House and Garden 
perfection by a scheme of the mistress lend an 
etherial touch to the decorative scheme. Pic¬ 
tures on the wall and the gleam of lightly gold- 
tooled hooks from the simple bookcase com¬ 
plete the charm of the apartment. From its 
windows one sees the wide expanse of sky and 
landscape, the roofs of a few neighboring houses 
lower down the slope, tor the occupants of 
the Wickiup are the highest perched of the 
inhabitants, and the stone wall that outlines a 
bit of green lawn islanded in the rough moun¬ 
tainside. 
Outside the studio is a barn,plain and simple. 
Within, however, it is a true workroom. A 
hint caught from a French railway station led 
the master of the place to frame many can¬ 
vases as part of the inner wall. He chose the 
beautiful gulf cypress for his wainscoting, 
and it makes admirable picture framing. 
Five minutes from the house takes one by 
any of several densely shaded old wood roads 
into the young forest that clothes the Buckel- 
barrack. Here grow all the wild Bowers of 
the region, arbutus hidden beneath the leaves, 
and glorious clumps of laurel and wild rhodo¬ 
dendron. From the top of the Buckelbar- 
rack one sees again the welter of wooded hills, 
and faint traces of the old perilous mountain 
road by which Wayne and his soldiers crept 
upon the British at Stony Point to snatch a 
victory of surprise. 
The earliest sounds of morning at this 
mountain cottage are the songs of many 
birds. At evening one hears the pleasant 
flat tinkle of cow-bells, for cattle feed all up 
and down the mountainside, and in the 
silence of the night there come thick-throated 
duckings, and deliciously liquid musical 
tones from the brook that frets its way in a 
hundred threads and foamy falls and rapids 
down the rugged stony slope to join the 
placid tidal Hudson. Squirrels play about 
among the trees, and a keen ear could proba¬ 
bly detect, after nightfall, the bark of a prowl¬ 
ing fox. 
1 here are neighbors not far away, placid 
folk of Dutch extraction who move as if under 
the languorous spell that cast Rip Van Winkle 
into his twenty years sleep. The very names 
of the neighbors are full of rural charm and 
redolent of nature: Captain Lavender occu¬ 
pies the nearest cottage, whence he over¬ 
looks the scene of his adventurous voyages 
when he commanded a Hudson river steamer. 
Hard by are the Roses and the Hollys. 
Ruddy little mountaineers trudge of mornings 
down the slopes to the public school in the 
village below. There, too, is the post office, 
where the New York morning papers await 
their subscribers an hour before they are 
placed upon the breakfast tables of suburban 
homes, but no rural “ deliverer” under Federal 
sanction climbs these heights carrying mail 
to the mountaineers. A steep and winding 
path crossing the brook and climbing several 
stone walls, takes a spry person in fifteen min¬ 
utes to the railway station, whence express 
trains deliver the traveler to New York in an 
hour and a quarter, but neither shadow nor 
smoke of the vast dropsical metropolis can 
soil or threaten the inviolate heights of the 
little Wickiup on the Buckelbarrack. 
An Old English Inn 
138 
