A Home-Coming

A Home-Coming (in Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, volume 6 )

A HOME-COMING

From 'The Neighbors'

LETTER I.--FRANCISCA W. TO MARIA M.

ROSENVIK, 1st June, 18.

Here I am now, dear Maria, in my own house and home, at my own
writing-table, and with my own Bear. And who then is Bear? no doubt you
ask. Who else should he be but my own husband? I call him Bear
because--it so happens. I am seated at the window. The sun is setting.
Two swans are swimming in the lake, and furrow its clear mirror. Three
cows--my cows--are standing on the verdant margin, quiet, fat, and
pensive, and certainly think of nothing. What excellent cows they are!
Now the maid is coming up with the milk-pail. Delicious milk in the
country! But what is not good in the country? Air and people, food and
feelings, earth and sky, everything there is fresh and cheering.

Now I must introduce you to my place of abode--no! I must begin farther
off. Upon yonder hill, from which I first beheld the valley in which
Rosenvik lies (the hill is some miles in the interior of Smaaland) do
you descry a carriage covered with dust? In it are seated Bear and his
wedded wife. The wife is looking out with curiosity, for before her lies
a valley so beautiful in the tranquillity of evening! Below are green
groves which fringe mirror-clear lakes, fields of standing corn bend in
silken undulations round gray mountains, and white buildings glance amid
the trees. Round about, pillars of smoke are shooting up vertically from
the wood-covered hills to the serene evening sky. This seems to indicate
the presence of volcanoes, but in point of fact it is merely the
peaceful labor of the husbandmen burning the vegetation, in order to
fertilize the soil. At all events, it is an excellent thing, and I am