The Mount Holly news. [volume] (Mount Holly, Burlington Co., N.J.) 1891-1942, 1897-01-12
THE HOME OF PAYNE.
DWELLING PLACE OF THE AUTHOR OF
THE MOST FAMOUS BALLAD.

Lucy Cleveland Writes Feelingly About
the Last Place That John Howard Payne
Ever Knew as His s'Home, Sweet Home"
"You ought to see it, ladyp'
My quaint Amagansett charioteer
pointed with his whip in the direction
of an antique mansion half hidden in
the shadows that the elm trees threw
across its portal.
l had driven over to old East Hamp
ton for an autumn afternoons pleasur-
ing along it's elm EMPOWERED street Of
100 years. Stretching from one antique
windmill to another, each the somber
guardian Of graves each the warden of
the old village cemeteries, this grand
old Main street of East Hampton I'M
rolls its green ribbon of verdure the
length of the little town and tempts the
tourist to lazy, lovely lettering in the
sherry colored sunset in the sanguine
air of seas. Afar the boom of the in
finite ocean called. The arms of the old
windmills tipped with the last tapestry
Of day, yearning aloft above the little
grayeyards, suggested the forever be-
yond the scattered white line of frozen
sorrow far below.
Eyes, you ought to see it, mum"
And, ''mum" consenting, my charioteer
stopped at the antique threshold Of the
East Hampton dwelling. 1t was the
house where John Howard Payne, au-
thor of the ballad that has sung itself
into the heart Of the world, passed his
boyhood
It is a modest two story dwelling,
standing little way back from the
village street, of frame, shingled and
gable rooted. Though it has received,
from time to time, some smart adorn-
ment, the old house keeps it's ancient,
soothing spell as you face it from the
main street know of nothing so quaint
out of old New England. On one side Of
the doorway a board placard, weather
beaten by time, mellowed by the years,
fingered by the masses and pecked at by
the little birds flying out for aye from
their home, sweet home beneath the old
gray caves. The quaint placard tells you
that within are
The town clerk,
The Bank of East Hampton,
The village notary,
and, as / learned afterward,
The undertaken
and
The furniture dealer,
all in one piece, or in one person-the
genial owner today of the old house by
the wayside.
| Step in-but you won't go far afield
or afoot. for the old staircase blocks the
way. 1t winds and beckons up. 1t is
thoroughly Revolutionary. 1t winds up
SO that you wonder it doesn't go off at
once and play tune. All, you are in
the upstairs nowI The house is double
house, as we say. But then all the old
dwellings of long ago were 'double.
Did you ever think of that? "Home,
sweet homes and married loves and
hearthsides. Not apartments, like pi-
amos, on the installment system; not
skysorapers attempting that old plain
of Shinar's tall ambitions not "homes"
whence you sailed to get your very din
ner and when you got back thanked
God up IS flights that you didn't die
from menus and messes. But it is down
stairs in the kitchen that the most
charming bit is found. This kitchen
seems older than the Revolution. 1t is
Cinderellan. In one moment, as you
step across it's threshold, you are trans
ported with fairy watt and fairy
wand into the days and the ways that
are older than that dear Mother Goose
into the days Of Mother Wise. Mother
Wise made all the fairy stories in the
beginning, do you know? And Mother
Wise lived in Egypt 5000 years before
we opened our wise eyelids. And Mother
Wise knew Cinderella by heart and by
head and wrote down all about her dear
little slipper in the vocabulary Of the
Pharaohs. older than the great pyramid.
AS you step into the antique kitchen
in the house of John Howard Payne
you almost expect to see an ancient
Egyptian stalk around the corner and
Oheops' sacred pussy cat in HERO
glyphic attitude ON the hearth. How
quaint-how quaint it isl Didn't hear
little Cinderella's laugh and see those
dear little plump hands clapped together
with joy? And is that glow flooding
| window and wall the silver ether that
floats around the fairy and dissolves,
slowly, in revolving, radiant rainbow,
into oolors that the fairy takes and stars
in the blue of her eyes and the frank,
fresh cherry of her lipsr
Really it is all SO unreal that it frets
you to be told that that is Revolution
airy musket hanging over the old, old
fireplace. You mistook it for club that
those grand old Bible fellows brandished
when they went down into Egypt and
had fight How pert and new 1776 isl
1t is sorrowful to think that, after he
closed the latch of his old sweet home
and heard for the last time the clink of
the closing door and went out to face
the world, John Howard Payne had nc
home. Lucy Cleveland in New York
Home Journal.