a pile 
of old beehives and bee materials, which 
led them to purchase two hives of bees 
from their nearest neighbor who lived 
nearly a quarter of a mile away, which 
Alice also claimed as a part of her work. 
Uncle Iligby’s wife (in her grave 
twenty years) had been a great lover of 
flowers, and they found on the south side 
of the house, under the mother’s bed¬ 
room windows, a wilderness of tangled 
roots and vines of rare and beautiful va¬ 
rieties, and while Ruth happily busied 
herself indoors, Alice, who was an 
ardent flower lover, found great delight 
in weeding and bringing the old flower 
garden back to more than its former 
beauty. There were also remains of a 
fine vegetable and fruit garden, which 
they found lower down the hill on which 
the house perched. It was grown up to 
weeds, and the berry bushes and vines 
were tangled into what seemed at first 
a hopeless confusion, the branches of 
the fruit trees sweeping the ground and 
the grape vines drugging down the un¬ 
sightly branches. But hard work told 
here, almost better it seemed, than in 
any other part of their property. And 
no one who looked at the trim garden 
after a few' months had gone by could 
1 ave dreamed it was the rough, unkempt 
place that they had found. The grape- 
vdues trained over strong trellises, and 
enriched by laundry and house slops, 
bore grapes of :m excellent quality, 
many baskets of which they sold for a 
£«>od price, and which made a welcome 
addition to their means. 
There was a colon y of Summer 
boarders at a seaside resort a few miles 
away, and it was Alice’s idea at first, 
which John readily seconded, that he 
should make semi-weekly trips there to 
sell country produce. The first trip, 
which was the first of June, he took 10 
young broilers of Alice’s first flock of 
chickens, 15 dozen fresh eggs, 50 quarts 
of early strawberries, 30 head of crisp 
lettuce, a number of bunches of pink 
radishes, two boxes of clear honey. And 
as a venture Alice made 20 boquets of 
her prettiest flowers, which sold so 
readily at the moderate price she asked 
for them, that that was a feature in the 
future semi-weekly trips to Glen Ilaven. 
All this meant hard work for them all, 
but early rising, pure air, out-door exer¬ 
cise and simple living had brought the 
reward of increasing good health, so the 
labor seemed lighter and pleasanter as 
the days went on. John had, by his 
neighbors’ advice, seeded down most of 
his land, only trying to raise enough po¬ 
tatoes, vegetables, etc., for their own use, 
reserving a good pasture for the Jersey 
cow, which did so well on the rich. 
juicy pasture, through which the brook 
meandered delightfully, that many a 
pound of butter and small jar of cream, 
found its way also to Glen Ilaven, bring¬ 
ing an extra price, for Ruth was a born 
housekeeper and dairy woman, loving the 
work, and so naturally excelling in it. 
Indeed so well did this venture turn out 
that enough was made during the Sum¬ 
mer and early Autumn from these semi¬ 
weekly trips to support the whole family 
through the year, to say nothing of the 
Fall crops gathered from the farm, and 
the 50 turkeys, chickens and ducks which 
they sold for Thanksgiving. 
The next year they bought another 
Jersey cow, the butter and cream of 
which helped to swell the amount they 
gained f om Glen Ilaven. The flock of 
poultry was increased by the purchase 
of first-class fowls, the bees had multi¬ 
plied to seven hives, which also helped 
to get money to improve the farm. For 
young James Martin, who was much 
interested in Alice's apiary, had brought 
her a hive of bees from his own garden, 
which he considered a great improvement 
on hers, and to prove this fact to her, it 
took many golden hours, out by the bench 
under the blossoming fruit trees, where 
her beehives shone in an orderly white 
row. These hours spent in pleasant con¬ 
versation as well as labor, left Alice and 
James with no signs of weariness and 
fatigue in their bright faces. 
It was on an unusually beautiful Sum¬ 
mer evening in the third year of their 
living on the old farm that Ruth re¬ 
ceived a letter from her cousin Eunice, 
which she read to her children on the 
piazza after tea. 
Overhead the clustering vines made a 
verdant perfumed bower among which 
the birds sang. The green lawn in front 
of her lay smooth as velvet. Alice’s 
flower garden blossomed sweetly under 
the rays of the setting sun, and beyond 
it she saw the orderly rows of vegetables, 
berry bushes and orchard trees, and still 
further on the fresh green pasture where 
the two Jerseys were feeding contentedly. 
Beyond, behind the encircling belt of 
fruit trees the sun was setting in rosy 
splendor. 
Ruth took out her cousin’s letter and 
read it to John and Alice. Things had 
not gone well with Eunice in the city, 
her doleful letter was full of complaints. 
Her rent had been so high she had fallen 
behind in payment. Some of her fash¬ 
ionable boarders had left without paying. 
Her handsome furniture, which she had 
been obliged to mortgage in order to get 
enough for the whole house, she had lost 
by the foreclosure of the mortgage. And 
now after three years of fruitless labor 
and anxiety she was put back into the 
same position she was in when the legacy 
had been received, but with far less 
health and strength to endure the hard 
life. She and Amabelle had to go to 
work again in the hot, crowded depart¬ 
ment store. As for the bright young boy, 
he had gone the way she might have ex¬ 
pected had she given more thought to the 
danger of placing him in a saloou, no 
matter what the position he occupied, 
whether a seller of the poison cup or an 
onlooker. At first perhaps disliking the 
sight, then becoming familiar with it, 
he little by little was drawn into 
the circle of youth, that must take the 
place of the older customers. 
Eunice bemoaned her hard and sor¬ 
rowful fate, and seemed inclined to lay to 
the door of Providence, what she in jus¬ 
tice might reasonably have taken upon 
herself. And she ended her letter with 
woeful complaints of the torrid heat and 
dust of the city, which she said was 
unendurable to any but the poor slaves 
of labor, who had to stay in the torrid 
oven of brick and mortar, and endure 
it as best they could. 
Ruth finished the letter as she sat 
there in the pure cool air. amid blossoms 
and verdure, with her loved ones close 
by her side. She looked upon their 
healthy happy faces and the prosperous 
surroundings of their home, and thanked 
the Giver of all good gifts for inclining 
her heart to take the path which though 
hard and toilsome at first, had led her 
into a pleasant and happy haven. 
THE END. 
March 1", 
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