looking up with a species of admiring awe at the herculean
form of the French coachman, who seemed to be concealing romantically
brigandish recollections behind his fiery black eyes and wide-spreading,
ferocious moustache. Along the dusty "South Road" we would go, under the
green lights and shadows of the maple-trees, over the two miles which
stretch between Poughkeepsie town and "Locust Grove,"--past "Eastman's
Park," with its smart decorations, past the small, unambitious houses,
draped with many-hued, old-fashioned roses, that straggled along the
dividing-line between the narrow restrictions of town and the fragrant
wideness of the country, where the air was cool with the breath of the
river, and the breezes brought suggestions of freshly-cut grass, just
blown locust-blossoms, and the thousand sweet, indefinable scents of the
woods.

On approaching the boundaries of "the Grove," the perfume of the
locust-flowers assumed due prominence, as the name of the place implies
they should, while their white clusters drooped from the heavily-loaded
branches till they fairly touched the high posts of the gate. And then
would come the drive up the dim avenue, flecked with patches of sunshine
that lay like fallen gold pieces in the dusk shadow, while if one
glanced upward or on either side one saw nothing save the arching
trees,--pines and locusts, and maples no less stately,--until a space
was reached where the grove was less dense and the view widened to a
stretch of velvet grass whitened with daisies lying soft on the tops of
the blades in a way to make one fancy a summer fall of snow. At the turn
of the avenue one caught a glimpse of the house, with its vine-wreathed
tower, generous piazzas, and hospitable _porte-cochere_, and in the
background, beyond the lawn, the river, with the blue hills on the
opposite shore veiled by a light, lace like haze, just enough of a haze
to lend mystery to the distance.

The loud clattering of the horses' shoes on the stone pavement under the
_porte-cochere_, which informed the occupants of the house that visitors
had come, seemed always to tell the youngest, most insignificant, yet
happiest of those visitors that the anticipated hour of many delights
had actually arrived. And of these delights there were to the heart of
the child a thousand and one such as could scarcely be realized or even
dreamed of at the home in town. There were the broad, shady piazzas to
be walked over with dainty foot