We were waked at 6:30, and come down to the front “stoop” of the homestead.  The structure was home-made, with rafters on the outside or inside according to the fancy of the builder; sunshine and storm had stained it grayish brown, and no tint could better harmonize with the background and surroundings.  In one corner of the stoop a tin wash-basin stood under a waterspout in the sink; there swung the family towels; the public comb, hanging by its teeth to a nail, had seen much service; a piece of brown soap lay in an abalone shell tacked to the wall; a small mirror reflected kaleidoscopical sections of the face, and made up for its want of compass by multiplying one or another feature.  We never before ate at the hour of seven as we ate then; then a pipe on the front steps and a frolic with the boys or the dogs would follow, and digestion was well under way before the day’s work began.  Then the Artist shouldered his knapsack and departed; the lads trudged through the road to school; the women went about the house with untiring energy; the male hands were already making the anvil musical in the rustic smithy, or dragging stock to the slaughter, or busy with the thousand and one affairs that comprise the sum and substance of life in a self-sustaining community.  We were assured that were war to be declared between the outer world and Ingram House, lying in ambush in the heart of our black forest, we might withstand the siege indefinitely.  All that was needful lay at our hands, and yet, a stone’s-throw away from our shake-built citadel, one loses himself in a trackless wood, whose glades are still untrodden by men, though one sometimes hears the light step of the bronco when Charlie rides forth in search of a strong bull.  All work was like play there, because of a picturesque element which predominated over the practical.  Wood-cutting under the window of the best room, trying out fat in a caldron or an earth-oven against our cottage, dragging sunburnt straw in a rude sledge down the hill-side road, shoeing a neighbor’s horse in a circle of homely gossips, hunting to supply the domestic board at the distant market—­is this all that Adam and the children of Adam suffer in his fall?

At noon a clarion voice resounded from the kitchen door and sent the echoes up and down the creek.  It was the hostess, who, having prepared the dinner, was bidding the guests to the feast.  The Artist came in with his sketch, the Chum with his novel, the Scribe with his note-book, followed by the horny-handed sons of toil, whose shoulders were a little rounded and whose minds were seldom, if ever, occupied with any life beyond the hills that walled us in.  We sat down at a camp board and ate with relish.  The land was flowing with milk and honey; no sooner was the pitcher drained or the plate emptied than each was replenished by the willing hands of our hostess or her boys.