The things we do!

All around rose the wide cup of the valley, its sides as yet
covered by unbroken decoration of vivid or parti-colored foliage.
Here and there the vivid reds of the wild sumac broke out in riot;
framed lower in the scale were patches of berry vines touched by
the frost; while now and again a maple lifted aloft a fan of clean
scarlet against the sky,--all backed by the more somber colors of
the oaks and elms, or the now almost naked branches of the lindens.
These enfolding forests gave a look of protectedness to this secret
place. They left a feeling not of discomfort but of shelter.
Moreover, the grass underfoot was soft and still green. Some sort
of comeliness, picturesque though rude, showed in the scant
attempts to modify nature in the arrangement of the grounds. And
there, noble and strong, upon a little eminence swelling at the
bottom of the valley's cup, lay the great house, rude, unfinished,
yet dignified. If it seemed just this side of elegance, yet the
look of it savored of comfort.


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