is also standing, and has recently been decorated by a memorial tablet.
In Portsmouth Martha Hilton is well remembered, thanks to Longfellow and tradition, as a slender girl who, barefooted, ragged, with neglected hair, bore from the well
"A pail of water dripping through the street,
And bathing as she went her naked feet."
Nor do the worthy people of Portsmouth fail to recall the other actor in this memorable drama, upon which the Earl of Halifax once benignly smiled:
"A portly person, with three-cornered hat,
A crimson velvet coat, head high in air,
Gold-headed cane and nicely powdered hair,
And diamond buckles sparkling at his knees,
Dignified, stately, florid, much at ease.
For this was Governor Wentworth, driving down
To Little Harbour, just beyond the town,
Where his Great House stood, looking out to sea,
A goodly place, where it was good to be."
There are even those who can perfectly recollect when the house was very venerable in appearance, and when in its rooms were to be seen the old spinet, the Strafford portrait, and many other things delightful to the antiquary. Longfellow's description of this ancient domicile is particularly beautiful:
"It was a pleasant mansion, an abode
Near and yet hidden from the great highroad,
Sequestered among trees, a noble pile,
Baronial and Colonial in its style;
Gables and dormer windows everywhere—
Pandalan pipes, on which all winds that blew
Made mournful music the whole winter through.
Within, unwonted splendours met the eye,
Panels, and floors of oak, and tapestry;
Carved chimneypieces, where, on brazen dogs,
Revelled and roared the Christmas fire of logs.
Doors opening into darkness unawares,
Mysterious passages and flights of stairs;
And on the walls, in heavy-gilded frames,
The ancestral Wentworths, with old Scripture names.
Such was the mansion where the great man dwelt."
The place thus prettily pictured is at the mouth of Sagamore Creek, not more than, two miles from the town of Portsmouth. The exterior of the mansion as it looks to-day does not of itself live up to one's preconceived idea of colonial magnificence. A rambling collection of buildings, seemingly the result of various "L" expansions, form an inharmonious whole which would have made Ruskin quite mad. The site is, however, charming, for the place commands a view up and down Little Harbour, though concealed by an eminence from the road. The house is said to have originally contained as many as fifty-two rooms. If so, it has shrunk in recent years. But there is still plenty of elbow space, and the cellar is even to-day large enough to accommodate a fair-sized troop of soldiery.
As one enters, one notices first the rack in which were wont to be deposited the muskets of the governor's guard. And it requires only a little imagination to picture the big rooms as they were in the old days, with the portrait of Strafford dictating to his secretary just before his execution, the rare Copley, the green damask-covered furniture, and the sedan-chair, all exhaling an atmosphere of old-time splendour and luxury. Something of impressiveness has recently been introduced into the interior by the artistic arrangement of old furniture which the house's present owner, Mr. Templeton Coolidge, has brought about. But the exterior is "spick-span" in modern yellow and white paint!
