The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1880-06-17
A DevOnshire Manor House.

IT was rambling old house set deep
down in a park that was luxuriant in
glades and meadows and blooming gar
dcns. The house was approached by a
noble avenue of ancient elmS. its gable
ends peering above a belt of frs, and its
old chapel windows rising up from a
gay garden bed. 1t was made up of a
series of quaint buildings which ram
bled about a court where shrubs and
flowers grew in rich profusion against
the gray old walls. A vine with bios
SONS that later were scarlet hung over
the entrance porch, and at one side a
white and yellow rose-bush held riot
Gus sway. An ancient building, with
the gargoyles and easements of ages,
looking out from behind crimson and
white roses that some young hands may
have planted few summers ago, is
very striking to an American eye. At
this manor the contrast was peculiarly
impressive. As we stood in the porch,
still rough hewn with the stone benches
of the fifteenth century, we could lift
our hands and pick whole armful of
deep crimson and pale "lady white"
roses; and the windows fronting the
court were ablaze with blossoms.
l think / never saw more enchant-
ing hallway than that in the old manor.
1t was long and low, and lined on one
side with the quaintest windows, whose
diamond-paned easements swung out
against the tangle of vines and flowers;
ON the other with heavily-carved old
oak presses, which our friends told us
had been there since the time of Queen
Elizabeth. The mushroom had been
chapel long ago, somewhere in the
fifteenth century, when the building
was monastery, and its form was so
little changed that the inches for statues
and holy-water fonts remained, and the
vaulted roof still bore the legends and
here in early days. Near by was an old
turret stair; and midway down the hall
was a grand room with great sweep
ing window; such room as might
have seen stately dances centuries gone
by, in all that was sumptuous in fabrics
and laces; might have heard the voices
and laughter of all that was fair and
grand in Devon. Up stairs the rooms
were perpetual surprises as we went
from one to another through the pictur-
esque corridors, dipping up and down,
with queer angles and high, deep win
dows. The most fascinating room of
all was that prepared two hundred
years ago for the birth of the heir. The
roof was arched. the walls were VAIN
scoted, and above was beautiful frieze
with vines and fruit in bas-relief, and
over the carved mantel huge shield
with the family crest and coat of arms.
and Latin motto signifying force and
courage and fidelity. Those notices of
old families are fine souvenirs of pow
er; they blazon forth the ambition, the
ideal, the final tradition of an old house
that perhaps commended for these brave
virtues with feasting, riot and decay.
The nineteenth century had crept into
the rooms with slow and not ungrace-
full movement; bits of the artistic
decoration of to-day showed here and
there like paint and powder on a worn
court beauty; the pale, faded colors of
the past, wherever they remained,
were treasured with pious care; but of
furniture which once graced
the rooms hardly any was left, and my
lady's fireside looked curiously re-
juvenated with a deep-cushioned chair
before it covered with dainty chintz
and lace.-Mrs. John Lille, in Harper's
Magazine for June.