ella's memoirs might be writ large in four parts that would really
be the history of the United States, just as a slender seam of gold can
only be explained through the geology of the earth. But they can also
be writ so small that each volume may be dropped, like certain
minute-books of bygone fashions, into a waistcoat pocket, or even read,
as through a magnifying glass, entire on a single page.

The first volume was the childhood book, covering the period from
Gabriella's birth to the beginning of the Civil War, by which time she
was fourteen years old: it was fairy tale. These earliest recollections
went back to herself as a very tiny child living with her mother and
grandmother in a big white house with green window-shutters, in
Lexington--so big that she knew only the two or three rooms in one ell.
Her mother wore mourning for her father, and was always drawing her to
her bosom and leaving tears on her face or lilylike hands. One day--she
could not remember very well--but the house had been darkened and the
servants never for a moment ceased amusing her--one day the house was
all opened again and Gabriella could not find her mother; and her
grandmother, everybody else, was kinder to her than ever. She did not
think what kindness was then, but years afterward she learned perfectly.

Very slowly Gabriella's knowledge began to extend over the house and
outside it. There were enormous, high-ceiled halls and parlors, and
bedrooms and bedrooms and bedrooms. There were verandas front and back,
so long that it took her breath away to run the length of one and
return. Upstairs, front and back, verandas again, balustraded so that
little girls could not forget themselves and fall off. The pillars of
these verandas at the rear of the house were connected by a network of
wires, and trained up the pillars and branching over the wires were
coiling twisting vines of wisteria as large as Gabriella's neck. This
was the sunny southern side; and when the wisteria was blooming,
Gabriella moved her establishment of playthings out behind those sunlit
cascades of purple and green, musical sometimes with goldfinches.

The front of the house faced a yard of stately evergreens and great
tubs of flowers, oleander, crepe myrtle, and pomegranate. Beyond the
yard, a gravelled carriage drive wound out of sight behind cedars,
catalpa, and forest trees, shadowing a turfy lawn. At the end of the
lawn was the great entrance gate and the street of th