Doubtless you know the delightful and intimate sound of rain which only a staunch immediate attic roof keeps off your face. Walking into the Chapin home at 3805 Calvert one has a similar pleasurable sensation. It is a beautiful house, and of course actually very protective, yet one has the feeling of being near the earth—still in the garden. This possibly comes from walking into it levelly from broad low flagstones. Inside one looks out thru great wide-eyed windows so flawless that he seems not to be separated from the rock garden and its mountain stream or the green plush lawn which falls away into the wood.

We grew up near the woods, but “the wood” seems more suitable for this fairy house (glorified French peasant). And the nicest thing about these trees which circle the Chapins’ two and a half acres is that they are original ones and came along free with Nebraska. Luckily the recent dry years—do you remember them—did not affect the small forest, in which hundreds of birds sing.

Inside, as the earth slowly turns, the Chapins can watch the seasons as on a stage, or as a great framed picture turning slowly from green to russet and brown, from brown to white. On the sloping green outside a silver gazing globe pictures the lawn in miniature.

One could exclaim over many things—the garden to the north, where a thousand gladioli grow—the balcony from which one half expects a pretty peasant girl or a blessed damozel to lean.