The house where the Severances lived, and had lived for half a
century, was built by Lucius Quintus Severence, Alabama planter,
suddenly and, for the antebellum days, notably rich through a
cotton speculation. When he built, Washington had no distinctly
fashionable quarter; the neighborhood was then as now small, cheap
wooden structures where dwelt in genteel discomfort the families
of junior Department clerks. Lucius Quintus chose the site partly
for the view, partly because spacious grounds could be had at a
nominal figure, chiefly because part of his conception of
aristocracy was to dwell in grandeur among the humble. The
Severence place, enclosed by a high English-like wall of masonry,
filled the whole huge square. On each of its four sides it put in
sheepish and chop-fallen countenance a row of boarding houses. In
any other city the neighborhood would have been intolerable
because of the noise of the rowdy children. But in Washington the
boarding house class cannot afford children; so, few indeed were
the small forms that paused before the big iron Severence gates to
gaze into the mysterious maze of green as far as might be--which
was not far, because the walk and the branching drives turn
abruptly soon after leaving the gates.

From earliest spring until almost Christmas that mass of green was
sweet with perfume and with the songs of appreciative colonies of
bright birds. In the midst of the grounds, and ingeniously shut in
on all sides from any view that could spoil the illusion of a
forest, stood the house, Colonial, creeper-clad, brightened in all
its verandas and lawns by gay flowers, pink and white
predominating. The rooms were large and lofty of ceiling, and not
too uncomfortable in winter, as the family was accustomed to
temperatures below the average American indoors. In spring and