T By Charles H. Crandall HE charm of evanescence some times touches some apparently inconsequential things with a rare value because the effect is so unique as well as delightful. The things that pass away are being more and more appreciated, and sometimes challenge a higher valuation than the more pompous but more modern verities that abide. So we are making treasures of the old daguerreotypes, the samplers, the old hall clocks, the ancient prints, the quaint pottery, the settles and stools and candlesticks which enjoyed their youth-time when great-grandmother enjoyed hers. Unfortunately, we cannot preserve all our antiques. We cannot put a cabinet of glass over the old-fashioned country houses that are crumbling, crumbling away on the hillsides of New England. Almost daily their knell is rung by the hammers of the great wave of "improvement," and a great villa rears its alleged "colonial" pretensions where yesterday stood the low-gabled, gray-shingled homestead, with its big square chimney of dove-gray granite, its broad windows of seven-by-nine panes, and, inside, its low ceilings, tiny cupboards, and motherly big fireplaces that have often taken a dozen logs, like a dozen children, into their arms. And ever, as a louder blast Shook beam and rafter as it passed, MRS. PHOEBE CRABBE. AGED 100 YEARS OLD DUTCH HOUSE, EASTHAMPTON, LONG ISLAND they sheltered, and so there seems more of pathos about the old house than about the andirons and blue china that we are able to seize and save like brands from the burning. Even the old gray homestead has its period of bloom, a sort of second youth that comes to dear old ladies also, when the pink comes in their cheeks and a dewiness in their eyes, and they are more charming than ever in this last Indian summer just previous to final decay. This is the stage at which you must portray the old homestead; and when it has arrived at this ripe bloom of age, do not delay if you wish to paint it, or photograph it, or enjoy an afternoon in just admiring and loving the dear old house. For, ere you foresee, decay has done its work, and the fabric totters to its fall. Or, it may be, the renovator, w.th the best intentions, strips off the splendid old shingles, a yard long and rived by hand two centuries ago, and puts a spick-span new siding in their place. What impertinence! Go, tear the old lace cap from your grandmother and put on her the latest milliner's nightmare of a bonnet ! Where will you find such shingles to-day, split from the primeval pine, nearly an inch well, and that was that when the rain ran the way of the grain the wood lasted twice as long, and that a rived pine shingle an inch thick was good for two hundred years! It is pleasant to note that while the Philistine is too frequent in the land, and the old house is not suffered often to die a natural death, yet there are those who appreciate it. We are reminded of several of the literary guild, since the days when Poe lived at Fordham, Cooper at Mamaroneck, and Irving at Tarrytown, who have enjoyed exploring some of these ancient dwellings, and it must be confessed that a few even went into ecstasies of admiration. One of the most A WAYSIDE INN OF '76 an old house as if he were counting typical homesteads found, but not here the rings in the stump of a tree. A pictured, one with great trees, bluestone certain style of molding, of wainscot, chimney, shingles showing a foot to the cupboard, doors, cornice, or what not, weather, a quaint porch, long, mossy fixes the period when the structure was gable, and a neighboring well-sweepfounded. Of course, houses that were all the ear-marks-was occupied by a famous as mansions when they were built young writer and his bride for two sumwould hardly pass muster now as comfort- mers; so appropriately, it seemed as able farm-houses. As for that matter, if two doves had alit to bill and coo the country home of George Washington under the eaves. This old "Young's would be sneered at by a third-rate beef- homestead, on a corner, fenced by mossy packer of to-day, who must have his walls, situated near a gurgling waterbay windows, and balconies, and porte- fall of the Rippowam River, in North cochères, and wide piazzas. One wonders Stamford, was such a typical specimen of how the modern villa will look when it the gray-shingled antique as one may not has passed its one hundredth birthday. see in many a drive. But fate was enviOne thing the old builders did know ous, and it all lay in ashes one morning ashes that were wet with genuine tears for the pity of it. Fortune favored the camera in our morning call on the old Barnum house in the outskirts of Stamford, pictured below. Only a few months later the exquisite old shingles were stripped off the gable and rew ones put on. But on this particular morning the old dwelling was radiant in the soft, clear light. All its homely details and unconventionalities were transfigured. It was cherry-time, and in chromatic harmony a robin perched near by, and a poor woman in a red bodice flitted in and out about her washing. It seemed a sort of Rip Van Winkle vision of the old pio In a quest for the old gray-shingled house one soon learns that he will not discover many well-preserved ones in a day's driving unless he is familiar with all the roads-knows their haunts, so to speak; for the old house in its habitat so harmonizes with its surroundings that it hides among bushes and rocks as slyly as a partridge or quail. Even its adornments and environment serve to draw one's attention away from the old house, as if it were an old lady saying: "Bless you! Look at these pretty grandchildren of mine. Pray, do not notice an old woman!" Lilacs, syringas, trumpet-flower, red and pink and yellow roses, crocus and tulips, Jacob's-ladder and wanderingJew, bleeding-hearts and lovein-a-mist, seem to spring up spontaneously all around the old gray houses. How can the o'd-fashioned flowers know how well the delicate gray in the background sets off their beauty? Sometimes