appointed, to find these rural road-houses doing a better business than even in their day. The bicycle revived the road-house, and though the bicycle has since been abandoned by those who prefer fashion to exercise, the places that the wheel dis A Peaceful Scene in New York. though not so old by twenty-five years as it is painted in the sign which says "Built in 1695," will probably be preserved as a museum too. Another relic in that locality well worth keeping is the Duryea place, a striking old stone farm-house with a wide window on the second floor, now shut in with a wooden cover supported by a long bracepole reaching to the ground. Out of this window, it is said, a cannon used to point. This was while the house was headquarters for Hessian officers, during the long monotonous months when "the main army of the British army lay at Flushing from Whitestone to Jamaica;" and upon Flushing Heights there stood one of the tar In the distance is St. Andrew's Church, Borough of Richmond, Staten Island. the nearest approach to the great game at that time in America, and it may have been played on the site of the present Flushing Golf Club. These same soldiers also amused themselves in less innocent ways, so that the Quakers and other non-combatants in and about this notorious Tory centre used to hide their live stock indoors over-night, to keep it from being made into meals by the British. That may account for the habit of the family occupying the Duryea place referred to; they keep their cow in a room at one end of the house. At any rate it is not necessary for New Yorkers to go to Ireland to see sights of that sort. Those are a few of the historic country places that have come to town. There is a surprisingly large number of them, and even when they are not adopted and tableted by the D. A. R. or D. R., or S. R. or S. A. R., they are at least known to local fame, and are pointed out and made much of. But the many abandoned country houses which are not especially historic or significant-except to certain old persons to whom they once meant homegoodly old places, no longer even near the country, but caught by the tide well within the city, that is the kind to be sorry for. Nobody pays much attention to them. A forlorn For Sale sign hangs out in front, weather-beaten and discouraged. The tall colonial columns still try to stand up straight and to appear unconscious of the faded paint and broken windows, hoping that no one notices the tangle of weeds in the old-fashioned garden, where old-fashioned children used to play hideand-seek among the box-paths, now overgrown or buried under tin cans. Across the way, perhaps, there has already squatted an unabashed row of cheap, vulgar houses, impudent, staring little city homes, vividly painted, and all exactly alike, with highly ornamented wooden stoops below and zinc cornices above, like false hair fronts. They look at times as though they were putting their heads together to gossip and smile about their odd, old neighbor that has such out-ofdate fan-lights, that has no electric bell, no folding-beds, and not a bit of zinc cornicing. Meanwhile the old house turns its gaze the other way, thinking of days gone by, patiently waiting the end-which will come soon enough. (BRETON) By Florence Wilkinson SUN drips down in a well of gold; M OTHER, will he not come to night, (The sun-burnt sound of his biniou; Oh, the dim sweet hour when he came to woo!) He swung the scythe through the wet luzerne And he sang to his swathe at the shining turn, I will call his name, Jannik, Jannik. M OTHER, my little hands are cold, The dark has come. (I am sick of the swish of the dancers' feet Fling me away that gown of green With its trailing length and its hateful sheen, And speak no more. The dark has come. Over the length of the languid land Step of the tide to the tremulous land. |