The Argosy — page 154: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Under Northern Skies. 139 house. Not far away was a lake with any amount of boating at command. ‘Tall reeds and rushes bent and waved to the passing breeze. Beyond it long stretches of country ; cultivated fields yield- ing corn and hay crops, in apparently endless extent. The distance was bounded by immense forests, where it seemed that timber might be felled yet never missed. Not far from the house, but out of sight, was an immense kitchen garden with unlimited strawberry beds ; and presently a dish was placed upon the dessert table that would almost have supplied a small town. Near the strawberry garden was the ice-house, partly underground, with a sufficient supply for all possible needs the whole year round. What could be more delightful than to explore this far away settle- ment? ‘There was all the freshness of a new feeling about it, of absolute freedom. You might be as eccentric and unconventional as you pleased, no censorious world would remark thereon. You lived and breathed the pure air of heaven. ‘The world had grown wider, mind and soul expanded with it. ‘Town life, its limits and contractions, conventionalities and stiffness, forms and ceremonies, next door neighbours and opposite windows—all this was shaken off and dismissed, and fell from one as might fall the chains of slavery. Hereditary bondsmen are they who live in great cities. Here was the truer life. A sky above, high and wide and blue; laughing sunshine that glinted through swaying trees and cast long shadows in the avenues, and invited one to live almost in the open air. Endless walks through field and forest. Here and there a few cottages where dwelt your dependents and farm labourers, who lived only to obey your will and till your ground. In early morning or the cool of evening, taking boat and idly paddling about the lake, watching the changes in the broad sky, the colours deepening as the sun dipped. Watching the gold-tipped trees changing to darkness, like a dying life, and gloom spreading itself over nature; and the depths of the forest turning from the cool shades of day to the melancholy of profound night. Over all, unbroken solitude ; not even a far-off glimmer flashing from any window to mark the existence cf other lives and domestic dramas in this solitary Eden, this boundless, charming wilderness. ‘“ Neighbours? We may indeed say that we have none, as the word is understood in England,” said my hostess. ‘Our only neighbour is Baron R , and he is seven miles away. Rather a long drive for a morning call, and so our calls usually last several days. We go Over and stay with them, and they come and stay with us. Even this is a delightful break in our monotonous existence. If it were not for books and letters, and the feeling that there is an outer world and that we have friends in it, who, after all, are accessible at any moment we choose to undertake a journey: if it were not for this, I think we should die of stagnation.” It was difficult to be convinced. The advantages of the world COMIC OOO (CO) im