Homestead

“ And at night we see the homely dwellings of the villagers assume a picturesque aspect to which they are strangers by the tell-tale light of day, their rough lines softened by the mellow splendor of a summer moon, or their unshapely forms looming forth mysteriously against the starlit snow of winter. Above all we become familiar with those cottage interiors to which the stories contain so many references. Sometimes we see the better class of homestead, surrounded by its fence through which we pass between the often-mentioned gates. ”

“ And in the country the single stately elm rising gracefully and benignantly over the wayside cottage, year after year like a guardian angel sending down its blessings of shade, moisture and coolness in times of drought, and shelter from the pitiless storm, recalls the tenderest associations of generation after generation that go from the old homestead. ”

“ The big house, so delightfully remodelled and modernized from a primitive homestead that nothing is left excepting the angles and pitch of the roof, is remarkably well placed upon a terrace that slopes behind the buildings, while they themselves are in the midst of green stretches of lawns, dotted with beds of flowering shrubs, with here and there a fountain or summer-house. ”

“ In what affluence might we not all have flourished! The old homestead, a fire burning in the grate, the stern and relentless parent, and outside in the cold and wet father, the outcast son, the disowned, the homeless one, about to ride off into the night in the service of his country—never to return. ”

“ The strong arms of the second occupants have denuded the hill sides of their bush, and the bare surface is exposed to view, a comfortable homestead or cottage dotting the surface here and there, everything indicating peace and comfort. Unless the thought arises, How can people make a living out of such land as this? But be satisfied, critical visitor, many have on this same seemingly and really wild spot thriven and become prosperous. ”

“ It is a sight which awakens reflection and touches the heart. There is much of healthy purity prevailing around these cottage homes. Every one, according to his means, endeavors to make the homestead an ornament to the grassy and elm-shadowed wayside. ”

“ A dwelling with a beautiful view has a great charm, but it draws the thoughts always outward to the external. Still, when I pass a quiet old homestead, hidden away in its own flowery old garden from the eyes of the world, it attracts me far more than the far-flung grandeur of many a stately English mansion. ”

“ And there are many such primitive towns nestling among our hills and valleys, some even less pretending; and there are lone cottages scattered by the road-side, and huts of squalid poverty, and the thrifty homestead of the farmer, all of which have their heart-histories. ”

“ For more than twenty years that house has stood there, a generation has grown up around it and in it, and yet it might as well have been built last year for all the signs of a homestead about it. There is somewhere a mealie-patch, and perhaps a few acres of green forage, and that is all. ”

“ When the land was surveyed, his house was found to be 200 feet distant from the line of the homestead, while his garden and spring, as well as some out-buildings, were on the homestead tract. He cultivated the homestead tract, and shortly after his homestead entry built a house upon the homestead tract, residing since his entry thereon one night each month, hoping thus to establish his residence. ”

“ In point of position, as affecting the appearance of the homestead, the fruit garden should stand on the weather-side of the dwelling, so as, although protected, in its several varieties, by itself, when not altogether sheltered by some superior natural barrier, it should appear to shelter both the dwelling and kitchen gardens, which adjoin them. ”

“ A few homesteads are interspersed in some places, peeping out from among the rocks like hermitages, whose site has been chosen for the benefit of sunshine as well as shelter; in other instances, the dwelling-house, barn, and byre, compose together a cruciform structure, which, with its embowering trees and the ivy clothing part of the walls and roof, like a fleece, call to mind the remains of an ancient abbey. Time, in most cases, and nature every where, have given a sanctity to the humble works of man, that are scattered over this peaceful retirement. ”

“ The homestead is a nice, large, comfortable place with plenty of room for man and beast, including any stray bachelors and other wayfarers, who claim hospitality almost as a right in these isolated localities. ”

“ Sometimes the land is cleared, and he finds himself by the homestead of a forest farm, and remarks the buildings, distinguished not only by their neatness, but the propriety of their rustic architecture. ”

