boys had volunteered to hold an umbrella over her
during the rainy season, but I wasn't quite satisfied with this
arrangement. Just then we saw an enchanting bungalow set in a garden of
bamboos, roses and bananas, and looked no further! It belonged to an
English woman who raised Toggenburg goats, which made it all the more
desirable for us as the goats were to stay at the back of the garden,
and provide not only milk but interest for the boys.

J---- dubbed it "El rancho goato" at once. Our friends in the East were
delighted with the idea, and many were their gibes. One in particular
always added something to the address of his letters for the guide or
diversion of the R. F. D. postman: "Route 2, Box so-and-so, you can tell
the place by the goats"; or during the spring floods this appeared in
one corner of the envelope: "Were the goats above high water?"

It wasn't just an ordinary farm. There was a certain something--I think
the names of the goats had a lot to do with it--Corella, Coila, Babette,
Elfa, Viva, Lorine, and so on, or perhaps it was the devotion of their
mistress, who expended the love and care of a very large heart on a
family that I think appreciated it as far as goats are capable of
appreciation. If she was a little late coming home (she had a tiny shack
on one corner of the place) they would be waiting at the gate calling
plaintively. There is a plaintive tone about everything a goat has to
say. In his cot on the porch J---- composed some verses one morning
early--I forget them except for two lines:

"The plaintive note of a querulous goat
Over my senses seems to float."

Of course that was the difficulty--creatures of one kind or another
do not lie abed late. Our Sabine Farm was surrounded by others and
there was a neighborhood hymn to the dawn that it took us some time
to really enjoy--if we ever did. Sopranos--roosters; altos--pigeons,
and ducks; tenors--goats; bassos--cows, and one donkey. There was
nothing missing to make a full, rich volume of sound. Of course
there is no place where it is so difficult to get a long, refreshing
night's sleep as the country.

One rarely comes through any new experience with all one's preconceived
ideas intact. Our first season on the Sabine Farm shattered a number of
mine. I had always supposed that a mocking-bird, like a garden, was "a
lovesome thing, God wot." Romantic--just one step below a nightingale!

There was a thicket of bamboos close to my