And yet, as the season advanced, and the air was too dry to admit of dampness anywhere, and the Summer breezes blew in the windows and doors whole clouds of perfume from the rank thickets of old-fashioned roses which stood about the garden, we became sincerely attached to the little cottage.  Then heavy masses of honeysuckles and vines which were trained against the house, grew dense and picturesque with foliage, and Sophronia would enjoy hours of perfect ecstasy, sitting in an easy-chair under the evergreens and gazing at the graceful outlines of the house and its verdant ornaments.

But the cellar was obdurate.  It was pumped dry several times, but no pump could reach the inequalities in its floor, and in August there came a crowd of mosquitoes from the water in these small holes.  They covered the ceilings and walls, they sat in every chair, they sang accompaniments to all of Sophronia’s songs, they breakfasted, dined, and supped with us and upon us.  Sophronia began to resemble a person in the first stages of varioloid, yet that incomparable woman would sit between sunset and dusk, looking, through nearly closed eyes, at the walls and ceiling, and would remark: 

“Pierre, when you look at the walls in this way, the mosquitoes give them the effect of being papered with some of that exquisite new Japanese wall-paper, with its quaint spots; don’t you think so?”

Finally September came, and with it the equinoctial storm.  We lay in bed one night, the wind howling about us, and Sophronia rhapsodising, through the medium of Longfellow’s lines, about

  “The storm-wind of the Equinox,”

when we heard a terrific crash, and then the sound of a falling body which shook the whole house.  Sophronia clasped me wildly and began to pray; but I speedily disengaged myself, lighted a candle, and sought the cause of our disturbance.  I found it upon the hall-floor:  it was the front-door and its entire casing, both of which, with considerable plaster, lathing, and rotten wood, had been torn from its place by the fury of the storm.

In the morning I sought a printer, with a small but strong manuscript which I had spent the small hours of the night in preparing.  It bore this title, “The House I Live In.”  The printer gave me the proof the same day, and I showed it to the owner of the house the same evening, remarking that I should mail a copy to every resident of Villa Valley, and have one deposited in every Post Office box in New York City.  The owner offered to cancel my lease if I would give up my unkind intention, and I consented.  Then we hired a new cottage (not from the agent with the liquid blue eyes), and, before accepting it, I examined it as if it were to be my residence to all eternity.  Yet when all our household goods were removed, and Sophronia and I took our final departure, the gentle mistress of my home turned regretfully, burst into tears, and sobbed: 

“Oh, Pierre! in spite of everything, it is a love of a cottage.”