Shenandoah herald. [volume] (Woodstock, Va.) 1865-1974, 1873-08-14

quarters at tho frec1nason's tavern on
'the village green But the house
was gone, the f'ecmasons We're dust
these fifty years, and on the "yillage
green" the gray craft chat cotnmemora
ted the Morrstown dead Of the last civ
il war obliterated the past. How, then,
remote and bloodless looked that Jer-
sey campaign Of II, beside the names
on this bloodless obelisk How rusty
those old blood stains appeared beside
the bright red, still warm current of to-
day. hurried past it, and out INTO the
leafy road that lead to the historic
house.
Ithad been my original intention to
take with me certain hu1norist, q man
who had made some little reputation by
habit of scoaing at certain reversed
objects of humorous analysis Of their eff.
feet upon others; man who kept you
in high spirits, and left you vapid and
| uncomfortable, a man whose company
was dissipation that brought dreadful
to morrow morning after it; a man who
was always to be depended upon, but
never to be trusted I concluded, how
ever, not to take him with me. You'll
be sorry you didn't he said gloomily, as
he leaned against fence with the set
tied melancholy Of lis profession
You're not to be trusted alone Ted
like to geta shy at G. w some time.
Look around his garden, not a cher
ry tree to be seen. Tell me that he
can get over that habit, that he didn t
sleep with q Ratchet under his pillow,
and get up in the dead Of night to do
it, And then he had no sense of hu-
NOR. When the staff were doing CO.
nundrums down there one night, and
Green asked why a gooseberry was
like Hessian,' didn't he reply, "Gen
Greene, cannot tell lie, there is GER
tainly no connection in nature between
the two, and spoil the boys.of their lit
lie fus 2 And SO I left him muttering,
with look in his eye as if he We're
even then celebrating an account of his
visit, based entirely upon speculations of
my character, and bearing every exter-
nal evidence of greater truth than my
own narrative.
But here was the house. A canny
walk and gentle ascent under few
old trees led to the porch, On that
bright day of yellow. June It's hard ont
lines and scant decoration were some
bow lost in the gracious atmosphere.
The door stood open, and I entered al
once spacious hall, almost the only
indication Of the dignity of its former
occupant. 1t divided the mansion east
and west, and through rear door as
large as the front gave view upon q
descending lawn and orchard, and q
simmer Of the Wipanny river in the
lower distance. ''In the hottest day in
summer" said the gentle hostess,
''there is always breeze through the
hall. It was pleasant to think that
when the fervid July sun scorched the
elaborate pink and blue tiled roofs of
the modern villas in the avenue yonder,
that the mountain hrcezes from the
wooded heights that he had made histo-
RE, loved to meet and play and linger
here. During his time the door was
never shut, continues tho lady, like g
pleasant Greek chorus, 'but always
open, as you see" Was it the Vir-
ginian habit still stronger, or q military
necessity? Think of it in that mcmor-
able winter of II, when the thermome-
ter stood below zero for week, and the
Hudson river was frozen over at the
battery! Yet | am somehow thankful
that the humorist is not with me to
comment upon this startling discovery
Of new and painful youthful habit.
Then we went iato the reception room
OF parlor, and saw the elaborate an
tique table desk, opening in the middle
a Washington relic individually, and
then the bed room where he slept, the
Office where he wrote, the dining-room
in which he ate, and looked in the glass
at which he shaved As no one ever
saw Washington with beard, and as
his habits were inethodical, perhaps this
insignificant bit of furniture is most no
table. There was-not perhaps, much to
see. You will find more elaborate old
furniture in modern drawing rooms /
have stood in more spacious and charac
teristic colonial dwellings. 1t is far I'M
like the Cambridge headquarters, in
which Longfellow is set as a precious
Jewel, but in its scant decoration, in its
faded and economic gentility, in its qui-
ct, stern, incorporating asceticism, it
is full of a past, a past entirely its own,
IKE Spartan period of the revolution.
The genius Of the place descends upon
you as you stand there Even in this
gracious June sunlight you SILVER and
tnrn cold. Gaunt faces peer at you
through the windows; there is the echo