he outer wall.

Not all sides of the house that belongs to the little garden look as
decorative as the one on the main street. There, a pale rose-colored
tint contrasts not too sharply with the green window-shutters and the
blue slate roof. The weather side of the house, on the narrow street,
looks as if it were clad in an armor of slate from top to toe; the
other gable-end joins directly on to the row of houses of which it is
the beginning or the end; at the back, however, it is an example of
the proverb that everything has its weak point. There, an upstairs
piazza has been built onto the house, not unlike half a crown of
thorns. Supported by roughly-hewn wooden posts it runs along the upper
story and expands toward the left into a little room. There is no
direct entrance to it from the upper story of the house. To reach the
"gallery chamber" from there one must leave the house by the back
door, walk perhaps six steps along the wall, past the dog-kennel, to
the wooden stairs, resembling those of a henhouse, and after climbing
these must wander the whole length of the piazza to the left.

If all the structures are not equally ornamental and if piazza, stable
and shed stand out noticeably against the dwelling-house, yet there is
nowhere lacking a quality which adorns more than beauty of form and
shining ornamentation. Extreme cleanliness smiles at the observer from
the most hidden corners. In the little garden it reaches such a pitch
that it hardly dares to smile. The garden does not look as if it were
cleaned with a hoe and broom; it looks as if it had been brushed. The
little beds that stand out so sharply against the yellow gravel of the
walks look, not as if they had been dug by a cord, but as if they were
drawn on the ground with a ruler and compasses, the box edging has the
air of being daily attended to by the most accurate barber in town
with comb and razor. And yet the blue coat which, if one stands on the
piazza, one may see twice daily stepping into the little garden and
every day at exactly the same minute, is still more neatly kept than
the garden. When, after doing various pieces of work, the old
gentleman leaves the garden again--and every day he goes at the same
minute, just as punctually as he comes--the white apron over his blue
coat shines with such unblemished whiteness that it is really
incomprehensible why the old gentleman should have put it on. When he
moves about among the tall rose-bushes which