"Now," said he when he had planted us to his satisfaction, "notice the doorway, with those two immense linden-trees shading the path. The original shoots of the Winslow linden-trees were brought to this country in a raisin-box. Up on the front of the house, over the upstairs window, you see the carving of the British Lion and Unicorn. This branch of the Winslows in Revolutionary days remained Tories and were very loyal to the King; and after the war their property went into other hands. But their Lion and Unicorn are as good as ever."
"Is it really true," asked Barbara, "that the house is upside down?"
"Well," said Alexander, "the legend is very old. And the second-story rooms are a great deal higher-studded than the rooms downstairs. There's one door upstairs that looks as if it had been made for a giant. But they say that some of the English builders used to plan a house that way."
Whether the house is upside down or not, one thing is certain—that here Miss Lydia Jackson was married to Emerson. Once in a while an event in the world takes place in precisely the perfect setting. Emerson's marriage was one. The huge English door, almost as broad as it is tall, with its great brass knocker and deep paneling, knows how to swing wide open in a stately way of its own; a proper door to welcome Mr. Emerson. And the rooms inside, with their high white paneling and delicate beading around the top, have dignity in every line. In every room there is a fireplace, with tiles. In the room where Emerson was married, the tiles around the fireplace illustrate Scripture stories—the drawings exactly in the style of the pictures in the New England Primer. Jonah emerges from his specially constructed fish; Elijah sits under his juniper bush; Jacob awakens from his dream. Under each picture is a reference to the Bible, with chapter and verse; so that, if you should fail to recognize any Bible worthy from his picture, you could look him up.
In the hallway, the white staircase, with its mahogany rail, is deeply paneled at the sides, and if you stand beneath the stairway where it turns, you see still more careful paneling on the under side of each stair. The spindles of the balustrade are white and delicately carved, and the slender newel-post is twined with a perfectly proportioned white spiral, like a smooth round stem of a vine, running round and round it, and disappearing into the woodwork of the rail.
This house, with its linden trees, its traditions, its Lion and Unicorn rampant over the sea, was the best example of old-time royalist elegance that we saw.
"Are you going sketching this afternoon?" asked Barbara politely of the artist.
"Yes, on Burial Hill," said he. "Want to come?"
"Don't you ever carry a camp-chair?" said I. For days I had been longing to ask him that question, when I saw him starting out with no visible sketching equipment except a leather affair, which looked like a lawyer's brief-case, strapped over his shoulder.