falls, lest the grown people should be
disturbed. There was the mystic retreat within the circle of a group of
low-branching pines, the secret of which one penetrated by stepping down
from the front piazza at a certain place and there insinuating one's
self into a small opening, which only the initiated could discover,
among the trees. Here one had a little fragrant sanctum all one's own,
carpeted with pine needles, green and brown, and arched over by ceiling
and walls of thick branches, from out of which peeped startled robins,
who soon, finding that no harm was meant them, went on with their song.
Then there was the garden, fragrant and brilliant, which one might
explore when one had promised Thomas, the presiding genius, that one
would not touch his cherished sweets, for it "went to his heart" to see
a single blossom torn from its parent stem. And there were the
grape-houses, for which the place was famous far and near,--hot, and
odorous of moist soil and growing vines, among which white and purple
clusters hung temptingly heavy and low.

One especial pleasure was to walk along the gravelled path that skirted
the smooth, level stretch of lawn at the back of the house, and thus to
reach the brow of the hill overlooking the "farm" and the river. There
were seats on the edge of this bluff, and a large spring-board on which
one might ride and jump to one's heart's content. By following this path
still farther, and to the left, one soon deserted the well-kept lawn and
found one's self on a narrow, winding walk overhanging a deep, wooded
ravine, in the depths of which a little brook ran curving about among
the ferns and daisies; and presently, far out of sight of the house, in
shade so dense as to lend a certain pleasing enchantment, one came upon
a rustic summer-house, with odd, three-cornered-seats, and a table
surrounding the tree-trunk that supported the centre of the roof.

There were manifold other out-of-door enjoyments, such as visiting the
pigeon-house, and, as a rare favor, rioting in the scented hay in the
loft over the barn, visiting the gardener's wife (whose home was in that
part of the old Livingston mansion which its master and time had allowed
to stand), and being permitted to draw water from the ancient well,
about which hung so many stories of generations past. How exciting it
was, and with what delicious awe one listened, when the little lady who
was a fairy grandmamma instead of a fairy godmother in th