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Now it happened that Mrs. Newton had a cousin, a rich man, in New York–at least, he seemed rich to those not used to the measure applied to wealth in a great city. She had not seen him since he left the little town in western Massachusetts, where they were both brought up. But she often talked about Cousin John. Whenever she saw his business advertisements in the papers she started out afresh in her talk about Cousin John. It is something quite worth the having–a cousin in New York whose name is in the papers, and who is rich. Whenever Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Newton’s neighbor, talked too ostentatiously about her uncle, who was both a deacon and a justice of the peace up in New Hampshire, then Mrs. Newton said something about Cousin John. To save her life she couldn’t imagine how Cousin John lived, except that he kept a carriage or two, or in what precisely his greatness consisted, since he held no office either in church or State, but the old lady evidently believed in her heart that a cousin who was a big man down in New York was nearly as good as an uncle who was a deacon up in New Hampshire.

Now it happened that John Willard, the Cousin John of Mrs. Newton’s gossip, was spending the summer at Lebanon Springs, and at the close of his vacation he started to drive home through the beautiful region once the scene of the anti-renters’ conflict with the old patroons. He stopped to see the Shaker villages, and then drove on among the rich farms, taking great pleasure in explaining to his town-bred wife the difference between wheat and rye as it stood in the shock, feeling for once the superiority of one whose early life has been passed in the country. He happened to remember that he had a cousin over in Weston, and though he had not seen her for many years, he proposed to turn aside and eat one dinner with old Farmer Newton and his wife.

And thus it happened that Cousin John Willard, and especially that Mrs. Cousin John Willard, saw Henrietta’s drawings, and heard of her aspiration to learn to draw and paint; and thus it happened that Cousin John, and, what is of more consequence, Mrs. Cousin John, invited the girl to come down to New York and spend the winter with them and develop her talent for drawing; though Mrs. Willard did not think so much of Henrietta’s developing her gift for art as that she had a fine face, and would undoubtedly develop into a beauty under city influences. And as Mrs. Willard had no children, and her house was lonesome, she thought it might add to her own consequence and to the cheerfulness of her house to have a handsome cousin under her care. Henrietta’s father was rather unwilling to let her go; he didn’t see how she could be spared from the housework; but the mother was resolved that she should go, and go she did.

The first things that excited the country girl’s wonder were not the streets and buildings and the works of art, but the unwonted luxury of city life. Velvet carpets, large panes of plate glass, hot and cold water that came for the turning of a stopcock, illumination that burst forth as by magic, mirrors that showed the whole person and reduplicated the room–even doorbells and sliding doors, and dumb waiters and speaking-tubes, were things that filled her with astonishment. For weeks she felt that she had moved out of the world into a fairy book. But, being a high-spirited girl, she carefully concealed her wonder, moving about with apparent nonchalance, as though she had lived in the enchanted ground all her life. Secretly she carried on experiments upon water works, gas fixtures, and plate-glass mirrors, using the inductive method of reasoning, as all intelligent people have from the beginning, without any of the cumbrous and pedantic machinery provided for them by Lord Chancellor Bacon.