CHAPTER VI.

Pictures of Cottage Life.—The widowed bride.—Generosity.—
Excursion to Askeaton.

Vermont^ near Limerick,—I am delighted with
the interesting pictures of real life which
appear before "the window" of this room. It is, if
I may use the expression, quite a magic lantern
of rural feehngs—of the pleasures, and pains,
the dull and poetic realities of cottage life. And
yet not dull—for there always appears to be much
of poetry in a mode of existence which is new
and strange to our eyes. The realities of hfe
only strilce us as dull when we have experienced
them ourselves, or when they are brought home
to our comprehension, by a similarity to our own
circumstances.