_. The Indian summer has a sweet sadness. The spring is
full of hope and promise, and the _heart_ buds with the flowers.

Out in the midst of all this country springtime freshness, our
'Hermitage' looks up from its shrubberies and rejoices within itself,
and does not care for the traveler's careless glances. The traveler may
call it stupid and ugly, if he calls it at all; our Hermitage still
patiently wears its havelock of weather-beaten shingles, for _it_ knows
that beneath its lowly roof--radiant with whitewash and fresh paper--are
cozy, coolly curtained rooms, where friendly books look down from the
wall, and drowsy arm-chairs woo from the corners.

Yes, many Wisconsin banks have yielded up their lives in the past year,
and in one of these fatal safes our little pile of 'ready' irrevocably
evaporated! Ah! the palmy days! when we had rooms at the ----; when our
tables were marble-topped and our mirrors presented full-length
portraits of us; when every dinner was a feast for epicures; when
servants awaited our nod or beck; when Davis's best turn-out bowled us
away to the purple bluffs yonder, at every sunset, and bowled us back
again happy in pocket and in heart! Those days have gemmed themselves in
the past.

We find it necessary to 'put in for repairs,' as they say of a steamboat
when her smoke-stacks are snapped off by a Lake Pepin gale, and she goes
ashore. At no distant day we will again go out into the tide. From any
quantity of 'wild lands'--which we have the felicity of paying taxes
on--we have selected a ten-acre patch in the neighborhood of the city,
and are living something after the style of Thoreau, except that we have
a better cook!

From our modestly architectured porch we look out upon the broad,
far-stretching valley of the Mississippi. It is a vast view--so that a
shower becomes a part of the landscape, and it is delightful to watch it
trailing over the hills. Alexander Smith is ahead of me in this idea,
but no matter. East and west the picturesque bluffs mingle in hazy
softness with the sky; the roofs and steeples of the city glimmer in the
sunny distance; now and then, away through the wooded banks we see
columns of pearly steam, as some stately boat goes gliding by. I shall
always have a weakness for these proud, screeching steamboats, for there
is one among them--the dear old 'Milwaukee'--for which I entertain a
confirmed infirmity! _We_ went honey-mooning in the 'Milwaukee.' Its
musical and f