We Americans are all cuckoos,—­we make our homes in the nests of other birds.  I have read somewhere that the lineal descendants of the man who carted off the body of William Rufus, with Walter Tyrrel’s arrow sticking in it, have driven a cart (not absolutely the same one, I suppose) in the New Forest, from that day to this.  I don’t quite understand Mr. Ruskin’s saying (if he said it) that he couldn’t get along in a country where there were no castles, but I do think we lose a great deal in living where there are so few permanent homes.  You will see how much I parted with which was not reckoned in the price paid for the old homestead.

I shall say many things which an uncharitable reader might find fault with as personal.  I should not dare to call myself a poet if I did not; for if there is anything that gives one a title to that name, it is that his inner nature is naked and is not ashamed.  But there are many such things I shall put in words, not because they are personal, but because they are human, and are born of just such experiences as those who hear or read what I say are like to have had in greater or less measure.  I find myself so much like other people that I often wonder at the coincidence.  It was only the other day that I sent out a copy of verses about my great-grandmother’s picture, and I was surprised to find how many other people had portraits of their great-grandmothers or other progenitors, about which they felt as I did about mine, and for whom I had spoken, thinking I was speaking for myself only.  And so I am not afraid to talk very freely with you, my precious reader or listener.  You too, Beloved, were born somewhere and remember your birthplace or your early home; for you some house is haunted by recollections; to some roof you have bid farewell.  Your hand is upon mine, then, as I guide my pen.  Your heart frames the responses to the litany of my remembrance.  For myself it is a tribute of affection I am rendering, and I should put it on record for my own satisfaction, were there none to read or to listen.

I hope you will not say that I have built a pillared portico of introduction to a humble structure of narrative.  For when you look at the old gambrel-roofed house, you will see an unpretending mansion, such as very possibly you were born in yourself, or at any rate such a place of residence as your minister or some of your well-to-do country cousins find good enough, but not at all too grand for them.  We have stately old Colonial palaces in our ancient village, now a city, and a thriving one,—­square-fronted edifices that stand back from the vulgar highway, with folded arms, as it were; social fortresses of the time when the twilight lustre of the throne reached as far as our half-cleared settlement, with a glacis before them in the shape of a long broad gravel-walk, so that in King George’s time they looked as formidably to any but the silk-stocking gentry as Gibraltar or Ehrenbreitstein to a visitor without