House and Garden 
Up here the winds riot: no call to complain ot 
stagnant air of town. The tall chimneys and the 
elevator shaft house furnish shelter when the hreeze 
is too rough and furnish shade when the sun is too 
ardent. We go to our house-top at all hours, have 
actually seen a sunrise up here, and have watched 
many and many a sunset. But it is on moonlight 
nights the roof is most favored, one and all we vow 
there can be no fairer moonlight view in the whole 
world than that which spreads out before us from our 
city eyrie. 
Leaning over the railing, we find ourselves 
“between two blue immensities,” cool blue of sky 
and sparkling blue of water. Near objects and 
distant are softened, transformed; the myriad golden 
lights of the town, the ruby and emerald lights of the 
railway add glitter and emphasis to the softness of 
the light of evening. We lie hack in our steamer- 
chairs, quiet, drinking in the loveliness and soothing, 
no tumult of town reaching us; up on the house-top 
all is stillness and beauty. 
When we bring privileged guests to this retreat, 
and when they at last step out of the gloomy hall into 
this view of such wideness and brilliance, we are 
never disappointed in the exclamations of genuine 
surprise and joy uttered by them. 
Some of the family sometimes spend a whole day 
on the roof, (juite Eastern in their mode of life. Here 
is brought work of a morning, here is indulged the 
brief midday siesta, and here the after-siesta stroll 
taken; up here one studies and reads, sometimes a 
cup of afternoon-tea is poured here, and here cooling 
draught is handed about in dim starlight or with the 
moon at full sail. Personally 1 find nothing so 
refreshing, after return from the long day in 
the hot city, as mounting to delicious idleness on 
our house-top; in the stillness and freshness gath¬ 
ering strength and calm that shall be badly needed 
Small hydrangea in tub. Na,sturtium, Wandering Jew, etc., 
in boxe.s. Sweet peas on wire netting at chimney 
to-morrow. As a place of outdoor lounging for 
one town-immured 1 know no better one than 
the house-top, 1 know no easier way “to grow in 
the open air. ” 
Since making acquaintance with the roof of our 
apartment-building, proving its possibilities, we do 
not repine and grumble as once we did over the 
hard-hearted employers, the tasks, that hold us 
to town. 
If the truth were known, 1 believe we who look upon 
our summer advantages as of a superior order would 
sadly miss our high pleasure-ground if suddenly we 
found ourselves in lowly country lane, or down by 
the seaside. Up here we seem so near to the clouds, 
we renew acquaintance with the stars, and experience 
that uplift, which mountain top and high altitude 
give. Hail to Out-of-Doors on the house-top! 
A General View of tbe Roof Garden. 
Over tbe Balustrade is seen tbe Hudson River with tbe New jersey Hills beyond 
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