Ashhurst found it necessary to engage in such extensive repairs that he practically rebuilt the house, covering the stone walls with stucco, adding porches, and imparting its present English Gothic appearance. Having no use for the bath turned into a schoolroom, he battered it partly down, making an artificial ruin, and harnessed the fountain, that originally supplied the bath, to a waterwheel that now forces the supply into the house. After the Civil War, Mr. Ashhurst built the porte-cochère and the wing abutting on the walled garden. He also took great interest in landscape gardening and largely increased the number of rare and valuable trees and shrubs on the estate. The Grange represents nearly two centuries of growth as far as the house itself is concerned and more than that with respect to the gardens. Such a setting for a country home it would be impossible to create without the aid of years. On every hand great box trees attest the age of the place and the lilacs and syringas, grown into trees, proclaim the lapse of summers since first they were set out. The slow-growing yew refuses to be hurried and attains robust proportions only in the course of many seasons. The terraced garden, too, shows frequent traces of great age and the ivy, covering the stable wall that forms a sheltering background, proves the flight of years by the thickness of its matted stems. Outside the garden, hawthornes, here and there become tree-high, tell you they are not of yesterday's planting. No matter which way one turns the evidences of care and well-considered purpose through long periods of time are everywhere to be seen. All these marks of man's long-standing design set among venerable trees left from the primeval forest cast around an air of antiquity that impresses even the most thoughtless. At a fork of the driveway some little distance below the house is a "William Penn Milestone" with the Proprietary's coat-of-arms on one side and the figure 5 on the reverse. It formerly stood on the Old Haverford Road where it was placed in 1793 and was moved hither by Mr. Ashhurst as a matter of antiquarian interest when the road authorities were none too careful about the preservation of these ancient landmarks. Higher up the hill behind the house stands the historic Bell Tree, a great black walnut fourteen feet in girth, where hung in Captain Wilcox's day, nearly two hundred years ago, a bell used to summon the slaves at meal times and when their day's work was done. Nowhere else are such splendid specimens of box to be seen in such profusion. The gardens and pleasure grounds would delight the hearts of tree lovers. The tulips, the horse chestnuts, the dogwoods, the magnolias, the spruce, and the fir, with a hundred others, noble-sized trees every one of them, unite to make the spot one of the most delightful places imaginable. It is no wonder that all its owners and their families, aye and their friends too, have loved it with an intense devotion. The Grange takes a strong hold on one's heartstrings and never lets go. The stately avenue has been cut in two by an intruding railroad, the rustic bower in the dark walk where John Ross was wont to entertain the Revolutionary worthies is gone, cut through by the same railroad, the old walled garden where the dainty lilies of the valley used to spring in prodigal abundance is overgrown with fern and weeds and the box borders long unpruned have almost obliterated the pathway they were meant to mark, but still the ancient low-browed Grange, so like an old French house with its square, heavy-mullioned casement windows, staunchly bears the burden of its years and there is still enough beauty and charm left, even though its borders have been narrowed, to satisfy even the critical. LOWER MERION TOWNSHIP, MONTGOMERY NE of the oldest seats near Philadelphia is Harriton on the Gulf Road about half a mile from Bryn Mawr in Lower Merion Township, Montgomery County. It was built in 1704 by Rowland Ellis, one of the settlers in the Welsh Barony, and has endured comparatively little changed to the present time. The house, two storeys in height with a high pitched roof lighted by dormers, is T shaped, substantially built of native grey field stone. Its lines and general aspect, as might be expected, show all the little characteristic peculiarities of the type usually found in the buildings erected by the Welsh settlers. It might he said they spoke in Georgian with a Welsh accent. The main part of the house is thirty-seven feet long and twenty-two in depth, while the wing in the middle of the rear is twenty-two by nineteen feet-a large house for the Colonists of those early days, but the Welsh always liked large houses. The house-door admits directly to a great living-room into which a smaller parlour opens. The dining-room, stairway, and kitchens are in the rear. In 1719 Richard Harrison, the son-in-law of Isaac Norris, came hither from Maryland and bought the estate from the Ellises. In 1774 Hannah Harrison, the daughter of Richard and Hannah Norris Harrison and heiress to the Harriton estate, then in her forty-seventh year, was married to Charles Thomson, a widower of forty-five, whom John Adams called the " Sam Adams of Philadelphia." Charles Thomson was born at Maghera, County Derry, Ireland, in 1729, and when eleven years old came out to America with his father, brother, and three sisters. The father died on the way over and the five children were unceremoniously put off at Newcastle by the captain, who wished to avoid further care of them. By the aid of the friends he soon made for himself and through his quick wit and indomitable determination to succeed, he supported himself and gained a serviceable education. In 1750 we find him in the position of tutor in the College of Philadelphia, and for some years thereafter he gave his time to teaching. Subsequently he became a merchant and also took an active part in politics. He was a politician by temperament and inevitably gravitated into political prominence in the years that were to follow. He served on various important committees, signed the Non-Importation Agreement of 1765 and in 1774 became a member of the General Assembly for the City of Philadelphia. Upon the assembling of the Continental Congress in Carpenters' Hall, a secretary was required who was not a delegate. Charles Thomson was chosen upon the nomination of Thomas Mifflin. He had just married Miss Harrison and on the very morning that Congress assembled, drove in to the city with her from Harriton, on what was really the wedding trip, all unconscious of the duties awaiting him. As he stepped out of the "chair" in which they were riding, a messenger came up bearing the |