The country about teas the perfection of cultivated landscape, dotted with cottages, and stately mansions of Revolutionary date, and sweet as an English country-side, whether seen in the soft bloom of May or in the mellow ripeness of late October.
It needed only the peace of the mind within, to make it a paradise.
One riding by on the Old Germantown road, and seeing a young girl swinging in the hammock on the piazza and, intent upon some volume of old poetry or the latest novel, would no doubt have envied a life so idyllic.
He could not have imagined that the young girl was reading a volume of reports of clinics and longing to be elsewhere.
Ruth could not have been more discontented if all the wealth about her had been as unsubstantial as a dream.

Perhaps she so thought it.
"I feel," she once said to her father, "as if I were living in a house of cards." "And thee would like to turn it into a hospital ?" "No.

But tell me father," continued Ruth, not to be put off, "is thee still going on with that Bigler and those other men who come here and entice thee ?" Mr.Bolton smiled, as men do when they talk with women about "business" "Such men have their uses, Ruth.

They keep the world active, and I owe a great many of my best operations to such men.

Who knows, Ruth, but this new land purchase, which I confess I yielded a little too much to Bigler in, may not turn out a fortune for thee and the rest of the children ?" "Ah, father, thee sees every thing in a rose-colored light.