ugh as different as a birch from an oak, are
just as perfect. Even Jack, whose every drop of blood is English and
Scottish, admitted this.

They're white and of simple lines, with a rich green background of
woods. In front there are lawns with lots of flowers growing as they
please, and ferns left to do as they like if they don't interfere with
other people; on both sides generous meadows stretching far away. Jack
said: "What a warm glow the thought of such a home must bring to the
heart of a boy when he's out for the battle of life! And what a place to
come back to at Christmas!"

"Or Thanksgiving," said I. But "Thanksgiving" suggests no picture to
Jack as it does to you and me. Our cranberry sauce in England is always
a failure, not thick or sweet enough; and the poor fellow has _never
tasted pumpkin pie_! If one of them came into his life, he would
probably address it as it is spelt; and what self-respecting pumpkin pie
would be luscious unless it were pronounced "punkin?"

"Anyhow, I give Vermont a star," he murmured, with the look of pinning a
V. C. onto a mountain's breast. And he did that just in time, for the
mountains were receding into the background, taking hands in a ring
round wide woodlands.

By way of the pretty toy town Arlington we came to Bennington, which is
the heart of history for Vermont. The man for whom it was named was
granted the first township in the wild lands known as "the Wilderness"
then. But it must have been a beautiful wilderness, for the British
soldiers of those pre-Revolutionary days used to fall in love with it as
they marched through, and promise themselves that they would come back
and build homes. They did come back and build the homes, and the
"promised land" was so attractive that New York wanted to take it away
by writ of ejectment. The Vermonters decided to fight for their rights
under Ethan Allen, and thus "The Green Mountain Boys" came into
existence as a famous band. The bronze catamount which still grins
defiance toward New York from the top of its tall pedestal makes that
day seem yesterday!

There's a great monument also, to the battle which made Bennington's
glory, but the most _humanly_ interesting thing in town--for us--was the
old Robinson house. Such a darling house, with a heavenly door and
scalloped white picket fence. You would love it! And it's turned itself
into a kind of glorified curiosity shop, as so many of the charming old
houses of New England have