t selfishness; those cedarn
alleys have admitted only vows that were never broken. If the occupant
of the house be unknown, even by name, so much the better. And from
homes more familiar, what lovely childish faces seem still to gaze from
the doorways, what graceful Absences (to borrow a certain poet's
phrase) are haunting those windows!

There is a sense of winter quiet that makes a stranger soon feel at
home in Oldport, while the prospective stir of next summer precludes
all feeling of stagnation. Commonly, in quiet places, one suffers from
the knowledge that everybody would prefer to be unquiet; but nobody has
any such longing here. Doubtless there are aged persons who deplore the
good old times when the Oldport mail-bags were larger than those
arriving at New York. But if it were so now, what memories would there
be to talk about? If you wish for "Syrian peace, immortal leisure,"--a
place where no grown person ever walks rapidly along the street, and
where few care enough for rain to open an umbrella or walk
faster,--come here.

My abode is on a broad, sunny street, with a few great elms overhead,
and with large old houses and grass-banks opposite. There is so little
snow that the outlook in the depth of winter is often merely that of a
paler and leafless summer, and a soft, springlike sky almost always
spreads above. Past the window streams an endless sunny panorama (for
the house fronts the chief thoroughfare between country and
town),--relics of summer equipages in faded grandeur; great, fragrant
hay-carts; vast moving mounds of golden straw; loads of crimson onions;
heaps of pale green cabbages; piles of gray tree-prunings, looking as
if the patrician trees were sending their superfluous wealth of
branches to enrich the impoverished orchards of the Poor Farm; wagons
of sea-weed just from the beach, with bright, moist hues, and dripping
with sea-water and sea-memories, each weed an argosy, bearing its own
wild histories. At this season, the very houses move, and roll slowly
by, looking round for more lucrative quarters next season. Never have I
seen real estate made so transportable as in Oldport. The purchaser,
after finishing and furnishing to his fancy, puts his name on the door,
and on the fence a large white placard inscribed "For sale". Then his
household arrangements are complete, and he can sit down to enjoy
himself.

By a side-glance from our window, one may look down an ancient street,
which in some