years have sent it into remote antiquity of appearance, the storms of
time having so swept it with their winds and beaten it with their
rains and bombarded it with snow and sleet and hail as to make
difficult the realization that it was once the home of bounding,
scintillant life, and that its walls in the years gone by were radiant
with the visions and hopes and ambitions of a happy group of youthful
souls. It stands at the foot of what is now a street of shops, and the
wearing away of the decades have taken from it all suggestion of home
surroundings.

Through a door at the left I passed into a wide hall, on the walls of
which are some patriotic inscriptions. There is one, a quotation from
President McKinley, that conveys an admonition the disregard of which
leads to consequences we often have occasion to deplore: "The
vigilance of the Citizen is the safety of the Republic."

At the right of the hall are two rooms, locked now, but serving as
parlors when the sad old house was a bright, beautiful home. A steep
Colonial stairway leads to a hall on the second floor, where again
there are inscriptions on the walls to remind the visitor of his
duties as a citizen of the nation over which the Star-Spangled Banner
yet waves.

On the second floor the first sign of life appeared. A door stood
slightly ajar, and in answer to a touch a tall woman with a face of
underlying tragedy and a solitary aspect that fitted well with the
loneliness of the old house appeared and courteously invited me to
enter. She is the care-taker of the mansion, bears an aristocratic old
Virginia name, and is wrapped around with that air of gloomily
garnered memories characteristic of women who were in the heart of the