Hall in the year of our Lord 1696, when the house was, I am told, but a
small dwelling. It was his father, George Carvel, my great-grandsire,
reared the present house in the year 1720, of brick brought from England
as ballast for the empty ships; he added on, in the years following, the
wide wings containing the ball-room, and the banquet-hall, and the large
library at the eastern end, and the offices. But it was my grandfather
who built the great stables and the kennels where he kept his beagles and
his fleeter hounds. He dearly loved the saddle and the chase, and taught
me to love them too. Many the sharp winter day I have followed the fox
with him over two counties, and lain that night, and a week after,
forsooth, at the plantation of some kind friend who was only too glad to
receive us. Often, too, have we stood together from early morning until
dark night, waist deep, on the duck points, I with a fowling-piece I was
all but too young to carry, and brought back a hundred red-heads or
canvas-backs in our bags. He went with unfailing regularity to the races
at Annapolis or Chestertown or Marlborough, often to see his own horses
run, where the coaches of the gentry were fifty and sixty around the
course; where a negro, or a hogshead of tobacco, or a pipe of Madeira was
often staked at a single throw. Those times, my children, are not ours,
and I thought it not strange that Mr. Carvel should delight in a good
main between two cocks, or a bull-baiting, or a breaking of heads at the
Chestertown fair, where he went to show his cattle and fling a guinea
into the ring for the winner.

But it must not be thought that Lionel Carvel, your ancestor, was wholly
unlettered because he was a sportsman, though it must be confessed that
books occupied him only when the weather compelled, or when on his back
with the gout. At times he would fain have me read to him as he lay in
his great four-post bed with the flowered counterpane, from the
Spectator, stopping me now and anon at some awakened memory of his youth.