The rent was two hundred dollars a year. We moved there early in April. The last night in the Brooklyn house I had one of my worst attacks of rheumatism. _I have never had the slightest twinge of it since._ Blessed be New Jersey! CHAPTER IX SUBURBAN LIFE. We had been in our new home but a very few days before we were quite in accord with the sentiment that "God made the country and man made the town." The house in its exterior was the ordinary, old-fashioned, one-and-a-half story farmhouse, improved by a piazza; but the interior, under the deft hands and good taste of my wife, had an appearance both home-like and cozy that was very attractive. We had to get accustomed to the low ceilings, only seven feet high; but this did not distress us, though in our parlor, a room twenty-eight feet long, the effect was always peculiar. The grounds around the house were not laid out. It was simply a case of a house set on a little elevation, in the center of a rather rough lawn, and without a path or a flower-bed, no shrubs and but few trees. I hired a man with plow and horse for a day or two and we made a path from the piazza to the road, set out an arbor-vitae hedge, made two or three small flower-beds, and had the kitchen-garden ploughed. The man planted the potatoes and corn in a field next the garden, but the kitchen garden was my hobby, and with all the enthusiasm of a child with a new toy I took personal possession of it. About an acre in extent, fenced and almost entirely free from even small stones, the soil was rich and productive. I met with wonderful success, and the crops that I raised, in their earliness and size, astonished the natives. Every pleasant morning I was up at five o'clock, and after a bowl of crackers and milk, worked for two or three hours. Then a bath, followed by breakfast, and after a day in town, which, owing to dull business, I made very short, I was back in the afternoon at work again. How I did enjoy those days. In the early stages my wife used to laugh at me for digging up the seed to see if it had sprouted, so impatient was I to see the growing plants. We had an ice-house, filled for us by the owner without charge, and in melon season I picked the melons in the morning and left them in the ice-house all day. My mouth waters at the thought of those delicious melons. The fact that I raised everything myself, practically by my own labor, added greatly to our enjoyment in the eating. The walk between house and station was for most of the distance through a private lane which was in part shaded by large trees. The quaint old village, one of the oldest in the State, was interesting; but not so the people, at least to us. It was a farming community, and of social life there was none. Still, we felt that no privation. We had found what we sought--a pleasant, comfortable home, my return to good health, and economical living.