This year was pleasanter still.  I do not know if the Chappaqua people are less patriotic than other citizens of the Union, but our nerves were only disturbed by the occasional popping of a fire-cracker in the garden of our neighbor, the train-master over the way; and when we strayed off to the Glen after dinner, we were as free from disturbing noise as though our country had not been born ninety-seven years ago.  But although noisy demonstrations do not seem the fashion here (perhaps owing to the predominance of Quakers in the neighborhood), the dormant enthusiasm of the people for the Fourth was aroused at sundown, when a mass meeting was held at the tavern, or “Chappaqua Hotel” as it is grandly styled, and lengthy and energetic speeches were delivered.  From our piazza we could hear the orators’ voices ascending to a very high key as they warmed with their topic, and quite congratulated ourselves that we were not obliged to be of the audience.

After dark there was a small display of Roman candles and sky-rockets; and so ended the glorious Fourth.

July 6.

I have again dreamed away an entire morning upon the piazza of the house in the woods—­to me the stillest, sweetest spot in the world.  I have described this dear old house and its romantic surroundings again and again since I have been here this summer.  I can scarcely turn over half a dozen leaves of my journal without finding some allusion to it; but it is a subject possessing such fascination for me that I must again revert to it.  I like to pass a quiet hour upon the steps of the piazza, or upon the large moss-grown boulder in front of the house where Ida, Raphael, and Gabrielle have all played; and while my fingers are busily employed with some fanciful design wrought with gold thread or emerald-green silk,

  “My thoughts wander on at their own sweet will,”;

oftenest returning, however, to Aunt Mary’s life here in the woods with her little children.  A lonely, comfortless life many women would have deemed it, so entirely shut in as she was from the outer world; and to any one less self-reliant and self-sustained than Aunt Mary it would have been so.  For that there were discomforts in her country life I do not doubt, although they were much lessened by uncle’s easy circumstances; and the house itself was finished off with all the city improvements and conveniences practicable to introduce into a building of its size and situation.  Still, the house was distant from good markets, and the trees encircled it so closely that the sun’s rays did not penetrate the rooms until ten o’clock; but Aunt Mary loved her trees as though they were human, and at that time would not allow one to be cut down, notwithstanding the dampness that they created.  An idle woman would have regretted the distance at which the house stood from the public road, as no distraction ensued from looking out of the windows; and a timid or nervous one would have dreaded the long nights in that solitary house when uncle was in the city or absent upon lecturing tours, and no neighbor was within calling distance in case of danger.