text:  If the outside looked desolate however the interior was lively enough: cattle pigs geese ducks and all the ordinary appurtenances of a well-stocked farm gave token that the old place was still tenanted; and a large mastiff who stalked towards us with a series of enquiring growls evidently demanding our business and suspicious of our good intentions made us not at all sorry to see a stout good-natured-looking dame a perfect contradiction to the poet's woe-worn "Mariana " who after bidding Boxer hold his noise volunteered a compendious history of herself and husband in answer to our simple question as to the name of the place