I too am feeling the domestic lure of cooler weather.  All the day I wish to be in the open, but when the earlier twilight closes in, the house, with its lamps, hearth fires, and voices, weaves a new spell about me, though having once opened wide the door of outdoors it can never be closed.

Do you remember the Masque of Pandora, and the mysterious chest?

“Pandora
Hast thou never
Lifted the lid?

Epimetheus
The oracle forbids. 
Safely concealed there from all mortal eyes
Forever sleeps the secret of the Gods. 
Seek not to know what they have hidden from thee
Till they themselves reveal it.”

Bart was reading it aloud to me last night.  Prose read aloud always frets me, because one’s mind travels so much faster than the spoken words and arrives at the conclusion, even if not always the right one, long before the printed climax is reached; but with good poetry it is different—­the thoughts are so crystallized that the sound of a melodious voice liberates them more swiftly.

Verily Pandora’s Chest has been opened this season here in the garden; the gods were evidently not unwilling and turned the lock for me, though perhaps I have thrown back the cover too rashly, for out has flown, instead of dire disaster, ambition in a flock of winged ideals, hopes, and wishes masquerading cleverly as necessities, that will keep me alert in trying to overtake and capture them all my life long.

Last night, once again comfortably settled in the den, we took inventory of the season’s doings, and unlike most ventures, find there is nothing to write upon the nether page that records loss.  Of the money set aside for the improvement of the knoll half yet remains, allowing for the finishing of the tree transplanting.  Into this remainder we are preparing to tuck the filling for the rose bed, a goodly store of lily bulbs, some flowering shrubs, an openwork wire fence to be a vine-covered screen betwixt us and the road, instead of the broken rattling pickets, a new harness for Romeo to wear when he returns home, as a thank offering for his comfortable services (really the bridle of the old one is quite scratched to bits upon the various trees and rough fence rails to which he has been tethered), and last of all, what do you think?  Three guesses may be easily wasted without hitting the mark, for instead of, as we expected, tearing down the old barn, our summer camp, we are going to remodel it to be a permanent outdoor shelter.  It is to have a wide chimney and fireplace at one end, before which our beds may be drawn campfire fashion if it is too cool, and adjustable shutters so that it may be either merely a roof or a fairly substantial cabin and at all possible seasons a study and playroom for us all.  Then too we shall overlook “Maria Maxwell’s Experiment,” as Bart calls her scheme of running the Opal Farm.  We were heartily glad to know that she had leased