From his library window Mr. Mitchell can look across a little foreground of well-kept dooryard, with blossoming shrubs and vines and bright parterres of flowers set in the close turf; across a hemlock hedge and a grass-bank sloping down to the road; across the road itself and the flat below it, checkered with his various crops, to the spires and roofs and elm-tops of New Haven and the green Fair Haven hills in the eastern horizon. Southward, following the line of the river, he sees the waters of the harbor, bounded by the white lighthouse on its point of rock. Northward is the trap “dyke” or precipice of West Rock, and northeastward, beyond the town, and dim with a violet haze, the sister eminence, East Rock. From the driveway which traverses the ridge behind the homestead the view is still wider and more distinct, taking in the salt marshes through which West River flows down to the bay, the village of West Haven to the south, and, beyond, the sparkling expanse of the Sound and the sandhills of Long Island. Back of the ridge, westward, stretches for miles a region which used to be known to college walkers as “The Wilderness,” from its supposed resemblance to the scene of Grant’s famous campaign: a region of scrubby woodland, intersected with sled roads and cut over every few years for fire-wood: a region--it may be said incidentally--dear to the hunters of the fugacious orchid. The weather-stained old farmhouse described in “My Farm of Edgewood” made way some dozen years ago for a tasteful mansion of masonry and wood-work. The lower story of this is built of stone taken mostly from old walls upon the farm. The doors and windows have an edging of brick which sets off the prevailing gray with a dash of red. The upper story is of wood. There are a steep-pitched roof with dormer-windows, a rustic porch to the east, a generous veranda to the south, and vines covering the stone. The whole effect is both picturesque and substantial, graceful and homely at once. The front door gives entrance to a spacious hall, flanked upon the south by the double drawing-rooms and upon the north by the library, with its broad, low chimney opening, its book-shelves and easy-chairs, its tables and desk and wide mantel, covered and strewn in careless order with books, photographs, manuscripts, and all the familiar litter of a scholar’s study. At the rear of the hall is the long dining-room, running north and south, its windows giving upon the grassy hillside to the west. A conspicuous feature of this apartment is the full-length portrait, on the end wall, of Mr. Mitchell’s maternal grandfather, painted about the beginning of the century, and representing its subject in the knee-breeches and silk stockings of the period. Half-length portraits of Mr. Mitchell’s grandparents, painted about 1830, by Morse, the electrician, hang upon the side wall of the dining-room, and an earlier portrait of his mother surmounts the library mantel-piece. Mr.