The young master of Hyson Hall

by Frank R. Stockton

Old Mr. Berkeley was a very peculiar man, and his house was a peculiar house. The rooms were very large,—so spacious, indeed, and with such high ceilings, that it was sometimes almost impossible to warm them in winter.

The halls, stairways, and outer entrance were grand and imposing, and in some respects it looked more like a public edifice than a private residence. The roof was flat, and was surrounded by a parapet, at various points upon which bells had been hung, in the Chinese fashion, which tinkled when the wind blew hard enough, and which probably reminded the old tea-merchant of the days and nights he had passed, when a younger man, in the land of the yellow-skinned Celestials.

But when his son, Godfrey Berkeley, came into possession of the house, he took down all the bells. He was an odd man himself, and could excuse a good deal of oddity, but these bells seemed ridiculous and absurd even to him.

At the time our story begins, the present owner of the property had not lived very long at Hyson Hall. It had been but three years since his father died, and during that time Godfrey Berkeley, then forty years old and a bachelor, devoted himself, as well as he knew how, to the management and improvement of the estate. He had been very much of a traveller ever since he was a boy, and he did not understand a great deal about farming or gardening, or the care of cows and beehives.

A wide pasture-field sloped up from the river to the bottom of the lawn, and there was an old-fashioned garden and some arable land behind the house; and Mr. Berkeley took a good deal of interest in looking after the operations of his small farm.

Some of his neighbors, however, said that he was spending a great deal more money than he would ever get back again, and laughed a good deal at his notions about poultry-raising and improved fertilizers.

Nothing of this kind, however, disturbed the easy-going Godfrey. Sometimes he laughed at his mistakes, and sometimes he growled at them, but he asked for no advice, and took very little that was offered to him.

It is not likely, however, that Mr. Berkeley would have been satisfied at Hyson Hall had it not been for the company of Philip Berkeley, his only brother’s orphan son.

Philip was a boy about fifteen years old. He and his Uncle Godfrey were great friends, and there could be no doubt about Philip’s enjoyment of the life at Hyson Hall. During the greater part of the year he went to school in Boontown, a small town about three miles distant, riding there and back on a horse his uncle gave him; and during the long summer vacation there was plenty of rowing and fishing, and rambles with a gun through the Green Swamp, a wide extent of marshy forest-land, about a mile from the house.

There were neighbors not very far away, and some of these neighbors had boys; and so, sometimes with a companion or two of his own age, and sometimes with his uncle, Philip’s days passed pleasantly enough.