The Old Stone House

by Constance Fenimore Woolson

"It is wonderful new life and hope," said Bessie.

"It is love," said Sibyl.

"It is all this and more," said Mr. Leslie reverently. "Speculations are useless, and our time should be too full of earnest labor to allow us to indulge in them. We should be content to leave it to our Maker, who has made even this world so beautiful, and this life, rightly used, so glorious."

July gave place to August, and the family of cousins, into whose circle Mr. Leslie had been received, lived a happy life in the old stone house. The heat of the dog-days was tempered by the lake breeze. At ten in the morning it came sweeping over the water from Canada, and men walking through the hot streets, felt its gentle coolness on their foreheads, and took off their straw hats with a sigh of relief. In the evening it came again, rustling through the trees with a refreshing sound as though the leaves were reviving from their parched stillness; people came out to meet it, the piazzas and door-steps were crowded, and all the closed blinds were thrown wide open to catch the blessed coolness which promised refreshing sleep.

"You dwellers by the lake-shore know nothing of the real August heat in the lowlands," said Mr. Vinton, one evening as he sat among a group of visitors on the piazza of the old stone house. "Here the lake breeze is invariable, but a hundred miles south, days and nights pass with alternate blazing heat and close, lifeless darkness, the latter even more trying than the former. The country where I live is the richest agricultural land in the State; it is a valley with a broad, slow river rolling through it, the very water dark and sluggish with the fertility of the soil. As long as the grain is growing, there is some vitality in the air in spite of the heat, but when the harvest comes, and field after field is shorn, it seems as though the superfluous richness rose from the earth into the air, and filled it with heavy rankness. The sun shines through a haze in the daytime, and the moon through a mist at night; everybody and everything is languid. One goes to bed oppressed with fatigue, sleeps heavily, and rises without refreshment; there is no fresh morning air, nothing but a weary looking forward to the next twelve hours of heat."

"What a forlorn description!" said Mr. Gay, laughing. "Is this all you can say for the great, rich state of Ohio?"

"It's very richness brings about what I am describing," said Mr. Vinton. "But perhaps some of your eastern farmers would endure the Ohio dog-days for the sake of the miles of level grain-fields without a stone, without a break of any kind, which extend through the midland counties. When I first came West, I was overpowered with homesickness for the hills of New England; the endless plains were hateful to me, and I fairly pined to see a rock, or a narrow, winding road. While in this mood, I happened to be riding in a stage-coach through one of the midland counties in company with two New England farmers. They had never been West before, and they were lost in astonishment and admiration at the sight of the level fields on either side of the broad, straight road, stretching away to the right and the left, unbroken by the slightest elevation. 'This country is worth farming in,' said number one; 'Ethan would admire to see it, but he'd hardly believe it, I guess, without seeing.'

"'Not a stone nor a rock nowhere; none of them plaguey hills neither,' said number two. 'Well, now! this is what I call a be-a-utiful country! Western farmers must have an easy life of it.' You can imagine with what feelings I listened to these men. There I was, longing for the sight of a hill with the longing of a homesick child for its mother."

"I am afraid you are prejudiced, George," said Mr. Leslie, with a smile. "You dwell upon the heat of August in Ohio, but you say nothing about the other eleven months of the year."

"The other eleven months are beautiful, I must acknowledge," replied Mr. Vinton. "As soon as the frosts come, nothing can surpass the climate; colored October, hazy November, and bright, open December are all perfect. Any New Englander,—even you, Mr. Gay,—would be obliged to yield the palm to the West in respect of winter climate."