[CHAPTER VIII.]
Poplar-Grove was comparatively a modern place; having been built by the present proprietor at the time of his marriage. The house was of brick, large and commodious; and flanked by neat out-houses and servants' quarters, presenting an imposing appearance, an air of lordly beauty. The shade trees were forest-born; the maple, oak, beech, and fairest of all, the tulip-poplar. Excepting in the green-house, on the south side of the mansion, and a rose-creeper that climbed upon the piazza, not a flower was tolerated within the spacious yard, and the sward was always green and smooth. Dr. Carleton's seat was the pride and envy of the country. "No wonder," growled the croakers; "a man with a plenty of money can afford to be comfortable." They lived in barn-like structures, treeless and yardless; (and who that has travelled in our commonwealth, but knows the heart-sickening aspect of these out-of-door habitations?) raising vegetables, because they must be had to eat; planting orchards, and suffering them to dwindle and pine, for want of attention; and existing themselves after the same shambling style, because they "had it to do;" content to "get along," and not feeling the need of anything higher, until the buried—not dead—sense of the beautiful was exhumed by the sight of the work of taste and industry; and the stupid stare was succeeded by jealous repinings, and the writing down of a long score against Providence. "I tell you what, my friend," the doctor said to one of these murmurers, "instead of harping so much upon one P, try my three, and my word for it, your wishes will be fulfilled sooner by fifty years—they are, Planting, Perseverance and Paint."
In the garden, beauty and utility joined hands, and danced together down the walks. There were squares of thrifty vegetables, deserving a home in the visioned Eden of an ambitious horticulturist; and the banished floral treasures here expanded in every variety of hue and fragrance. There grew hedges of roses, and the dwarf lilac, and the jessamine family, the star, the Catalonian, the white and yellow, thatching one arbor; while the odorous Florida, the coral, and the more common but dearer English honeysuckles wreathed their lithe tendrils over another; and ever-blowing wall-flowers, humble and sweet, gaudy beds of carnations, and brightly-smiling coreopsis, and pure lilies with their fragrant hearts powdered with golden dust—a witching wilderness of delights. Trellises, burdened with ripening grapes, were the boundary line between the garden and the orchard. The same just sense of order and well-being regulated the whole plantation. Kindness was the main-spring of the machinery, but it was a kindness that knew how to punish as well as reward.
"Do you believe in the unity of the human race?" asked Ida, one evening, as she and Carry were taking their twilight promenade in the long parlor.
"Assuredly; but what put that into your head just now?"
"I was thinking of your father; and trying to realize that he belongs to the same species with others I could name. I am compelled to the conclusion that he is an appendix, a later creation, a type of what man would have been had he not 'sought out many inventions.'"
"And what new instance of his immaculateness has induced this sapient belief?"
"I was sitting at the window this afternoon, before he went out, when I heard him call to little Dick to bring his saddle-bags from 'the office.' The boy scampered off, and presently appeared running, still holding the precious load with great care in both hands. 'Steady, my lad,' said your father, and as the warning passed his lips, Dick tripped his foot, and came down—the saddle-bags under him. He cried loudly, and your father ran to pick him up—what do you suppose he said!"
"Inquired if he was hurt, of course."