Explore "The White Blot" by Henry Van Dyke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The real location of a city house depends upon the pictures which hang / upon its walls. They are its neighbourhood and its outlook. They confer / upon it that touch of life and character, that power to beget love and / bind friendship, which a country house receives from its surrounding / landscape, the garden that embraces it, the stream that runs near it, / and the shaded paths that lead to and from its door.
By this magic of pictures my narrow, upright slice of living-space in / one of the brown-stone strata on the eastward slope of Manhattan Island / is transferred to an open and agreeable site. It has windows that look / toward the woods and the sunset, watergates by which a little boat is / always waiting, and secret passageways leading into fair places that / are frequented by persons of distinction and charm. No darkness of night / obscures these outlets; no neighbour's house shuts off the view; no / drifted snow of winter makes them impassable. They are always free, and / through them I go out and in upon my adventures.