on its walls. They are its neighbourhood and its outlook. They confer
upon it that touch of life and character, that power to beget love and
bind friendship, which a country house receives from its surrounding
landscape, the garden that embraces it, the stream that runs near it,
and the shaded paths that lead to and from its door.

By this magic of pictures my narrow, upright slice of living-space in
one of the brown-stone strata on the eastward slope of Manhattan Island
is transferred to an open and agreeable site. It has windows that look
toward the woods and the sunset, watergates by which a little boat is
always waiting, and secret passageways leading into fair places that
are frequented by persons of distinction and charm. No darkness of night
obscures these outlets; no neighbour's house shuts off the view; no
drifted snow of winter makes them impassable. They are always free, and
through them I go out and in upon my adventures.

One of these picture-wanderings has always appeared to me so singular
that I would like, if it were possible, to put it into words.

It was Pierrepont who first introduced me to the picture--Pierrepont the
good-natured: of whom one of his friends said that he was like Mahomet's
Bridge of Paradise, because he was so hard to cross: to which another
added that there was also a resemblance in the fact that he led to a
region of beautiful illusions which he never entered. He is one of
those enthusiastic souls who are always discovering a new writer, a new
painter, a new view from some old wharf by the river, a new place to
obtain picturesque dinners at a grotesque price. He swung out of his
office, with his long-legged, easy stride, and nearly ran me down, as I
was plodding up-town through the languor of a late spring afternoon,
on one of those duty-walks which conscience offers as a sacrifice to
digestion.

"Why, what is the matter with you?" he cried as he linked his arm
through mine, "you look outdone, tired all the way through to your
backbone. Have you been reading the 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' or
something by one of the new British female novelists? You will have la
grippe in your mind if you don't look out. But I know what you need.
Come with me, and I will do you good."

So saying, he drew me out of clanging Broadway into one of the side
streets that run toward the placid region of Washington Square. "No,
no," I answered, feeling, even in the act of resistance, the pleasure of
his c