“ The colonial houses of New England with large living-room, dominated by the huge fireplace with its outfit of cooking utensils, with groups of buildings for different uses clustered about them, giving protection to the varied industries of the homestead, illustrate the most perfect type of family life. Each member had a share in the day's work, therefore to each it was home. To the old homestead many a successful business man returns to show his grandchildren the attic with its disused loom and spinning-wheel ”

“ Therefore every owner of a homestead should strive to make it a cosey and pleasant home for himself and family. He should take a just pride in keeping his buildings in good repair, well painted and suitably arranged for the purposes of his business and a happy and healthy home life. The surroundings should be made neat and attractive, by the absence of rubbish, and the presence of green grass and shade trees.
If he owns much land, he ought to be landscape gardener enough to set out his fruit and shade trees and to lay out his fields in the best way for convenience and scenic effect. ”

“ A few lonely homesteads, each with its shearing sheds and shepherds’ huts, are all that can be found in the way of dwellings. The attendant sheds and huts are often separated from each other, and from the central dwelling, by miles of mountain range and stony river-bed. Each homestead is the centre of a sheep-station, which often includes many mountain chains. ”

“ I will take up a homestead and make them a good home, and as the boys grow old enough they can take up timber-claims and homesteads so that by the time they reach manhood they will each have a valuable property, a good start in life, and a chance to make of themselves whatever they see fit. ”

“ The homestead must embrace the house used as a home by the owner thereof, and if he has two or more houses thus used by him at different times and places, he may select which he will retain as his homestead. ”

“ Yet there were the grey steeples too, and the churchyards, with their grassy mounds and venerable headstones, sleeping in the sunlight; there were broad fields and homesteads, and fine old woods covering a rising ground, or stretching far by the roadside, allowing only peeps at the park and mansion which they shut in from the working-day world. ”

“ It is true that an observer, under that softening influence of the fine arts which makes other people’s hardships picturesque, might have been delighted with this homestead called Freeman’s End: the old house had dormer-windows in the dark red roof, two of the chimneys were choked with ivy, the large porch was blocked up with bundles of sticks, and half the windows were closed with gray worm-eaten shutters about which the jasmine-boughs grew in wild luxuriance; ”

“ Many of these homesteads have been turned into houses for the wealthy, and great alterations have taken place; but a track the whole way may still be made out, though hidden in places by private drives and occupation roads. ”

“ The broad old forest had been rudely cut away by the axe of the settler, and cottage-homes were reared thickly side by side. The emigrant’s hut had been transformed into an elegant mansion, whilst the green lawn in front, sloping down to the water, and planted with shrubbery and vines—was the play-ground of happy children. At a little distance, among the trees, a pretty church raised its slender spire toward heaven, and behind it, several mounds of fresh earth told plainly there was no retreat from death. ”

“ Wherever you go, in the town or along the country roads, among little potato farms and patches or expensive country-seats, these stainless white dwellings, gleaming out from flowers and foliage, meet you at every turn. The least little bit of a cottage is as white and blemishless as the stateliest mansion. Nowhere is there dirt or stench, puddle or hog-wallow, neglect, disorder, or lack of trimness and neatness. The roads, the streets, the dwellings, the people, the clothes—this neatness extends to everything that falls under the eye. ”

“ It does not abound in grand and sublime prospects, but rather in little home scenes of rural repose and sheltered quiet. Every antique farm-house and moss-grown cottage is a picture; and as the roads are continually winding, and the view is shut in by groves and hedges, the eye is delighted by a continual succession of small landscapes of captivating loveliness. ”

“ A short distance beyond the Crown and Anchor stands a small lone cottage built of sea-cobbles, with a sandy garden and potato-plot in front, and a sandy field, in which a thin, stunted crop of rye was making believe to grow. Once past this cottage, and all is a wild waste of sand, covered here and there with reedy grass, among which you now and then see a dusty pink convolvulus, struggling, as it were, to keep alive a speck of beauty amid the barrenness. ”

