Before the winter was over we had commenced to scan the advertising columns of the daily papers for "country places to rent." We wanted if possible to get a place in the mountainous section of New Jersey. I wanted to get away from air off the salt water and this section of the country seemed the best.
It must be healthy and at a low rent. For the rest we must take what we could get at the price we could pay.
Our search ended in our taking a place of about six acres, five minutes' walk from a station on the Morris & Essex Railroad, between Summit and Morristown.
On the property was a farm-house more than one hundred years old, and this the owner repaired and improved by building an extra room and a piazza across the front of the house.
The rent was two hundred dollars a year. We moved there early in April. The last night in the Brooklyn house I had one of my worst attacks of rheumatism. I have never had the slightest twinge of it since.
Blessed be New Jersey!
CHAPTER IX
SUBURBAN LIFE.
We had been in our new home but a very few days before we were quite in accord with the sentiment that "God made the country and man made the town."
The house in its exterior was the ordinary, old-fashioned, one-and-a-half story farmhouse, improved by a piazza; but the interior, under the deft hands and good taste of my wife, had an appearance both home-like and cozy that was very attractive.