Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1913-03-01

neighbors and the dwellers in Mount
Hope it was known as the geperal's
place, which perhaps sufficiently dis
tinguished it; for It's owner was still
always spoken of as a general,
though since the war he had been
governor of his state.
Rather less than half a century
before, Daniel Herbert, then coun-
try urchin tending cattle on the hill
side where now stood his turreted
stone mansion, had decided that some
day when he should be rich he would
return and buy that hillside and the
great reach of fiat river bottom that
lay adjacent to it, and there build
his home. His worldly goods at the
time Of this decision consisted of a
pair of jeans trousers, hickory
shirt, and battered straw hat. For
years he had forgotten his boyish
ambition. He had made his way in
the world: he had won success in
his profession the law; he had won
even greater distinction as a soldier
in the Civil War; he had been a
national figure in politics. and he
had been governor of his state. And
then had come the country bred
mans hunger for the soil. He had
a boy he had tended his fathers
herds
He was nfft q rich man, but he had
married a rich woman. and it was
her money that bought the many
acres and built the many-turreted
mansion. Wishing, perhaps, to mark
the impermanency of the life there
and to give it a purely holiday as
pect, Mrs. Herbert had christened
the place Idle Hour: but the gov
ernor beyond occasional participa-
ton in local politics, never again
resumed those activities by which he
had so distinguished himself He
Wore top-boots and rode about the
farm ON an old gray horse, while his
mers, with whom he talked crops
and politics by the hour.
In panied surprise Mrs. Herbert, a
woman of great ambition, had en-
dured five years of this kind of life:
with unspeakable bitterness of spirit
she had seen the once potent name
of Daniel Herbert disappear from the
newspapers, and then she had died.
On her, death the general became
| a rich and, in way, q free man, for
now he could, without the silent pre-
test of his wife, recover the neglected
lore of wood and field, and practise
| forgotten arts that had in his boy
hood come under the elastic head OF
chores. Elizabeth, his daughter had
never shared her mothers ambitions
Perhaps because she had always had
It she cared nothing for society. She
was well content to ride about the
farm with her father whom she
greatly admired, and at whose &C.
centricities she only smiled.
In this agreeable comradeship with
| his daughter, General Herbert had
lived through the period of his be.
reavement with very tolerable COM
| fort. He had rendered the dead the
dead's duo of regretful tenderness;
but Elizabeth never asked him when
| he was going to make his reentry
| into politics; and she never re-
preached him with having wasted
the very best years of his life in try
ing to make four hundred acres OF
scientifically farmed land show q
| profit, q feat he had not yet ac-
complished.
| Quitting the highway. North turned
in at two stone pillars that marked
the entrance TO Idle Hour and walked
rapidly up the maple-lined driveway
to the great arched vestibule that
gave the house the appearance Of a
tNor11aart- French chateau.