hat wild land, of the vanished city of "Is," which
ages ago disappeared beneath the waves. The peasants still point out at
a certain place on the coast the site of the fabled city, and the
fishermen tell how during great storms they have caught glimpses of its
belfries and ramparts far down between the waves; and assert that on calm
summer nights they can hear the bells chiming up from those depths. I
also have a vanished "Is" in my heart, and as I grow older, I love to
listen to the murmurs that float up from the past. They seem to come
from an infinite distance, almost like echoes from another life.

At that enchanted time we lived during the summers in an old wooden house
my father had re-arranged into a fairly comfortable dwelling. A
tradition, which no one had ever taken the trouble to verify, averred
that Washington had once lived there, which made that hero very real to
us. The picturesque old house stood high on a slope where the land rises
boldly; with an admirable view of distant mountain, river and opposing
Palisades.

The new Riverside drive (which, by the bye, should make us very lenient
toward the men who robbed our city a score of years ago, for they left us
that vast work in atonement), has so changed the neighborhood it is
impossible now for pious feet to make a pilgrimage to those childish
shrines. One house, however, still stands as when it was our nearest
neighbor. It had sheltered General Gage, land for many acres around had
belonged to him. He was an enthusiastic gardener, and imported, among a
hundred other fruits and plants, the "Queen Claude" plum from France,
which was successfully acclimated on his farm. In New York a plum of
that kind is still called a "green gage." The house has changed hands
many times since we used to play around the Grecian pillars of its
portico. A recent owner, dissatisfied doubtless with its classic
simplicity, has painted it a cheerful mustard color and crowned it with a
fine new _Mansard_ roof. Thus disfigured, and shorn of its surrounding
trees, the poor old house stands blankly by the roadside, reminding one
of the Greek statue in Anstey's "Painted Venus" after the London barber
had decorated her to his taste. When driving by there now, I close my
eyes.

Another house, where we used to be taken to play, was that of Audubon, in
the park of that name. Many a rainy afternoon I have passed with his
children choosing our favorite birds in the glass cases