To those persons who have only visited the town of Newport, taken its ocean drive, lunched at its Casino, strolled on its beach, and stared at its fine carriages and the fine people in them, that fill Bellevue Avenue of an afternoon, the idea of choosing Newport as a place to rest in must seem a very singular one. If their visit be a brief one, they may easily fail to discover that after leaving the limits of the gay summer city, with its brilliant social life, its polo matches, its races, balls, dinners, and fêtes, there still remains a district, some twelve miles in length, of the most rural character. The land here is principally owned by small farmers, who raise, and sell at exorbitant and unrural prices, the fruit, vegetables, eggs, milk, butter and cream which the Newport market-men, adding a liberal percentage, sell again to their summer customers. The interior of the island is in many respects the most agreeable part of it; the climate is better, being much freer from heavy fogs and sea mists, and the thermometer neither rises so high nor falls so low as in the town. The neighborhood of Lawton’s Valley is one of the most charming and healthy parts; and it is in this spot that Mrs. Howe has, for many years, made her summer home. The house stands a little removed from the cross-road which connects the East and West Roads, the two thoroughfares that traverse the island from Newport to Bristol Ferry. Behind the house there is a grove of trees--oaks, willows, maples, and pines--which is the haunt of many singing birds. The quiet house seems to be the centre of a circle of song, and the earliest hint of day is announced by their morning chorus. In this glen “The Mistress of the Valley,” as Mrs. Howe has styled herself, in one of her poems, spends many of her leisure hours, during the six months which she usually passes at her summer home. Here she sits with her books and needle-work, and of an afternoon there is reading aloud, and much pleasant talk under the trees; sometimes a visitor comes from town, over the five long miles of country road; but this is not so common an occurrence as to take away from the excitement created by the ringing of the door-bell. There are lotus trees at Oak Glen, but its mistress can not be said to eat thereof, for she is never idle, and what she calls rest would be thought by many people to be very hard work. She rests herself, after the work of the day, by reading her Greek books, which have given her the greatest intellectual enjoyment of the later years of her life. In the summer of 1886 she studied Plato in the original, and last year she read the plays of Sophocles.