with prayer.
Of spirit grave but light,
How fervent fragrances uprise
Pure-born from these most rich and yet most white
Virginities!
Mulched with unsavory death,
Grow, Soul! unto such white estate,
Strong art and virginal prayer shall be thy breath,
Thy work, thy fate.
SIDNEY LANIER.
AN OLD HOUSE AND ITS STORY.
[Illustration: MOUNT PLEASANT.]
It is pleasant, on a warm, sunny afternoon in the spring-time (or,
indeed, at any season of the year, but I love the spring-time
best), to take the broad, well-shaded avenue on the east bank of the
Schuylkill at Fairmount Park, and, passing the pretty little club
boat-houses already green with their thick overhanging vines, to
saunter slowly along the narrow roadway on the water's edge to the
great Girard Avenue Bridge, and so on through the cool dark tunnel,
coming out on the steep railed path that winds up and away from the
river to bury itself for a while in rich deep woodlands, only to bring
you presently to the water-side again, where stands the fine old Mount
Pleasant mansion, the country-seat of Benedict Arnold nearly a hundred
years ago, and bestowed by him as a marriage-gift upon his new-made
bride in April, 1779. A sweet, cool air blows up to you from the
river, purple and white violets, buttercups and Quaker ladies are set
thickly about your feet, the newly-arrived orioles are piping their
pert little tunes nigh at hand, and you can spend a meditative hour or
two sitting in the shifting specks of yellow sunshine filtered
through the tender young leaves overhead, undisturbed by the shades of
departed revelers that may be wandering behind the close shutters of
the silent old house you have come so far to see. There is a curious
and distinct flavor of antiquity about the place; for the woodwork
around the doors and windows, which has so bravely withstood the
corroding tooth of Time and the wearing rain-drip from the great
tree-branches creaking above the roof, is of a quaint but excellent
pattern, of which we see too little in these days of hideous sawed
scrollery and gimcrack ornament--the masonry of such an honest
solidity as may well cause the dweller in modern brick and sandy
mortar to sigh enviously for the "good old times." Although the house
appears to be extremely large, it contains very few rooms, and none
of these are so spacious as might be reasonably expected from the
outside. The staircases are singula
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