as but faintly shadowed forth in the princely gift of a house and
land! But no presence crossed the dim perspective within, and the only
whisper I heard was the wind in the cypress-tree. The past had buried
its dead, and soon their habitation, like themselves, would be but a
memory and a name.

In that mansion used to be
Free-hearted hospitality;
His great fires up the chimney roared,
The stranger feasted at his board.

Fair and stately are the dwellings that shelter this latest
generation, and by their side such mansions as Schuyler Hall seem only
moldering, ghost-haunted reminders of the past. But those who dwelt in
them are immortal, and though walls of flesh and walls of stone alike
crumble to dust, there shall never lack a heart to treasure and a pen
to record the virtues of the men and women of those early times, who,
in reverence and in honor, founded and built the "old Kentucky home."

III

THE COURTSHIP OF MISS AMARYLLIS

[Illustration]

III

THE COURTSHIP OF MISS AMARYLLIS

"It's curious," said Aunt Jane meditatively, "how, when old people go
to lookin' back on the way things was when they was young, it appears
like everything was better then than it is now. Strawberries was
sweeter, times was easier, men was taller, and women prettier. I ain't
say in' a word against your looks, child; you're as good-lookin' as
the best of 'em nowadays, but I reckon there ain't any harm in me
sayin' that you don't quite come up to Miss Penelope and Miss
Amaryllis. I git to thinkin' about them two, and I wish I could see
'em by the side o' the women that folks call pretty nowadays so I
could tell whether they really was prettier or whether it's jest an
old woman's notion."

"Who was Miss Amaryllis?" I asked. "If she matched her name she must
have been a beauty."

Aunt Jane smiled delightedly and gave an assenting nod. "Miss
Amaryllis was Miss Penelope's sister," she said. "They was first
cousins to Dick Elrod, that married Annie Crawford, and their father
was Judge Elrod, Squire Elrod's brother. The old judge was a mighty
learned sort of a man. He spent most of his time readin' and writin',
and he had a room in his house with nothin' in it but books, clear
from the floor to the ceilin', and some of 'em he never allowed
anybody but himself to touch, he thought so much of 'em. And next to
his books it was his two daughters. Folks used to say that the judge's
wife was right jealous o