n and
bedroom, and used the platform as our summer parlour. The sense of
privacy, as I have said already, was complete. We could look over the
dump on miles of forest and rough hilltop; our eyes commanded some of
Napa Valley, where the train ran, and the little country townships sat
so close together along the line of the rail. But here there was no man
to intrude. None but the Hansons were our visitors. Even they came but
at long intervals, or twice daily, at a stated hour, with milk. So our
days, as they were never interrupted, drew out to the greater length;
hour melted insensibly into hour; the household duties, though they were
many, and some of them laborious, dwindled into mere islets of business
in a sea of sunny daytime; and it appears to me, looking back, as though
the far greater part of our life at Silverado had been passed, propped
upon an elbow, or seated on a plank, listening to the silence that there
is among the hills.

My work, it is true, was over early in the morning. I rose before any
one else, lit the stove, put on the water to boil, and strolled forth
upon the platform to wait till it was ready. Silverado would then be
still in shadow, the sun shining on the mountain higher up. A clean
smell of trees, a smell of the earth at morning, hung in the air.
Regularly, every day, there was a single bird, not singing, but
awkwardly chirruping among the green madronas, and the sound was
cheerful, natural, and stirring. It did not hold the attention, nor
interrupt the thread of meditation, like a blackbird or a nightingale;
it was mere woodland prattle, of which the mind was conscious like a
perfume. The freshness of these morning seasons remained with me far on
into the day.

As soon as the kettle boiled, I made porridge and coffee; and that,
beyond the literal drawing of water, and the preparation of kindling,
which it would be hyperbolical to call the hewing of wood, ended my
domestic duties for the day. Thenceforth my wife laboured single-handed
in the palace, and I lay or wandered on the platform at my own sweet
will. The little corner near the forge, where we found a refuge under
the madronas from the unsparing early sun, is indeed connected in my
mind with some nightmare encounters over Euclid, and the Latin Grammar.
These were known as Crown Prince's lessons. He was supposed to be the
victim and the sufferer; but here there must have been some
misconception, for whereas I generally retired to bed a