Vermont farmer. [volume] (Newport, Orleans County, Vt.) 1870-1877, 1875-01-01
Beechwood Revel,

CHAPTER I.-BEECHwOOD CASTLE
The country around Beechwood Castle il
dead level, and underlying the thin crust of
sandy soil are rich beds of marl which the
plow stirs up to mingle kindly with tho sur
face and make the grass grow rank and
green for the steers and heifers who stand in
it knee-deep and contented; and the beech
trees, which love this lny soil, tell in their
tall, smooth-barked trunks, their great out
spread branches, and their close grown
leaves, how wide and how deep their roots
have struck into the nourishing soil below.
There arc no other trees than beeches in
this tract OF country, but no one who knows
the true beauty and variety of this tree where
it grows to perfection would regret this.
They were here of every age and kind; there
were saplng trees, with thin, delicate stems
and leaves; older trees, feathering their
branches gracefully to the earth, like the
widespread wings of some great bird; there
were the great forest giants, round whose
huge trunks men walked admringly, and
whose boughs held aloft, in summertime,
clouds of green leaves, and looked like great
ships sailing under press of canvas; and
there were the ancient moss-covered trees
most beautiful of all-with lnchen-stained
trunks, with ferns growing in the clefts and
crannies of the wood and on thor smooth
bark hundred names written of lovers dead
and gone long generations ago-trees that,
shorn by time OF half their branches, still put
forth their delicate green LEAKAGE in spring,
and changed it to red and gold in the Au-
tumn. This whole district was forest of
these trees known rs Beechwoods, and the
great house set in the midst of it was Beech
wood Castle, where lived Sir Philip and
Lady Sandon, and Miss Eugenia Sandon,
their only child.
Beechwoed Castle was in name and in
fact real medieval castle, with moat, tyr
ret, and projecting bartizans, and Sir Philip
Sandon was a man worthy to have inherited
such monument Of the old time II every
individual OF the generations of men through
whose hands the tenements built in ancient
days have come to us had preserved his
precious heir-looms rs Sir Philip had done,
the England of to-day would be full of build
ings erected by men who knew the art of
building churches, houses, and halls as we
shall never know it.
Sir Philip had been at pains to restore his
house to its pristine condition. lie had
thrown down wing added in tho Elizabeth
an period; he had, with less hesitation, ro
moved an Italian portico of II later date,
and with the zeal of an iconoclast he had
ruthlessly demolished hideous facade
which had delaced one side of the house
since the time of the second George. The
same tasteless period had filled in the moat;
he cleared it out, and could with difficulty
be induced not to roplenIsh 1t with stagnant
water.
The house now stood rs il stood in the |
fourteenth century, when it was bult-a |
dwelling-houso and stronghold. Every |
stone was as the medieval builders had left |
it, Some men love ancient buildings not so
much for what they were once MS for what |
they are now love the moss that time has |
gathered upon them, the weathered stone |
surfaces that the lichens stain gray and yell
low, and the lvy-abettor in the ruinous
work of time-which steals up like thief |
from the earth and clutches the stones in its
grasp TO drag them down; but Sir Philip was
far too logical and uncompromising an anti
quarian to give in to the mild mstheticism Of
such likings. lie treated his residence as its