MY LITTLE GENTLEMAN.
For a year the great house rising on the summit of Prospect Hill had been an object of interest and observation, and a chief subject for talk to the quiet country neighborhood surrounding it. Hillsdale was an old town—a still, steady-going farming place—where the young men ploughed the unwilling fields, and coaxed reluctant crops out of the hard-hearted New England soil, as fathers and grandfathers had done before them. But in all the generations since the town was settled, no one had ever thought of building on Prospect Hill. It had been used as pasture ground, until now, when a man from Boston had bought it, and had had a road made to its top, and a house built on its very brow.
This house was a wonder of architectural beauty.
"With its battlements high in the hush of the air,
And the turrets thereon."
It was built of a kind of mixed stone; so that its variegated coloring had an air of brightness and gayety very unusual. The farmers about were exercised in mind over the amount of ox-flesh and patience required to drag stone enough for the great building up the high hill; but that did not trouble the architect, who gave his orders composedly, and went on with his business, quite unheeding comment. The house, itself, puzzled the neighbors, with its superb, arched dining-hall, its lovely, frescoed drawing-room, its wide passages, its little music-room, and its great library all lined with carven oak. Then, why there should be so many chambers, unless, indeed, Mr. Shaftsbury had a very large family.
But it was when the furniture began to come in that wonder reached its height. Such plenishings had never been seen before in Hillsdale. The carpet on the drawing-room must have been woven in some loom of unheard-of size; for it seemed to be all in one piece, with a medallion in the centre, a border round the edge, and all over its soft velvet—into which your feet sank as into woodland moss—the daintiest flowers that ever grew. Marble statues gleamed in front of the great mirrors; and pictures of lovely landscapes, and radiant sunsets, and handsome men, and fair women, hung upon the walls. In the music-room were placed a grand piano, a harp and a guitar. The shelves which ran round the library on all sides, half way from floor to ceiling, were filled with substantially bound books; and above them were busts of great men by whom immortal words had been written. It was a dream of beauty all through,—and when it was finished, and a troop of servants, men and women, came to make all things ready, expectation reached its height.
A presidential progress could hardly have excited more interest than did the arrival of a quiet, gentlemanly-looking man, dressed in gray, with iron-gray hair and beard, at the little railroad station, where a carriage had been sent down from Prospect Hill to meet him. This, of course, was Mr. Shaftsbury. He was accompanied, in spite of the many chambers, by a family of only two,—a lady much younger than himself, dressed with elegant simplicity, with a face full of all womanly sweetness, and a boy, about twelve or thirteen, apparently,—a high-bred little fellow in his appearance, but somewhat pale and delicate, and in need of the bracing air of Prospect Hill.