ctice of his profession except in
rare cases, dwelt in a square old fashioned New England mile away from
the green. It was called a mansion because it stood alone with ample
fields about it, and had an avenue of trees leading to it from the road,
and on the west commanded a view of a pretty little lake with gentle
slopes and nodding were now blossoming under the generous modern
influences. Squire Oliver Montague, a lawyer who had retired from the
practice of his profession except in rare cases, dwelt in a square old
fashioned New England groves. But it was just a plain, roomy house,
capable of extending to many guests an unpretending hospitality.

The family consisted of the Squire and his wife, a son and a daughter
married and not at home, a son in college at Cambridge, another son at
the Seminary, and a daughter Alice, who was a year or more older than
Ruth. Having only riches enough to be able to gratify reasonable
desires, and yet make their gratifications always a novelty and a
pleasure, the family occupied that just mean in life which is so rarely
attained, and still more rarely enjoyed without discontent.

If Ruth did not find so much luxury in the house as in her own home,
there were evidences of culture, of intellectual activity and of a zest
in the affairs of all the world, which greatly impressed her. Every room
had its book-cases or book-shelves, and was more or less a library; upon
every table was liable to be a litter of new books, fresh periodicals and
daily newspapers. There were plants in the sunny windows and some choice
engravings on the walls, with bits of color in oil or water-colors;
the piano was sure to be open and strewn with music; and there were
photographs and little souvenirs here and there of foreign travel.
An absence of any "what-pots" in the corners with rows of cheerful
shells, and Hindoo gods, and Chinese idols, and nests of use less boxes
of lacquered wood, might be taken as denoting a languidness in the family
concerning foreign missions, but perhaps unjustly.

At any rate the life of the world flowed freely into this hospitable
house, and there was always so much talk there of the news of the day,
of the new books and of authors, of Boston radicalism and New York
civilization, and the virtue of Congress, that small gossip stood a very
poor chance.

All this was in many ways so new to Ruth that she seemed to have passed
into another world, in which she experienced a freedom