One beautiful feature was the return of the pigeons every afternoon to their home.  At this time they would come sweeping across the lawn, positively in clouds, and with a swiftness and softness of winged motion more beautiful than anything of the kind I ever knew.  Had I been a musician, such as Mendelssohn, I felt that I could have improvised a music quite peculiar, from the sound they made, which should have indicated all the beauty over which their wings bore them.  I will here insert a few lines left at this house on parting, which feebly indicate some of the features.

  THE WESTERN EDEN.

  Familiar to the childish mind were tales
    Of rock-girt isles amid a desert sea,
  Where unexpected stretch the flowery vales
    To soothe the shipwrecked sailor’s misery. 
  Fainting, he lay upon a sandy shore,
  And fancied that all hope of life was o’er;
  But let him patient climb the frowning wall,
  Within, the orange glows beneath the palm-tree tall,
  And all that Eden boasted waits his call.

  Almost these tales seem realized to-day,
  When the long dulness of the sultry way,
  Where “independent” settlers’ careless cheer
  Made us indeed feel we were “strangers” here,
  Is cheered by sudden sight of this fair spot,
  On which “improvement” yet has made no blot,
  But Nature all-astonished stands, to find
  Her plan protected by the human mind.

  Blest be the kindly genius of the scene;
    The river, bending in unbroken grace,
  The stately thickets, with their pathways green,
    Fair, lonely trees, each in its fittest place;
  Those thickets haunted by the deer and fawn;
  Those cloudlike flights of birds across the lawn! 
  The gentlest breezes here delight to blow,
  And sun and shower and star are emulous to deck the show.

  Wondering, as Crusoe, we survey the land;
  Happier than Crusoe we, a friendly band. 
  Blest be the hand that reared this friendly home,
  The heart and mind of him to whom we owe
  Hours of pure peace such as few mortals know;
  May he find such, should he be led to roam,—­
  Be tended by such ministering sprites,—­
  Enjoy such gayly childish days, such hopeful nights! 
  And yet, amid the goods to mortals given,
  To give those goods again is most like heaven.

Hazelwood, Rock River, June 30, 1843.

The only really rustic feature was of the many coops of poultry near the house, which I understood it to be one of the chief pleasures of the master to feed.

Leaving this place, we proceeded a day’s journey along the beautiful stream, to a little town named Oregon.  We called at a cabin, from whose door looked out one of those faces which, once seen, are never forgotten; young, yet touched with many traces of feeling, not only possible, but endured; spirited, too, like the gleam of a finely tempered blade.  It was a face that suggested a history, and many histories, but whose scene would have been in courts and camps.  At this moment their circles are dull for want of that life which, is waning unexcited in this solitary recess.