“ After all, when we see a cottage standing in its glowing garden, with a neat hedge cutting it off from its fellows; with children playing eternal games with dolls (Mr. Mould’s children following the ledger to its long home in the safe—shall I ever forget that?) , we see the whole world, cares, joys, birth, death and marriage; the wealth of nations scattered carelessly in flowers, spoils from every continent, surrounded by a hedge, its own birds to sing, its hundred forms of life, feeding, breeding, dying round the cottage door; and, at night, its little patch of stars overhead. ”

“ And, although all out of date, and conventionally vulgar this sentiment may be now considered, such is, or should be the subdued, unsophisticated feeling of all natives of the farm house, and the country cottage. We may leave the quiet roof of our childhood; we may mix in the bustling contentions of the open world; we may gain its treasures; we may enjoy its greatness, its honors, and its applause; but there are times when they will all fade into nothing, in comparison with the peace, and quietude, and tranquil happiness of a few acres of land, a comfortable roof, and contentment therewith! ”

“ The low house, with recesses and galleries, built round an inner court, or patio, which, however small, would fill the whole interior with sunshine and the scent of flowers, is the sort of dwelling that would suit the climate and the habit of life here. But the present occupiers have taken no hints from the natives. In village and country they have done all they can, in spite of the maguey and the cactus and the palm and the umbrella-tree and the live-oak and the riotous flowers and the thousand novel forms of vegetation, to give everything a prosaic look. ”

“ From the cottage homes, and old-fashioned farmhouses, which are dropped over the landscape, like birds' nests, "each in its nook of leaves," generation after generation has come forth to wander through the same [Pg 72] grass-grown byeways, and brambly old lanes; to weave the same chequered web of simple joys and sorrows, and cares and toils; and to lie down at last in the same old churchyard, where the "rude forefathers of the hamlet" are sleeping together so quietly. It is a country well worth visiting by any lover of nature, for its own sake. ”

“ Conceive a brook running in a deep bed down one side of a village street, and bridged at close upon half a hundred intervals with brick and plank footbridges, leading across into cottages and cottage-gardens; and conceive those cottages, partly the humble homes of fishermen, and partly the simple villas of an Early Victorian, or even a Regency, seaside, and midway down the street imagine that stream crossing under the road, taking the little beach diagonally, and there percolating through the giant “popples.” ”

“ We passed out of the wood by some broken palings on to Bishopsgate Heath, and after no long walk arrived at her habitation. It was a solitary, dreary-looking cottage; the palings were in disrepair, the garden waste, the lattices unadorned by flowers or creepers; within, all was neat, but sombre, and even mean. The diminutiveness of a cottage requires an appearance of cheerfulness and elegance to make it pleasing; the bare floor,—clean, it is true,—the rush chairs, deal table, checked curtains of this cot, were beneath even a peasant’s rusticity ”

“ In the dim light you distinguish a little cottage, the dwelling of a sorceress; in the back-ground a lake surrounded by mountains, some of whose peaks are clothed with snow. All as yet is misty and indistinct;—the sun then rises triumphantly, chases the morning dews, and the hut, with the village in the distance, now appear in perfect outline. ”

“ Seventy-five cosey, one-story cottages, so small and snug that a well-grown man might touch the gables without rising on tip-toe, are drawn up in three rows parallel to the sea, with narrow lanes of turf between them,—all of a weather-beaten gray tinged with purple, with pale-blue blinds, vines over the porch, flowers in the windows, and about each one a little green yard enclosed by white palings. Inside are odd little rooms, fitted with lockers, like the cabin of a vessel. Cottages, yards, palings, lanes, all are in proportion and harmony. ”

“ The eaves of the house, the door knocker, the pickets of the fence, the honeysuckles and seringas, once the boast of summer, are all alike polished, varnished, and resplendent with their winter trappings, now gleaming in the last rays of the early sunset.
Within that large, old-fashioned dwelling might you see an ample parlor, all whose adjustments and arrangements speak of security, warmth, and home enjoyment; of money spent not for show, but for comfort. ”