m the north is
by all means the most agreeable; it leads by Mr. Rink's fine colonial
house and Martin Howard's new place and through an embowered avenue of
weeping willows, which, out of deference to his melancholy profession,
Mr. Dimmons, landscape gardener of our most prosperous cemetery, has
constructed in front of his beautiful residence in Thistle Patch Court;
a turn is then made upon Dandelion Place, and just one block this side
of Mr. Allworth's bowlder house (famous as the greatest bargain ever
acquired on the North Shore) another turn to the right brings you in
sight and within a few yards of our property.

Mr. Black was pleased with the neighborhood. He is not a man of
enthusiasms; in all the years of my acquaintance with him I have never
known him to give way to an ebullition of any kind. Yet upon this
occasion there was an expression upon his face when he first set eyes
upon our property which gave me to understand that he approved of our
purchase. I hastened to clinch this favorable impression by apprising
him briefly of the proposition Colonel Bobbett Doller had made to me
the previous afternoon, and I flatter myself that, between us, Alice
and I made a pretty fair presentation of the merits of our new place.

"You seem to have begun reconstructing the house," said Mr. Black.
"Who is your architect?"

"We have no real architect," said I. "In order to save expense we have
employed a boss carpenter capable not only of designing plans, but also
of executing them. His name is Silas Plum."

"Plum? That is a very familiar name to me," said Mr. Black. "I wonder
whether he is any kin to the Plum family of Maine. There was an
Elnathan Plum, who used to live in Aroostook, and I went to school with
him at Pocatapaug Academy in the winter of 1827. The last time I
visited Maine I was told that he had moved west in 1840, or
thereabouts. He married a third cousin of mine whose maiden name was
Eastman--Euphemia Eastman, as I recall it."

Of course I was unable to say what Uncle Si's antecedents were, but I
felt pretty certain that, if left to himself, Mr. Black would find out
all about them, for of all the people I ever met with Mr. Black surely
has the most astounding faculty for acquiring and remembering
genealogical data.

Our worthy friend consumed fully a half-hour's time inspecting our
front lawn, examining into the condition of the fence, learning what
kind of trees we had, and ascertaining the cha