A small house in the village was hired, and after a few weeks’ preparation, one bright June morning, when the flowers we had watched over and tended with care were in bloom, when the robins which, year after year had returned to their nests in the maple tree, were singing their sweetest songs, and when the blue sky bent gently over us, we bade adieu to the spot, looking back with wistful eye until every trace of our home had disappeared. Farewell forever to thee, dear old homestead, where now other footsteps tread and other children play than those of “auld lang syne.” The lights and shadows of years have fallen upon thee since that summer morn, and with them have come changes to thee as well as to us. The maple, whose branches swept the roof above my window, making oft sad music when tuned by the autumn wind, has been cut away, and the robins, who brought to us the first tidings of spring, have died or flown to other haunts. “The moss-covered bucket which hung in the well” has been removed; the curb, whose edges were worn by childish hands, is gone; while in place of the violets and daisies which once blossomed on the grassy lawn, the thistle and the burdock now are growing, and the white rose bush by the door, from whence they plucked the buds which strewed the coffin-bed of our baby brother, is dead. Weeds choke the garden walks, and the moss grows green and damp on the old stone wall. Even the brook which ran so merrily past our door has been stopped in its course, and its sparkling waters, bereft of freedom, now turn the wheel of a huge saw-mill, with a low and sullen roar. All is changed, and though memory still turns fondly to the spot which gave me birth, I have learned to love another home, for where my blessed mother dwells, ’tis surely home to me. By her side there is, I know, a vacant chair, and in her heart a lonely void, which naught on earth can fill; but while she lives, and I know that there is in the world for me a mother and a mother’s love, can I not feel that I have indeed a home, though it be not the spot where first she blessed me as her child? CHAPTER XVI. “OUT WEST.” What a train of conflicting ideas do those two words oftentimes awaken, bringing up visions of _log cabins_, ladder stairs, _wooden latches_, fried hominy and maple sugar, to say nothing of the hobgoblins in the shape of bears, rattlesnakes, wolves, and “folks who don’t know anything;” the latter being universally considered the “staple production” of every place bearing the name of “out West.” Even western New York, with her hundreds of large and flourishing villages, her well cultivated farms, her numerous schools, her educated, intelligent people, and her vast wealth, is looked upon with distrust by some of her eastern neighbors, because, forsooth, her boundaries lie farther towards the setting sun, and because she once bore the title of “way out west in the Genesees.”