FOREWORD V 



more than a place or thing, it is a person and 

 has a history, a memory, a heart! These old 

 rooms are still redolent with character-flavor, 

 for here have met and mingled Presidents and 

 Governors and Generals and Senators and au- 

 thors — and their impress is here and it is such 

 a legacy. This mansion has had a splendid his- 

 tory, judging from its records. It had from 

 its outset an old English habit of a daily diary 

 of events and happenings and callers and ex- 

 penses. What a charming bit of biography 

 and history, a color of the life of those days, 

 found dignified entry here, written in fine old 

 style; and sometimes interpolated by another 

 hand in after years, adding a truth or fact 

 reminiscent, making the records more vivid, 

 not always creditable, but more realistic. Those 

 were the days of Whigs and Tories and tense 

 politics, of English and French and American 

 travellers, dancing and drinking bouts, horse 

 racing and fox hunting and negro chasing ; cau- 

 casing in the interests of State or Nation for 

 Governor or President, physicians combining 

 to oppose some "quack," ministers to silence 

 some heretic or to patch up their theology, col- 

 lege men on some scientific search, and so it 

 runs on book after book. 



Among the earlier guests was John Quincy 



