Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1867-05-02

tits well, at times, to go away in thought from
the resent era; to revisit the past and to seek in
age-dscolored letters or vague legends, that food
for tpught which expsnds our knowledge of the
human heart.
Thse, the patient student finds the tragedy
made ,p of blood and tears the comedy all flowers
and sunshine, and the tragicomedy, in which the
elemeits of joy and sorrow mingle. Thehours thus
spentwil bring hima rich freight of knowledge,
and add new proof 70 the trite maxim, that truth
is often stranger thsn fiction.
, Toexplore this strange, forgotten world, is the
privilege of the romance writer The general his
torian cannot enta it even. From the very nature
of his task he ican only skim the surface as
the map of a cottinent can only show the larger
rivers, cities, bays and headlands The lesser In
dentstions of tie coast, the smaller streams that
wander over tb land, and the hamlets far away in
,shadowy nooB, quite lost to the busting world,
must be omitted.
What the map Of a state or country is to that
of continent, the romance is to the history. The
latter dealsIwith treaties, protocols and public
documents" the former with the scattered leaves
recording family griefs or fejoicings Often the
substanceof the narrative is gathered from the
memoriesof the aged, trembling on the threshold
of another world-but these old histories are none
the less, tue because they are called legends The
human heart heats in them and they have continu-
ed genention, after generation, to move every lis
tener to laughter or to tears.
OF the legend which I am going briefly to relate,
I may be permitted to speak without CEREMONY
1t is taken from an old and forgotten source-fa-
milar pnbaby to no one of the present generation
-whereli it is declared to be veritable legend.
That it singular and moving story, every reader
must acknowledge have made such alterations
as seemed best, and changed the names-that is
ALL
The original authority thus speaks of himself and
the scene of his tradition:
''I am Virginian born-a native of that oldest
and loveEest of the States How many long and
wearisome years have been added to ''then before
the food" since wandered light of limb and fan
cy free, over the breezy hills of my birthplace in the
rich and populous county of Albermale There is
in all the broad lands and bright isles that the sun
shines upon in his daily round, no farer spot than
that deep and lonely glen, embosomed amid blue
hills and inlaid with two lines of sparkling silver,
by the Rivanna and its tributary 1t made part of
splendid domain and here more than half a centu-
ry before, had been the homestead of wealthy and
high-born Engishman, who occupying the vast
and venerable pile erected by his wife's ancestor,
lived and revelled in all the patrician pomp and
state peculiar to the past The ruins of the stately
mansion, crowned with many wreath Of ivy inter-
mingled with yellow jessamin, yet numbered its
site on the fair brow of the mighty hill; and the
huge chimneys, as hard and durable as stone, still
stood perfect among heaps of crumbling rubbish. "
Such was Haddon, when the original chronicler
saw it early in the present century. 1t had doubt
less fallen victim to the fames-those dread des-
troyers who have licked with venomous tongues so
many houses in Virginia, and Missed over their
ruins.
Our history relates, however, to the palmy days
of the old mansion and the fortunes of those who
inhabited it about the middle of the last century.
IT.