An insecure perch for the radiant wanderer. The inhospitable saurian
dives with embarrassing suddenness and dips the airy visitor into the
"rank water." The butterfly finds no charm in the gloomy place and
flies away, which less ethereal wanderers might likewise be fain to
do. Now and then the stillness that reigned over that home of malign
things was broken by the sound of a boat-horn on a lumber raft
floating down the Edisto.

A song written by Simms chants the charms of a grapevine swing in the
festoons of which half a dozen guests could be seated at once, all on
different levels, book in one hand, leaving the other free to reach up
and gather the clusters of grapes as they read. After supper they sat
on the portico, from which they looked through a leafy archway formed
by the meeting of the branches of magnificent trees, and discussed
literature and metaphysics.

The Christmas guests at Woodlands would be awakened in early morning
by the sound of voice and banjo and, looking from their windows, could
see the master distributing gifts to his seventy dusky servitors. In
the evenings host and guests met in the spacious dining room where
Simms would brew a punch of unparalleled excellence, he being as
famous for the concoction of that form of gayety as was his friend,
Jamison, down the river, for the evolution of the festive cocktail.

Life flowed on pleasantly at Woodlands from October till May in those
idyllic years before death had made a graveyard of the old home and
fire had swept away the beautiful mansion.

William Gilmore Simms first opened his eyes upon the world of men in