398 
to forward her incoming bark, laden with fabrics dear to her 
maiden heart. Mrs. Gantley and her children look across the 
intervening space at a sweet-faced old lady in a mob cap, 
hung over a Heppelwhite sideboard with knife boxes at either 
end. The old lady and the sideboard were young together. 
Two dozen mahogany chairs are lost in the spaces of the 
oval room. Card tables holding rare vases decorated with 
hunting scenes of long ago, an Empire sofa covered with red 
damask, inlaid tables, silver sets intended for afternoon teas, 
silver candlesticks to scatter the gathering dusk, while the 
Cathedral clock chimes out the hour from the tinkling bell 
in its steeple, all furnish the rooms in the style of a bygone 
day. 
In the great kitchen below stairs, and the ample bedrooms 
above, the great spaces are repeated. Solidmahogany bedsand 
chairs, writing desks of different styles, high bookcases with 
diamond paned doors, a low-boy with its brass trimmings, 
samplers worked by patient fingers, dressing-tables before 
which young girls have made corkscrew curls, and into the 
glasses of which bright eyes have seen brilliant jewels on 
snowy necks and arms, and billowy dresses trailing off in the 
distance; full length mirrors with heavy gilt frames, into 
which brides have taken a last look at their own loveliness— 
all these things tell stories in the bedrooms. The great oval 
bedroom over the drawing-room gathers between its wide 
embracing walls two full sets of bedroom furnishings. Here 
is also a tiny sewing table with brass knobs and claw feet, 
which lifts up its lid and shows a fully equipped writing desk. 
The mother of such a family needed her conveniences ever 
at hand. As brides have gone out from the rooms below, so 
in this room has many a first note of a baby’s voice echoed 
through the spaces. At later dates many pairs of toddling 
feet have run about the wide circular piazza below, growing 
up in sight of the Hudson on the one hand and the far 
stretching green fields on the other. 
Winter and summer the river is a part. of the life of the 
Gantley house. ‘The steamers and yachts, rowboats and 
canal boats always pass before its windows. In winter the 
ice cutting and ice boating again keep the river alive. Even 
the night on the river has its charm to those awake in the 
small hours. The house claims the river as a part of itself. 
There is a touch of Greenland outside, in zero weather, but 
the little conservatory that long opened out of the front 
parlor drove away all icy thoughts, the odor of daphne and 
pittosporum and camellias wafted in through the open door 
on a cold afternoon, defying with the sunshine a thought of 
the chill outside. 
The Empire Sideboard and the Hall 
AMERICAN. HOMES” AND “GAR Die iNts 
June, 1906 
Such a house always holds letters of the men and women 
who led the march with time in the long ago. 
house is no exception. 
The Gantley 
President Jefferson and Governor 
The Quaint Entrance of the Gantley House 
Clinton and Tom Paine all were visitors by letter, and many 
a correspondent of less note told of Queen Victoria and 
Lafayette, and French and Russian ambassadors. 
The walls of this old Colonial home have been storing 
up histories of families for nearly a century. With the last 
of the Gantleys one more volume is closed. 
Standing on the broad marble steps in front, one remem- 
bers that in that first building, a century ago, these great 
slabs were wheeled many miles from Stockbridge in New 
England. Another step takes one among the flowers in the 
garden. These, too, carry their stories as 
well as the walls of the house. Tiny shrubs 
have grown into great bushes, trees planted by 
a child’s hand have reached maturity. The 
lilacs and the spring blossoms have all heard 
love stories. The rose bushes and begonias, 
the sweet peas and the pansies, all speak of 
loving care. The life of the garden has been 
like that of the house, strong, sweet, and 
outgiving. It is a place of real and quiet 
beauty and even of grandeur, for the house is 
large, with rooms of great size, abundantly 
furnished. And there has been space for the 
trees and shrubs to grow in the garden, grow 
large and strong, as only fine old plants will 
do. We miss the men and women who made 
it, but they have left us a memorial of 
themselves, not, indeed, of the so-called im- 
perishable materials, but which is in reality 
of the most enduring kind—one which brings 
to us anew each year its ever-welcome 
message. 
