that this is humbug, for, the fact is, the perfect silence strikes you
as somewhat lonesome, and it even scares you a little. Then your
children keep running up to you with strange plants and flowers, and
asking you what they are; and you find it trying on the nerves to keep
up the pretence of parental omniscience, and yet avoid the too-ready
corrections of your friend.

[Illustration]

"Johnny-jumper!" he says, scornfully, when you have hazarded a guess out
of your meagre botanical vocabulary: "Why, man, that's no Johnny-jumper,
that's a wild geranium." Then he addresses himself to the other
inquiring youngster: "No, my boy, that's not a chestnut; that's an
acorn. You won't get chestnuts till the fall, and then you'll get them
off the chestnut trees. That's an oak."

And so the walk is not altogether pleasant for you, and you find it
safest to confine your remarks on country life to generalizations
concerning the air and the silence.

No, Modestus, do not think for a moment that I am making game of you.
Your friend would be no more at home at the uptown end of your little
New York path than you are here in his little town; and he does not look
on your ignorance of nature as sternly as you would look upon his
unfamiliarity with your familiar landmarks. For his knowledge has grown
upon him so naturally and unconsciously, that he hardly esteems it of
any value.

But you can have no idea of the tragico-comical disadvantage at which
you will find yourself placed during your first year in the
country--that is, the suburban country. You know, of course, when you
move into a new neighborhood in the city you must expect to find the
local butcher and baker and candlestick-maker ready to fall upon you,
and to tear the very raiment from your back, until they are assured that
you are a solvent permanency--and you have learned how to meet and repel
their attacks. When you find that the same thing is done in the country,
only in a different way, which you don't in the least understand, you
will begin to experience a certain feeling of discouragement. Then, the
humorous papers have taught you to look upon the Suburban Furnace as
part of the machinery or property of a merry jest; and you will be
shocked to discover that to the new-comer it is a stern and cold
reality. I use the latter adjective deliberately and advisedly. There
will surely come an awful night when you will get home from New York
with Mrs. Modestus in the midnight