The
bond of our Community was such, that the members had the privilege of
building cottages for their own residence within our precincts, thus
laying a hearthstone and fencing in a home private and peculiar to
all desirable extent, while yet the inhabitants should continue to
share the advantages of an associated life. It was inferred that
Hollingsworth and Zenobia intended to rear their dwelling on this
favorite spot.
I mentioned those rumors to Hollingsworth in a playful way.
"Had you consulted me," I went on to observe, "I should have
recommended a site farther to the left, just a little withdrawn into
the wood, with two or three peeps at the prospect among the trees.
You will be in the shady vale of years long before you can raise any
better kind of shade around your cottage, if you build it on this
bare slope."
"But I offer my edifice as a spectacle to the world," said
Hollingsworth, "that it may take example and build many another like
it. Therefore, I mean to set it on the open hillside."
Twist these words how I might, they offered no very satisfactory
import. It seemed hardly probable that Hollingsworth should care
about educating the public taste in the department of cottage
architecture, desirable as such improvement certainly was.
X. A VISITOR FROM TOWN
Hollingsworth and I--we had been hoeing potatoes, that forenoon,
while the rest of the fraternity were engaged in a distant quarter of
the farm--sat under a clump of maples, eating our eleven o'clock
lunch, when we saw a stranger approaching along the edge of the field.
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