many improvements, not only in the house itself, but also in the
grounds which surrounded it. The building had been erected long
before the first Tudor cottage was transported, Loretto-like,
across the Atlantic, and was even anterior to the days of Grecian
porticoes. It was a comfortable, sensible-looking place, however,
such as were planned some eighty or a hundred years since, by men
who had fortune enough to do as they pleased, and education
enough to be quite superior to all pretension. The house was a
low, irregular, wooden building, of ample size for the tastes and
habits of its inmates, with broad piazzas, which not only
increased its dimensions, but added greatly to the comfort and
pleasure of the family by whom it was occupied.

{"Downing" = Andrew Jackson Downing (1815-1852), noted American
rural architect and landscape gardener; "Loretto-like" = after
Loreto, in Italy, where, according to tradition, a brick Holy
House was miraculously conveyed through the air by angels in
1294}

The grounds were of the simplest kind. The lawn which surrounded
the house was merely a better sort of meadow, from which the
stones and briars had been removed with more care than usual, and
which, on account of its position, received the attention of one
additional mowing in the course of the summer. A fine wood, of a
natural growth, approached quite near to the house on the
northern side, partially sheltering it in that direction, while
an avenue of weeping elms led from the gate to the principal
entrance, and a row of locusts, planted at equal distances, lined
the low, rude stone wall which shut out the highway. One piazza
was shaded by noble willows, while another was faced by a row of