ver, the old house on the bend stands up to
view, especially if you are on the front seat with the driver. The car
swings into a straightaway, lined, perhaps, with sugar-maples and gray
stone walls. Between the trunks are vistas of the green fields and far
hills. But the chief vista is up the white perspective of the road,
which seems to vanish directly into the front door of the solid,
mouse-gray house on the bend.

The ribbon of road rushes toward you, as if a great spool under your
wheels were winding it up. The house rushes on with it; grows nearer;
details emerge. You see the great square chimney; the tiny
window-panes, six to a sash, some of them turned by time, not into the
purple of Beacon Hill but into a kind of prismatic sheen like oil on
water; the bit of classic egg-and-dart border on the door-cap; the
aged texture of the weathered clapboard; the graceful arch of the wide
woodshed entrance, on the kitchen side; the giant elm rising far above
the roof. You rush on so near to the house, indeed, that the car seems
in imminent danger of colliding with the front door, when suddenly the
wheels bite the road, you feel the pull of centrifugal force, and the
car swings away at right angles, leaving an end view of the ancient
dwelling behind you, so that when you turn for a final glance you see
the long slant of the roof at the rear, going down within six or eight
feet of the ground.

Such is the view from the motor-car. If you are traveling on foot,
however, there is much more to be observed, such as the great doorstep
made from a broken millstone, the gigantic rambler by the kitchen
window, the tiger-lilies gone wild in the dooryard, and above all, the
view from the front windows. Since the house was visible far up the
road, conversely a long stretch of the road is visible from the house.
Standing in front of it, you can see a motor or wagon approaching a
mile away, and from the end windows, too, can be seen all approaching
vehicles from the other angle. Moreover, if you lived within, you
could not only see who was coming, but you could step out of your door
a pace or two and converse with him as he passed. The old house is
strategically placed.

When it was built, a century or even a century and a half ago, no
motors went by on that road, and not enough of any kind of traffic to
raise a dust. The busy town to the south, the summer resort to the
north, were alike small villages, given over to agriculture. There