Ida and I, however, wandered away from the others this morning, and strolled up to the dear old house in the woods where she passed her childhood.  This is, to my mind, the sweetest and most picturesque spot upon the entire estate, and I do not wonder that Aunt Mary, with her keen love for the beautiful in Nature, her indifference to general society, and her devotion to her children, to study, and to reflection, preferred the quiet seclusion of her home shut in by evergreens, with the deep ravine, and the joyous little brook at her feet, to the most superb mansion that graces our magnificent Hudson.

[Illustration:  The House in the Woods.]

One of the purest springs on the place is in the ravine, or “Ida’s Glen,” as uncle christened it long ago.  Here at the foot of the long wooden staircase is a basin of natural rock, and flowing into it is the sweetest, coolest water in the world.  This water Aunt Mary always preferred to any other on the place—­even to the spring at the foot of the side-hill, so celebrated in the campaign times as the spot where uncle and his visitors would stop to “take a drink,” when returning from a walk.  Exquisite in her neatness, Aunt Mary would frequently order the basin of her favorite spring to be well purified by a thorough scrubbing with brush and soap, followed by a prolonged rinsing with water.  During her illness last fall, she frequently asked to have a pitcher of water brought from this spring, which she always especially relished.

That uncle shared his wife’s partiality for this spring is evident by his description of it in his “Recollections”: 

“In the little dell or glen through which my brook emerges from the wood wherein it has brawled down the hill, to dance across a gentle slope to the swamp below, is the spring,—­pure as crystal, never-failing, cold as you could wish it for drink in the hottest day, and so thoroughly shaded and sheltered that, I am confident, it was never warm, and never frozen over.  Many springs upon my farm are excellent, but this is peerless.”

The house in the woods was built by uncle to suit Aunt Mary’s taste, and very comfortable and complete it is.  Uncle says of it: 

“It is not much—­hastily erected, small, slight, and wooden, it has at length been almost deserted for one recently purchased and refitted on the edge of the village; but the cottage in the woods is still my home, where my books remain, and where I mean to garner my treasures.”

The house consists of two stories with that most necessary addition to a country house, a broad piazza.  To the right stands a white cottage, built for the servants.  Almost in front of the house is a large boulder, moss-grown and venerable.  This, Aunt Mary would not have removed, for she loved Nature in its wildest primeval beauty, and now the rock is associated with loving memories of Raffie’s little hands that once prepared fairy banquets upon it, with acorn-cups for dishes; but now those baby hands have long since been folded quietly in the grave.