There is no other house like Nym’s den. It’s the longest, biggest, cosiest country place I was ever in. There’s style about it above the lowly farmer, but there are no false notes sung in its hospitality. There is an atmosphere of gentle, happy Bohemia, such as you like where hands clasp firm. Nym built this house by his pen. He was several years in building it, paying for it in ripples that soon gathered into a solid wave of possession. He built it as he wanted it. The boss carpenter may have bossed his man, but when Nym wanted a twenty-foot opening for a fireplace he bossed that. He has his “ morning ” room, where the early sun shines in from across the meadows, and he has the “ living ” room, which the sun lightens through the trees the rest of the day, and then gives the calm, gentle hour of dusk, when it sinks back of the great hills of Ramapo. At night big logs of wood wrarm this living room into an embrace of comfort, and around its table, under a lamp that seems to help in the search to each other’s heart, there is something different discussed from the shallow gabble of the club. Nature seemed never more gorgeous than it did on this visit of mine. The sky was Venetian, and the paint-brush that had colored the leaves had Nym Crinkle s Diapason. 37 splashed them with Etruscan. The orchards were speckled with red apples, and the little touch of frost the night before had made the chestnut-burs drop and open on the ground. Everywhere the cornucopia of plenty suggested itself, and the air was so exhilarating I found myself thanking God I lived, even more enthusiastically than the katydids and whippoorwulls declared themselves that night. Do you blame me that I fell into writing such lines as these before I crept into bed ? What a profusion of leaves ! Yellow and russet, red and brown, All touched with a golden brush. Ferns in myriad tints are casting Shadows of delicate tracery, And fields are dimly yellow With fading golden-rod. Above the sun-burned marsh The heads of cat-tails peep, Their brown pompons unravelled in the winds ; Yellow tents of field-shocked corn, And pumpkins piled like cannon-balls, While through draperies of dying leaves Rosy apples wink. Elms and oaks, pines and maples ! Swelling masses of green splashed red ! The sun’s aslant, the shadow’s long ; An odor of brown grass is on the evening breeze ; 38 The Bachelor and the Chafing-dish. The hazy horizon suffused with blushes..; The half-moon white as silver shining in the east ; The leaf-gatherers are going to their homes ; The whippoorwill is calling to its mate ! There ! that may be faulty literature, and the rhythm may be halting, and there may be a strange uncertainty to my lines ; but I think when I read it to Nym he’ll say : “ My boy, the way you read it is the way we both have the painting in our hearts ! ”

AI-modernized reading of the original text

There is no other house like Nym’s den. It’s the longest, biggest, cosiest country place I was ever in. There’s style about it above the lowly farmer, but there are no false notes sung in its hospitality. There is an atmosphere of gentle, happy Bohemia, such as you like where hands clasp firm. Nym built this house by his pen. He was several years in building it, paying for it in ripples that soon gathered into a solid wave of possession. He built it as he wanted it. The boss carpenter may have bossed his man, but when Nym wanted a twenty-foot opening for a fireplace he bossed that. He has his “ morning ” room, where the early sun shines in from across the meadows, and he has the “ living ” room, which the sun lightens through the trees the rest of the day, and then gives the calm, gentle hour of dusk, when it sinks back of the great hills of Ramapo. At night big logs of wood warm this living room into an embrace of comfort, and around its table, under a lamp that seems to help in the search to each other’s heart, there is something different discussed from the shallow gabble of the club. Nature seemed never more gorgeous than it did on this visit of mine. The sky was Venetian, and the paint-brush that had colored the leaves had Nym Crinkle s Diapason. splashed them with Etruscan. The orchards were speckled with red apples, and the little touch of frost the night before had made the chestnut-burs drop and open on the ground. Everywhere the cornucopia of plenty suggested itself, and the air was so exhilarating I found myself thanking God I lived, even more enthusiastically than the katydids and whippoorwills declared themselves that night. Do you blame me that I fell into writing such lines as these before I crept into bed ? What a profusion of leaves ! Yellow and russet, red and brown, All touched with a golden brush. Ferns in myriad tints are casting Shadows of delicate tracery, And fields are dimly yellow With fading golden-rod. Above the sun-burned marsh The heads of cat-tails peep, Their brown pompons unravelled in the winds ; Yellow tents of field-shocked corn, And pumpkins piled like cannon-balls, While through draperies of dying leaves Rosy apples wink. Elms and oaks, pines and maples ! Swelling masses of green splashed red ! The sun’s aslant, the shadow’s long ; An odor of brown grass is on the evening breeze ; 38 The Bachelor and the Chafing-dish. The hazy horizon suffused with blushes..; The half-moon white as silver shining in the east ; The leaf-gatherers are going to their homes ; The whippoorwill is calling to its mate ! There ! that may be faulty literature, and the rhythm may be halting, and there may be a strange uncertainty to my lines ; but I think when I read it to Nym he’ll say : “ My boy, the way you read it is the way we both have the painting in our hearts ! ”

The bachelor and the chafing dish