Now permit me to draw your attention to the little plain at our left, in the river vale, between the two portions of our village, lying green, and fresh, like a garden run wild, and, but for one cottage house, left to its own leafy solitude. A magnificent grove of white pines stoops and murmurs to the wind as it draws down the valley, the tufted boughs give out a healthy odor, and in their shadows are a thousand grassy nooks and hollows filled with wild blossoms that give a richer fragrance to the air. I have said there was but one house in the river vale. A little back from the river’s brink, and just beyond the clump of chesnuts at the end of the bridge, are two large oak trees, sheltering, and almost hiding a low cottage house. A flower garden is in front, and a sweep of rich sward rolls from the back parlor windows down to the water’s edge. It is a quiet rural dwelling, and the home of my childhood. Does it not look sequestered and deliciously cool? That waterfall, which sounds a perpetual anthem night and day, can be seen from the windows. The fine grove forever spreads its sea of green in front, and here are the old bridge, the village cut into fragments, and the rough hills giving a dash of the sublime to what is in itself so beautiful! There is yet another object which cannot be seen from the bridge, but from our cottage door we may trace the road which branches off from the turnpike at the opposite end where it winds along the river’s margin till it reaches a spot just opposite Castle-rock. There the high bank crowds close down to the water, thus forcing the projectors of the road to lead it up the brow of the hill, where a growth of underwood and some few trees that have been left standing partially conceal its course, and the exact spot where a cross road from School-hill intersects it. But just at that point and directly opposite the highest peak of Castle-rock, stood a handsome white dwelling-house, with green blinds and a portico of lattice work, covered half the year with crimson trumpet flowers and cinnamon roses. In the winter, when the trees were leafless, we had a full view of this house from our cottage, and could almost distinguish its inmates as they passed in and out through the portico. Even in the summer, its white walls might here and there be seen gleaming through the green foliage, and very frequently the figures of two young girls appeared at night-fall wandering through the garden which sloped down the hill, where the flower beds and thickets were at the twilight hour rendered golden by the sun as he plunged over Castle-rock, deluging it with a glory which kindled up the whole landscape.