392 
Mrs. Whitehead is famous for the art with which she has 
revived the stately and quaint dances of our grandparents, 
and each dancing-night the company is surprised by another 
addition to the list already large. There are plenty of 
musical volunteers at Byrdcliffe, and these succeed one an- 
other at the piano to the delight of the dancers, to say 
nothing of amateurs whose talents and good nature provide 
the assembly with extra instruments now and then. One 
looks for novelty, quite as a matter of course, and is seldom 
appreciated. 
The last Saturday of the season brings with it a magnif- 
icent fancy dress ball, and such marvels of costuming fished 
up from chests where have been stored the clothing incident 
to studios where models must be draped for every taste. 
It’s all a beautiful dream to me, that final dance of last 
eee ees ad 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
October, 1909 
These bungalows are scattered, some forty or fifty it 
would seem to me, throughout this great forest demesne, and 
the inmates live in sandals, short skirts, sailor jumpers, 
gypsy attire; the men mainly in the comforts of outdoor 
camp-life. 
The inmates of this great park avoid, so far as possible, 
the conventional paths and concomitants of resorts like 
Tuxedo and Onteora. They are here to draw inspiration 
from nature; nature is their mother; they love her and make 
her their model. 
And thus it happens that a stranger might easily drive past 
the whole colony and ignore its presence, for no sign is there 
by way of advertisement, and the bungalows are all tinted to 
the color of the partridge in order to attract as little as pos- 
sible the eye of the gossip-hunter. 
There is no more delightful objective on the slopes of the Catskills than the neighborhood of Woodstock, Ulster County 
autumn, the exquisite taste, the simplicity, the absence of 
money-display, and then the refreshments were not at a long 
bar, but each bungalow spread a carpet under the trees, 
hung Chinese lanterns in the branches, and there they enter- 
tained the guests who reclined like the gods of Homer and 
forgot the hours in the joy of festive relaxation. 
Byrdcliffe proper is the summer and winter home of the 
Whitehead family, a home in the best old sense of that word, 
the house of massive timber, the interior made by artists in 
woodwork, the whole a thing which appears to have grown 
out of its happy invironment. The view from the front 
takes in an immense range of mountain and valley, blocked 
to the south by the range of Lake Mohonk. In the fore- 
ground is the great barn, for Ralph Whitehead is a mighty 
farmer in addition to his other many accomplishments. All 
the buildings are in harmony as to color and design with 
the main house, none painted, merely stained to preserve the 
wood in its natural beauty of color. 
Before it had been my good fortune to meet the leading 
spirits of this wondrous community, I had heard of it through 
some carpenters who worked upon my house, some 15 miles 
from Byrdclifte. 
‘Them there folks is nothing but a passel of cranks!” 
‘What makes you think so?” queried I. 
‘Why, because they don’t do their carpenter-work same as 
we do!” 
This it was that first prejudiced me in favor of Byrdcliffe. 
To write about this colony is difficult for me, because it 
is never easy to describe on paper a thing that depends 
wholly upon the spirit of its leaders for the success which it 
now enjoys. 
This success is linked with no secrets, no spies can go there 
and filch from it the means of making a duplicate. There 
is but one Whitehead couple; it is a secret as free to all as 
the mobilization of the German army, the wit of Mark 
Twain, the dramatic dominion of Calvé. 
