Now this dream which exists in the transatlantic mind is to be found also in the migrating Americans. The country boy who has come to the city and made his fortune ends in buying back the paternal farm he once hated, and in turning it into a country-seat. Many villages of the Atlantic States are already surrounded with showy houses that are, to all intents and purposes, ancestral estates, representing the old settlers several degrees removed. There are, no doubt, some variations in the style of living, but the whirligig of fashion has in many ways brought round the later generation to the habits of the earlier. The first settlers had uncarpeted floors, so have their descendants; the founders drove about in two-wheeled carts, so do their posterity; the earlier residents slept on hard mattresses, so do the later ones. The very houses must be colonial — with a difference-and their occupants wander about the country to buy eight-day clocks and spinning-wheels. Every such household vindicates the American love of home. We all like to live for at least a portion of the year at our birthplace, and we like to emulate the style in which our ancestors lived — with a few improvements. The town libraries, for example, which are springing up in every village of the Eastern States, are specimens of these
