uld like to live
where that kind of people lived. That's the way I came to be in Boston.
It all seems very simple now, but I used to think it might look romantic
from the outside. I've had a happy life; and I'm glad it began in the
country. I shouldn't care if it ended there. I don't know why I've
bothered you with my autobiography, though. Perhaps because I thought
you knew it already."

She looked as if she would have said something fitting if she could have
ruled herself to it; but she said nothing at all. Her failure seemed
to abash her, and she could only ask him if he would not have some more
coffee, and then excuse herself, and leave him to finish his breakfast
alone.

That day he tried for his picture from several points out-of-doors
before he found that his own window gave him the best. With the window
open, and the stove warm at his back, he worked there in great comfort
nearly every afternoon. The snows kept off, and the clear sunsets burned
behind the summit day after day. He painted frankly and faithfully, and
made a picture which, he said to himself, no one would believe in, with
that warm color tender upon the frozen hills. The soft suffusion of the
winter scene was improbable to him when he had it in, nature before
his eyes; when he looked at it as he got it on his canvas it was simply
impossible.

In the forenoons he had nothing to do, for he worked at his picture only
when the conditions renewed themselves with the sinking sun. He tried to
be in the open air, and get the good of it; but his strength for walking
had failed him, and he kept mostly to the paths broken around the house.
He went a good deal to the barn with Whitwell and Jombateeste to look
after the cattle and the horses, whose subdued stamping and champing
gave him a sort of animal pleasure. The blended odors of the hay-mows
and of the creatures' breaths came to him with the faint warmth which
their bodies diffused through the cold obscurity.

When the wide doors were rolled back, and the full day was let in, he
liked the appeal of their startled eyes, and the calls they made to one
another from their stalls, while the men spoke back to them in terms
which they seemed to have in common with them, and with the poultry
that flew down from the barn lofts to the barn floor and out into the
brilliant day, with loud clamor and affected alarm.

In these simple experiences he could not imagine the summer life of the
place. It was nowhere mor