56 



Monday, May 24, 1880. 



Meeting this evening. The President in the chair. 

 Kecords read. 



Mr. Edward A. Silsbee gave 



AN informal talk, ON SUNDRY ARCHITECTURAL 

 AND ART TOPICS. 



Coming from Boston there is an old house standing 

 alone in a beautiful open spot sloping to the water. It 

 is very old. Like the venerable men who came down 

 to us from a former generation, this has descended from 

 many. It is refreshing and unchanged in an ever-new 

 land. Long may it remain. I look upon it with affec- 

 tion. Two centuries speak through it. It takes us back 

 to witchcraft. Its black color the winds and weather 

 have painted. It is flat on the ground. One massive 

 chimney is stacked in the centre, clustered in masses and 

 solid as the earth. It is simple as a Doric temple and not 

 unworthy as a human record to stand beside it. The 

 bleak centuries have howled about it and raved, life has 

 gone on there and it has threaded its way to our time. 

 Fire has spared it. 



Bare, bald, unornamented, these houses are like mon- 

 uments of the past. They plead with posterity. They 

 seem to say to us : "Disturb us not, respect old age." 

 It touches us with pathos. It is a voice of Pilgrim days, 

 of Indians, of Quakers, a new continent, a worthy be- 

 ginning when life was barely lodged here and struggling 

 for a place to plant itself, and the nation was 3^oung and 

 civilization new. The Indians saw its raising. The Pil- 

 o-rim struo^ofled with the savas^e. AYhere there are so few 

 symbols, such a paucity of relics, and the centuries are so 

 rare, indeed, we cannot aflbrd to neglect them, these old 



