lawn, 't is a place for archery; a spot, too, for boxwood hedges and a sundial. Croquet, however, has had its innings as the favorite outdoor amusement, and

many a stiff game of quoits has been pitched across the sward with horseshoes.

Waxwings build their nests amid the cedar boughs that brush the house; a bluebird yearly has its home in the hollow limb of a dead sweet cherry; the little nests of song sparrows are well concealed there among the blackberries; and English sparrows chirp and twitter about the eaves, and long straws from their nests hang from the corners. In the days cardinals and robins and many other beautifully colored birds come whisling and fluting about it; toward nightfall swallows dart and soar above, and bats flutter and girate to and fro, while katydids rasp away in the maples, and the crickets drone out in the fields; and later, in the dusky places, the whip-poor-wills and screech owls cry, while round about whispers the never-ending soughing of the pines and spruces.

Formerly great flocks of wild pigeons used to fly over the farm, sometimes even darkening the sun in their flight-pigeons, pigeons everywhere, as far as the eye could reach. Wild turkeys piped through the woods, and wolves came up back of the barn at night and howled. But these have all gone, and it is a rare thing nowadays to see even a single little flock of a dozen wild pigeons, and the people remember the year when they see them.

Around upon the estate are various orchardsapples, pears, quinces, apricots, peaches, cherries, plums; and many kinds of berries-strawberries (of which, 't was said, so tells old Izaak Walton, that "doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did"), red and black raspberries, blackberries, and, some time past, a patch of dewberries

and one of currants. On a hillside gently sloping from the house innumerable clusters of white and purple grapes hang, luscious and sweet, beneath the sheltering shade of the broad green leaves of the vineyard. Pastures flank the roadsides, and fields of clover, wheat, and corn, where golden pumpkins dot the brown earth. in the autumn. A large woods serves as a wind-break toward the West, and its masses of dark foliage and the antlered tips intensify and prolong the beauty and mystery of the slow-dying sunsets.

I think of Horace on his Sabine farm. Sometimes, too, as I look at it, I think of Hawthorne and the old manse. 'Tis an ideal life-otium cum dignitate. What more could one wish?

The homestead is one of the few old places now left in this vicinity. Almost all the others have become too modernized. But it is not like our modern houses. It has never been rented; and the people who live in it have never moved. So, although not far from the city, the homestead is suggestive always of old-time memories and old-time customs, and affords one of the unusual opportunities, nowadays, where we can see old-time ways still practiced, the wheat cradled, the maple sap boiled in kettles, soft soap made from the wood ashes, and the open fire in the sitting-room.

During one season ("befo' de wah") as many as one hundred and fifty thousand hogs were driven past along the turnpike down to the city of Cincinnati, at that time the great pork market of the country. The old homestead became a sort of tavern at such times, and the drovers used to stop over night. The road would become all ruts and wallows. But all that has

changed, too, with the years, and the extension of railroad facilities and the opening of the many other Western packing-houses have sadly diminished the great droves of hogs; yet even I can remember more than once seeing the turnpike black with droves containing several hundred, and great herds of lowing cattle, and flocks of hundreds of sheep as well, panting and bleating along on their way to the stockyards.

How many memories there are that thus cluster about an old house! The customs and loves of years ago are there—1834. The old people now living in it can tell of incidents that occurred in the first campaign of Martin Van Buren; and the recollections of the aunts go back even further, to a time when, as little girls, they had listened to the tales of a neighbor, an old woman then, who was the daughter of a soldier of the Revolution. She had, as a child in New Jersey, baked loaves of bread, very long, large loaves, for the American soldiers; and once, when fired upon by the British, she had jumped over a fence, and had fallen as if dead, and had then been left there by them. The old homestead, as I have said, is also itself practically on the site of a log cabin built in pioneer days, and the well in the yard dates back to the earliest settlements in the Miami Valley. It has never been rewalled, and its moss-covered stone sides still contain the sweetest, best of sparkling water in the world. When we hear these tales, and think of these associations with the past, it stirs our blood, and it is almost as if we were ourselves thus joined in a way, and link by link, to the very origin of the Republic.

Afar off, at certain times, I used to (and can yet)

hear faintly, floating up in sweet mellow tones, the deep whistles of the big river steamers on the Ohio, fifteen miles away; and in the distance, again, across the rolling hills, on still days, could be heard the rumble and tooting of the train on its way toward the North. I used to think it one of the wildest places possible upon such occasions. It seemed as if we were remote and isolated from the whole world, and I enjoyed it.

There is a large picture in the sitting-room, which long ago excited my imagination, entitled "Westward Ho!" A pioneer has just returned from a hunt, and, coming into his lean-to hut with his game-a deer slung over his pony's back, and a raccoon and opossum and some wild turkeys lying on the ground-stands leaning on his long muzzle-loading rifle surveying the scene, while his wife looks up admiringly into his eyes. His oldest boy is taking the deer from the horse; the children are playing about a spring of water; and supper simmers over the open fire beside the spring. A river winds its way not far distant among the hills. An improvised shack is the home, with a roof of bark. The whole picture set the wild blood and love of adventure aglow in me, and I quivered for the life of the forest. It seemed to me then, in my young boyhood days, and still seems, as I look upon it, the symbol of all that is independent and adventuresome and truly American. It speaks of the wild life that used to be when the forests were here upon every hill, and when Audubon could stop for the night and kill a wild turkey for supper at almost any point along the Ohio.

There used to be another picture, in the diningroom, which not only excited my imagination, but