l of the forest for
dwellings, governed in their choice, with less reason, our
American planters. It was built in the mode common to the period,
round a vast brick chimney-stack, ten or twelve feet square. The
principal apartment, now divided into two, possessed, as did also
the kitchen, one of those spacious fireplaces which are the marvel
and envy of these degenerate days, when a hole in the carpet has
superseded in many households the family hearth. It is pleasant to
think of the groups that in the olden time clustered around them;
charming people, whom we know by tradition, and who are remembered
by many associations.

The house possesses various other apartments of size and
pretension, and has answered well the needs of the successive
generations that have occupied it, not only as a spacious and
commodious abode, but one sufficiently elegant to satisfy the
advancing standards of taste and refinement. Among the marked
features of the building are several small casements, lighting
closets and staircases, which give variety to the monotonous
symmetry of windows all of a size, one on top of another, and where
all the openings for egress or light are in straight lines and of
equal dimensions. It is many years since my visit, and I hope you
will see it, for much that was peculiar, and made a weird
impression at the time, has passed out of mind. If the trickles in
my own veins do not mislead, the present proprietors will be glad
to have pleasure afforded to the reading community, even by this
inadequate description of a house which has such claims to be
known, if, as you intimate, you purpose to place this account of it
in your Appendix. They will not consider it a liberty if I repeat
what some one not long since told me of an interesting relic of the
past discovered on its walls, a statement which might be related
almost in the same words of the house of MacPhaedrics at
Portsmouth.

Not many years since it was concluded to repaper the hall, the
walls of which were covered with several thicknesses of paper which
had from generation to generation been pasted one upon another. It
was thought best to remove them all, and when a large party of
young people, home for the holidays, were gathered for a dull week
of weather under its roof, they determined to amuse themselves by
stripping off the various layers of previous decorations,
preparatory to