The things we do!

The house was built in the edge of a growth of great oaks and elms,
which threw their arms out over even the lofty gables as though in
protection. Tradition had it that the reason the building had
never been completed was that the old master would have been
obliged to cut down a favorite elm in order to make room for it;
and he had declared that since his wife had died and all his
children but one had followed her, the house was large enough as it
was. So it stood as he had left it, with its two tall chimneys,
one at each end of the mid-body of the house, marking the two great
fireplaces, yet another chimney at the other end of the lesser wing.
Straight through the mid-body of the house ran a wide hall, usually
left open to all the airs of heaven; and through this one could see
far out over the approach, entirely through the house itself, and
note the framed picture beyond of woods glowing with foliage, and
masses of shrubbery, and lesser trees among which lay the white
huts of the negroes.


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