a place to locate a summer home,
that Doctor and Mrs. Homer Gage of Worcester, Massachusetts, discovered
at Shrewsbury a simple little farmhouse, showing no claim to
architectural beauty. It was such an unattractive, plain, little
building, that only the experienced eye could discover its fine lines.
This house stood close by the dusty highway; the fence which formed the
boundary line had fallen into decay, while the farm lands, run down
through hard usage, showed no trace even of an old-fashioned garden,
such as many of the housewives of the earlier day so loved to tend. The
house was built before the Revolutionary War, being erected in 1760, and
was considered in those days to be a good example of what a farmhouse
stood for. Surely it was an excellent type, considering the usual lines
in the New England farmhouses of that day,--this small, unpretentious
dwelling, whose entrance door out of plumb and windows irregularly
placed made a curious combination that was in reality fascinating and
appealing.

It was two stories in height, with an attic under the eaves,--a hot
little place during the summer months and cold in winter, but good for
storage of furniture and unnecessary household belongings. The roof had
a pitch at the back and sloped to meet the kitchen, which was only one
story in height. Two sturdy, six-foot chimneys had been built on one
side of the house, as stoves were unknown in those days. The frame was
of white pine, well seasoned, and the timber hand-hewn, with the mark of
the adze plainly showing in the beams, for it was built when honest
labor prevailed and was as stanch as in the days when the bush stuck in
the chimney or ridge-pole showed that the carpenters' work was done. The
farm buildings were connected with the main house and comprised a barn,
hen-house, corn-crib, and byre, all huddled together in the most compact
kind of way. It had not been occupied since Doctor Brown, the original
owner, paid his last visit and left the house to its fate. The interior
was not as dilapidated as in most old houses, being in tolerably good
repair. And so, with little alteration, it was used as a dwelling house,
while the new home which was being built near the center of the estate
was erected.

After the cellar was built and the foundation partly laid, the work on
the new house was stopped. There was something about the old clapboarded
farmhouse that appealed so strongly to the new occupants that they fell
unde