Page:Letters of Life.djvu/18

6 and of the rushing and picturesque cascade of the Yantie, creating the same class of sensations that were, in after years, deepened to speechless awe at the thunder-hymn of solemn, sublime Niagara.

My still earlier recollections are of the mansion where, near the close of the last century, on the first day of September, 1791, I first saw the light. It was among the better class of New England houses at that time of day—spacious but not lofty, a broad hall intersecting it in the middle, with suits of rooms on each side. Its court-yard was of the richest velvet turf; two spruce trees, in their livery of dark green, stood as sentinels at the gate, and alternate columns of the fragrant eglantine and the luxuriant white rose were trained from the basement to the eaves. It was environed by three large gardens, each of which enchanted my childhood, and even now linger with me, as those of the Hesperides.

The southern one stretched out in view of the windows of the parlor, where we usually sat. There were the flowers, transposed in an old-fashioned parterre, or knot—a diamond-shaped bed in the centre—with its chief glory, a rich crimson peony, surrounded by others in angles and parallelograms, whose dark mould was sprinkled with every tint and perfume, in their season. There flourished the amaryllis family, white and orange-colored, the queenly damask-rose, the deep-red, the pale-cheeked, and the sweet briar; tulips in gorgeous