Alide by Emma Lazarus

It looked more like an ancient farm-house than the home of the parish priest, and was separated by a considerable distance from the village church, whose humble spire and glittering vane peered above the clustered trees beyond. It seemed a very antique and weather-stained homestead, but wore rather the quaint picturesqueness that just precedes decay, than the actual dilapidation of ruin itself. It would have been hard to tell with what color it had originally been decorated, for it was now sunburned and rain-washed into a streaky, sombre gray, to which this gorgeous October light gave a certain mellow warmth of its own; and the walls were so covered with the glossy leaves of the ivy, the porch was so overgrown with the interlocked stems of the honeysuckle, that comparatively little of the dwelling itself was left bare.

In front was a small, carefully-tended garden, where the autumn roses were glowing; but nearly all the adjacent grounds were devoted to what would have seemed the interests of a goodly farm; the gray old orchard rich with red and yellow globes twinkling among the branches or lying half buried in the soft turf below; the vine-trellises beyond, with their large, dusky leaves, bearing their splendid blue and golden-green fruitage freely in the open air; and on the other side of the house, the thriving kitchen-garden with its stripes of varied verdure, -- all prosperously basking in the radiant sunshine of harvest-tide. Some of the windows were thrown open for the air and light to play through the dwelling; from one of them a white curtain, detached from its fastenings, was blowing. A perky little hen, with her brood close after her, was strutting along the garden-lane and pecking near the walls of the manse, but no other living creature seemed to be stirring about the premises.