BY

SARAH E. MILLER

It was in the autumn of 1872 that I first met my friend, Mary Larcom Ober, at Wilmington, North Carolina, where we were teaching in the same school.

In the spring of 1873, she invited me to her home in Beverly Farms.

How well I remember that first happy visit to beautiful Beverly Farms, and the first walk in its woods. We went through the grounds of the Haven estate and then to Dalton's hill which has such a fine outlook.

From that time my friend's home held a welcome for me whenever I chose to come, and the welcome lasted till the close of her life.

What a hospitality, rest and peace there was in the dear "house by the side of the road," and a never-failing kindness and love. What cheer at Thanksgiving and Christmas festivals when friends and neighbors came in to bring greetings, and stayed for friendly chat or a game of cards.

In the first years of our friendship, I made close acquaintance with the woods of Beverly Farms, for we lived our summer afternoons mostly out of doors in those days. We had two favorite places under the trees, one, on a little hill deep in the pines, the other, with glimpses of the sea, and we took our choice of these from day to day.

Here in the company of books, birds and squirrels we used to sit, read and sew till the last beams of sunlight crept up to the tops of the pines, then gathered up books and work and went home.

I learned much of book-lore in those days from my friend, much also of wood-lore. She knew the places where the spring flowers were hidden, hepeticas, violets, blood-root, the nodding columbines, and all the others, and we searched them out together.

The memory of those first years at Beverly Farms, and of all the following years are among the most precious possessions that I hold.

S. E. M.