rtificially colored,
decorate the lilac-bushes in the side yard. They are always making new
mats or piecing quilts in a new pattern.

As soon as the first bluebird warbles they begin to work in their flower
and vegetable garden, and from then until it is time to cover the
verbena-beds in the fall I rarely pass without seeing one or more of
them, with sunbonnet on head and hoe in hand, busy at work. Besides
keeping their little front yard a mass of gorgeous bloom and their
vegetable garden free from weed or stone, they raise canary-birds to
sell and take care of a dozen hives of bees. Last fall I frequently saw
all three of them in the yard, with a neighbor or two called in for
conference, and all twittering and chattering like blackbirds in March.
Finally, the mystery was solved. Going past one day, I saw a carpenter
deliberately cutting out the whole end of the house, and soon a large
bay-window made its appearance. When this was completed three rows of
shelves were put up inside close to the glass, and immediately filled
with plants in pots and tin cans. What endless occupation and
entertainment the watering and watching and tending of these must afford
the sisters during winter!

Neither does another neighbor of mine supply the type I seek--the old
Quaker farmer, who is discontented and changeable in his disposition,
having lived in Indiana a while, then in Iowa, then in Indiana again,
and who is now in Iowa for the second time. He rents some land which
lies just across the railroad, and in summer, when he is ploughing the
growing corn, I hear him talking to his horse. He calls her a "contrary
old jade," and jerks the lines and saws her mouth, and says, "Get over
in that other row, I tell thee!" Once I heard him mutter to her, when he
was leading her home after the day's work was done, "I came as near
killin' thee to-day as ever I did."

I will take for one type a man whom we met last summer in the country.
We had driven for miles along the country roads in search of a certain
little glen where the maiden-hair ferns grew waist-high and as broad
across as the fronds of palms, and having found it and filled our
spring-wagon with the treasures, we set out to return home by another
road. We lost our way, but did not regret it, as this mischance made
known to us the most stately and graceful tree we had ever seen--one
that was certainly worth half a day's ride to see. The road left the
treeless uplands, where the sunsh