The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-07-30

Edgewood of forty yeaFs ago. It has been moved bodily across the road, and It has adopted such elegancies as high ceilings and Is surrounded by tall box hedge.
 Garden associations inevitably have English coloring," wrote K Marvel in the impressions of his farm "Is 1t strange, when so many old gardens are Blooming through so many old books we know
 One reaches the door through an aIbor. door that Is old-fashioned to the last degree, door that opens wide or opens half wide, according to the welcome 1t indorses. It Is really two doors-an upper and lower door.
 It can be open and yet you cannot get into the house unless you vault the lower half. It is a door made on the old-fash- toned principle-compromise that conveyed outward courtesy but withheld inward welcome
 The door compromised for us.
 Its upper half opened. and a lass in a calico gown and a severe simplicity of manner that might have been as the manner of Sophia or Olivia herself, stood guard on the poets threshold.
 We had come from the big city by the sea. from the tallest building In a city of tall buildings; we were mildly self-impor- tant as New Workers always are when QlSenldnSl0u lDe CTOWutQ SlTttlo that crush their littleness.
 Disllkes interviews.
 Would the poet see us?
 She swung the lower half of the door open. smiled frank yet reserved well come, and said with deprecating gesture, in a voice as quiet as the hushed murmur in the trees on the hill T don't know how well he will feel when he returns from his drive My father is always averse to notoriety of any kind. He has always said, whenever he has seen other authors in interview form, We'll thank goodness, I hope 1 can always dodge them.'"
 They say that Goldsmith was rather vain, but doubtless he, too. would have shied the affliction of a literary inter view. Still, K Marvel in his prime had been, as he told me, ]" au courant' with the men who make newspapers and their ways.
 We sat down on the shaded porch, so quiet, so sweet. in it's stiffness and it's sky room, so pregnant with the atmosphere of reverie and dreams.
 Your father does not write now?" asked.
 "No, he is resting. This hot weather we have to keep him as quiet and free from excitement as possible. He drives every moning, then he dimes, and then he sleeps; sometimes he never leaves the couch after dinner till sundown, when he comes out under the arbor, takes a last look at the country he loves, and goes to bed" she said.
 And he abhors strangers?'
 ''He rarely sees anybody because 1t ex- cites him; frequently he cannot see close realtives and friends he is fond of"
 All of his world Is Edgewood?'
 sHa ndOrpg thQ and knows every mood of it's life. He is interested in the war news. too. but he is no longer in the action of contemporaneous events. U
 He is in the dream-life'' and Olivia, or Sophia smiled acquiescence.
 An old-fashioned phateton crept up the hill, drawn by an old-fashioned stately horse, and far back in it's comfortable shadow sat an old gentleman, the poet of Edgewood.
 T will ask him if he will see you?' said Olivia or Sophia, and she passed swiftly to the other side of the house where he was.
 In few minutes the peace of the house. hold was disturbed, there were footsteps in and out of rooms and doors within another daughter appeared through 8 window, looked us over critically a nd retired. Then we were conscious of another lady,, a woman determined, prac- ticaI, older than the other two. a woman who clearly disappreved of this intrusion upon the serene system of that house. hold.
 But Olivia or Sophia. she of the simple calico gown and the gentle manner was to be relied upon, and she it was who brought him to us.
 He came briskly; we could hear the quick rapping of his cane as he came across the wooden floor of the library through the open window, on to the porch; i; a man of average height, a little stooping, a little gnarled with age, wearing a brown velvet coat in cutaway style. trimmed with broad black braid-a dandys coat, a Byronic collar, brown linen trousers and waistcoast, his head thrown back inqur- ingly. buoyant, cheerful smile on his fine, sensitive, wisely gentle face.
 Eighty-three years oldl
 Was a Handsome Face.
 It was a handsome face, not in the dark. powerful, breeding strength of the Dante