back to the very core of Old New England and your pride in every 
drop of your New England blood is tempered by great humility as you 
realize how far you have wandered from the simphcity and dignity 
of a hundred and fifty years ago in gardening as well as in many 
deeper things. 
4? ^ ^ -ff w 
Our motor cavalcade is stopped again in Danvers by the welcome The Lindens, 
green signal. This time it is in front of a superb row of enormous century- D Anveb S 
old Lindens which lead the way from the shady old street to the dig- 
nified steps of an ancient stone Georgian house. A true mansion it is, 
imposing, severe, and architecturally perfect. One needs a caleche 
or at least hoop-skirts and a black lace parasol to make one's proper 
entry up this -wdde, long walk. One expects, too, an old colored butler 
such as Washington had at Mt. Vernon to open ceremoniously the 
heavy door. Here a pleasant surprise awaits us, for the gracious 
hostess stands herseK at the threshold, cordially welcoming us all, 
so understanding of the undue haste which seems to animate us and 
yet of our eager desire to drink to the last drop this rarest cup of 
delight. How could she but be happy in our intense, explosive ad- 
miration of one of the most architecturally perfect houses in America. 
The broad hall takes a crowd so easily, people look well here, 
it is par excellence a place for hospitahty and entertainment. The 
wide stairs are not crowded, though full of enthusiastic, appreciative 
women. But the wall-paper! No one could beheve it unless they 
have seen it! It was made for this hall in i860 and is an exact copy 
of the original one put on in 1753, when the house was first built. 
Such a dehcious melee of scenes from all quarters of the globe has 
never been on wall before or since, yet it is entirely in keeping with 
the heavy carved woodwork arid massive doors. One longs to ask a 
thousand questions about the history of the house, one hears a rumor 
that there is a whole book all about it, one aches to know if the en- 
trancing old French furniture is the original, or when and how it 
was collected. The whole house and its contents seem absolutely 
incredible in America. You feel the delightful French influence very 
strongly here; gay, subtile, what does it remind you of? Oh, yes, that 
adorable passage in the first part of the Education of Henry Adams 
where he describes the strange foreign charm of his Great-Grand- 
mother's boudoir, which she made a little bit of old France in Puritan 
New England. You long to tarry awhile and dream of the f^tes held 
here a hundred years ago when the beauty and wit of Salem, of 
Lynn, Marblehead and Newburyport, danced cavatinas and gavottes 
in these same spacious rooms. You see them floating down the 
garden path in the moonUght, stopping to admire that same stone 
bust which stands on the left of the tapis vert, and then moving gently 
SI 
