e, a silence that listens and watches but
never speaks, finger on lip. There is a spectral quality about
everything upon which the eye falls: the woods, like great green clouds,
the wayside flowers, the still farm-houses half lost in orchard
bloom--all seem to exist in a dream. Everything is so still, everything
so supernaturally green. Nothing moves or talks, except the gentle
susurrus of the spring wind swaying the young buds high up in the quiet
sky, or a bird now and again, or a little brook singing softly to itself
among the crowding rushes.

Though, from the houses one notes here and there, there are evidently
human inhabitants of this green silence, none are to be seen. I have
often wondered where the countryfolk hide themselves, as I have walked
hour after hour, past farm and croft and lonely door-yards, and never
caught sight of a human face. If you should want to ask the way, a
farmer is as shy as a squirrel, and if you knock at a farm-house door,
all is as silent as a rabbit-warren.

As I walked along in the enchanted stillness, I came at length to a
quaint old farm-house--"old Colonial" in its architecture--embowered in
white lilacs, and surrounded by an orchard of ancient apple-trees which
cast a rich shade on the deep spring grass. The orchard had the
impressiveness of those old religious groves, dedicated to the strange
worship of sylvan gods, gods to be found now only in Horace or Catullus,
and in the hearts of young poets to whom the beautiful antique Latin is
still dear.

The old house seemed already the abode of Solitude. As I lifted the
latch of the white gate and walked across the forgotten grass, and up on
to the veranda already festooned with wistaria, and looked into the
window, I saw Solitude sitting by an old piano, on which no composer
later than Bach had ever been played.

In other words, the house was empty; and going round to the back, where
old barns and stables leaned together as if falling asleep, I found a
broken pane, and so climbed in and walked through the echoing rooms. The
house was very lonely. Evidently no one had lived in it for a long time.
Yet it was all ready for some occupant, for whom it seemed to be
waiting. Quaint old four-poster bedsteads stood in three rooms--dimity
curtains and spotless linen--old oak chests and mahogany presses; and,
opening drawers in Chippendale sideboards, I came upon beautiful frail
old silver and exquisite china that set me thinking of a beau