rval of labor, and when the
intense heat brought comparative stillness, before his closed eyes came
often up his home among the New-Hampshire hills. He thought of his dead
mother in the burying-ground, and the slate stones standing in the
desolate grass. Then his thoughts ran eagerly back to the Fox farm,
and the sweet, lonely figure that stood watching his return under the
pear-tree,--the warm kiss of happy meeting, life opening fair, and a
long vista through which the sunlight peeped all the more brightly for
the shadowing trees.

Then over the farm, broad and bountiful, scanning every detail of the
large red house, the great barns and sheds, the flocks of turkeys,
and the geese, kept for feathers, and not dreamed of for eating. (Our
Puritan fathers held neither to Christmas nor Christmas goose.) Through
the path up by the well-sweep, where the moss-covered bucket hangs
dripping with the purest of water. Beyond the corn-barn to the
butternut-trees,--by this time, they have dropped their rich, oily
fruit; and the chestnut-burrs, split open, and lying on the sunny
ground. Then round to the house again, where the slant October sun
shines in at the hospitable open door, where the little wheel burrs
contentedly, and the loom goes _flap-flap_, as the strong arm of Cely
Temple presses the cloth together, and throws the shuttle past, like
lightning: stout cloth for choppers and ploughmen comes out of that
loom!

In all his peepings at the interior of the house, one figure has
accompanied him, beautified and glorified the place; so that, whether he
looks into the buttery, where fair, round cheeses fill the shelves, or
wanders up the broad stairs with wide landings to the "peacock chamber,"
he seems to himself always to be going over a temple of sweet and sacred
recollections. Into the peacock chamber, therefore, his soul may wander,
where the walls are sparsely decked with black-and-white sketches, ill
displaying the glorious plumage of the bird, and, like all old pictures,
very brown,--even to the four-posted bed, whitely dressed, and heaped to
a height that would defy "the true princess" to feel a pea through it,
and the white toilet-table, neatly ornamented with a holder and a pair
of scissors, both sacred from common usage. Asparagus in the chimney,
with scarlet berries. General Washington, very dingy and respectable,
over the fireplace; and two small circular frames, inclosing the Colonel
and his wife in profile. The li