Twilight itself, the mild and shadowy hour, so soothing to every feeling, every pensive mind; that soft transition from day to night, so dear to peace, so due to meditation, is here scarce known, at least only to have its shortness regretted. No daisy hastens to meet the spring, or embellishes the meads in summer. Here no purple heath exhales its wholesome odour, or decks the arid waste with the chastened glow of its waving bells. No bonny broom, such as enlivens the narrow vales of Scotland with its gaudy bloom, nor flowering furze, with its golden blossoms, defying the cold blasts of early spring, animates their sandy wilds. There the white-blossomed sloe does not forerun the orchard’s bloom, nor the pale primrose shelter its modest head beneath the tangled shrubs. Nature, bountiful yet not profuse, has assigned her various gifts to various climes, in such a manner, that none can claim a decided pre-eminence; and every country has peculiar charms, which endear it to the natives beyond any other. I have been tempted by lively recollections into a digression, rather unwarrantable. To return:
At the back of the large house was a smaller and lower one, so joined to it as to make the form of a cross. There one or two lower and smaller rooms below, and the same number above, afforded a refuge to the family during the rigours of winter, when the spacious summer rooms would have been intolerably cold, and the smoke of prodigious wood fires would have sullied the elegantly clean furniture. Here, too, was a sunk story, where the kitchen was immediately below the eating parlour, and increased the general warmth of the house. In summer, the negroes resided in slight outer kitchens, where food was dressed for the family. Those who wrought in the fields often had their simple dinner cooked without, and ate it under the shade of a great tree. One room, I should have said, in the greater house only, was opened for the reception of company—all the rest were bedchambers for their accommodation, while the domestic friends of the family occupied neat little bed-rooms in the attics, or in the winter-house. This house contained no drawing-room; that was an unheard-of luxury. The winter rooms had carpets—the lobby had oil-cloth, painted in lozenges, to imitate blue and white marble. The best bed-room was hung with family portraits, some of which were admirably executed; and in the eating-room, which, by the by, was rarely used for that purpose, were some fine scripture paintings:—that which made the greatest impression on my imagination, and seemed to be universally admired, was one of Esau, coming to demand the anticipated blessings. The noble, manly figure of the luckless hunter, and the anguish expressed in his comely though strong-featured countenance, I shall never forget. The house fronted the river, on the brink of which, under shades of elm and sycamore, ran the great road towards Saratoga, Stillwater, and the northern lakes; a little, simple avenue of morello cherry trees, inclosed with a white rail, led to the road and river, not three hundred yards distant. Adjoining to this, on the south side, was an inclosure, subdivided into three parts, of which the first was a small hay field, opposite the south end of the house; the next, not so long, a garden; and the third, by far the largest, an orchard. These were surrounded by simple deal fences. Now let not the genius that presides over pleasure-grounds, nor any of his elegant votaries, revolt with disgust, while I mention the unseemly ornaments which were exhibited on the stakes to which the deals of these same fences were bound. Truly they consisted of the skeleton heads of horses and cattle in as great numbers as could be procured, stuck upon the aforesaid poles. The jaws are fixed on the pole, and the skull uppermost. The wren, on seeing a skull thus placed, never fails to enter by the orifice, which is too small to admit the hand of an infant, lines the pericranium with small twigs and horse-hair, and there lays her eggs in full security. It is very amusing to see the little creatures carelessly go out and in at this aperture, though you should be standing immediately beside it. Not satisfied with providing these singular asylums for their feathered friends, the negroes never fail to make a small, round hole in the crown of every old hat they can lay their hands on, and nail it to the end of the kitchen, for the same purpose. You often see in such a one, at once, thirty or forty of these odd little domicils, with the inhabitants busily going out and in.