Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/36

 term in the Crescent City), and the high dark Spanish buildings, with mysterious passages leading to hidden courts,—one hesitates to say which are the most attractive. To Margaret Ruysdale, sculptor, from the North, whose native New England town was anything but picturesque, the choice of habitation had been a difficult one. For days she had wandered about the streets of the older portion of the city looking at houses of all degrees. One morning as she started on her search she stopped suddenly before a small house which she had passed perhaps a hundred times, and had never seen before. It stood on a wide thoroughfare, which boasted a green ribbon of turf, running through its middle like a cool, verdant river bordered by two rows of trees. The large, pretentious dwellings on either side of the little house seemed to be anxious to elbow their humbler neighbor out of sight. It stood back a dozen feet from the street, and with an effort at self-effacement hid its modest front behind two straight tall magnolia-trees standing on either side of the door. When one did at last obtain a sight of the house, the only wonder was that one had ever looked at anything else in all the wide pleasant street. It was a very low wooden building, of a dull, unaggressive tint of pearl gray, a story and a half in height. A