one will wish to buy one of these old places, to try to preserve so much of old-time charm, if may be, by ownership. Occasionally, of course, such places are for sale, but again one may be met by some sedate, grave person who will say, with quiet dignity, "No, we prefer to keep our home while we live." It is easy to see how impossible it would be for such people to invest any other than their own gray dwelling with the attributes of home-that is, home with a big H. THE BARNUM HOUSE-THE OLDEST IN STAMFORD, CONN. neer days set down here "on a bias" to the modern street, as nearly all old houses are left by the changing of roadways. It is said that the place was originally owned by kinsmen of the great showman, who never had anything so rare in his collection as such a house will be a hundred years hence. This is a house that has seen General Putnam ride by at the head of his Continentals, has seen Lafayette's enthusias ic welcome by the populace, and many other such scenes, now almost forgotten, The oldest house in the township of THE SHAW HOUSE, NOROTON, CONN. YOUNGS HOMESTEAD, STAMFORD, CONN. New Canaan, Conn., is situated on historic Carter Street, so called, a high ridge cast of the village. This is the house once occupied by the Rev. John Ells, the first pastor of the local Congregational church, which dates back to 1731. The fame of Brother Ells's wit promises to last longer than his house, however well preserved the latter. It was under a window of this house, it is said, that the minister made use of the formula also attributed to Dean Swift, in marrying a couple who appeared for the ceremony late on a stormy night. The minis'er did not care to rise and dress so late, so called the pair under his window and pronounced this quatrain: Under this window, in stormy weather, I join this man and woman together; Let none but Him who made this thunder E'er part this married pair asunder. Tradition credits the bridegroom with as nimble a wit as the parson. The latter had remarked that it was customary to offer a prayer on such occasions, but, as the thunder-storm was growing violent, he would omit it, as it was not essential. The bridegroom must have thought himself slighted by such an informal cere 7 mony, for he muttered something about its being customary to pay a dollar on such occasions, but, as it was a pretty bad night, it was not essential; and he trooped off through the puddles with his bride under his arm. This house was built by one of the first settlers of Carter Street, about 1640, when white men first came to New Canaan, and the red chiefs, Ponas and Wascussue, were as common a sight as First Selectmen are to-day in the town. It was an old house when the smoke of Danbury was rising in the north, and the British, after their work of pillage and sharp fight at Ridgefield, were driven by General Arnold and his co-patriots to their boats on the Sound. Many of the original shingles are still in place on the old house. On Oenoke Avenue, north of New Canaan, are several houses that date back to pre-Revolutionary times. One now occupied by Mr. Bond was built in 1740, by a settler, whose name, Haynes, still clings to that ridge of land. This old structure also sheltered one of the worthy parsons of early days, the Rev. Justus Mitchell, whose gift of oratory, percolating through three generations, flashed out again with perennial charm in the person of his great-grandson, Chauncey Mitchell Depew. A furlong further north is the old Davenport mansion with its quaint porches, oval windows in the gables, large rooms, old-fashioned halls, broad windows of innumerable panes, all charmingly situated on a corner surrounded by large trees, with a guide-board in front, and a watering-trough where the four-inhands stop nowadays on their way from Stamford to Ridgefield. We find the old well-sweep, too, at the Youngs homestead, previously alluded to, and at the Crabbe cottage, not grayshingled, indeed, but gray-clapboarded, when we photographed (see page 68), and remarkable for its tenant, Mrs. Phoebe Crabbe, on whose head the summer of 1897 promises to set the crown of a hundred years. "Ah," said the bright old lady, with delicious disdain of old age, "what is the use of repairing an old house? You may fix it, and mend it, and patch it, and after all it is an old house yet!" So we may go wandering over the hills and vales of Connecticut and Westchester County, and among the old Dutch T homesteads on Long Island, and in the course of some months or years may have made the acquaintance of many a grayshingled home. They have their chosen localities. If you go too far west, you will find the old houses made of rough brown stone; and further north they will be of limestone. Where the saw-pit was planted earliest, there the weather-board was used by early builders, but rarely have clapboards survived from the last century, unless constantly painted. Paint is an excellent thing within its scope, but that scope has nothing to do with investing old shingled houses with the æsthetic charm that comes from the natural tints of age. No, no! our grandmotherly old house shall not paint her cheeks! Yet we have seen some homesteads that made a neat, sweet appearance with natural gray shingles, but with window-casings, sashes, door casings, and cornice trimmed with white-a quaint dress that suggests a nice old Quaker lady with gray gown and immaculate cap, collar, and ruffles of white. Such a one is pictured on page 70 -the Shaw homestead, west of Norotona finely preserved, hospitable old house. Poor Partner! By Octave Thanet HE lamps were lighted overhead, adding the fumes of kerosene to the sickening riot of smells in a crowded car in winter. To prevent any rash lover of fresh air from raising a window, the railway authorities had thoughtfully screwed the outside windows to the car. They reasoned that most travelers want warm air, no matter how foul, but that the few who want ventilation are sometimes violent, and might force pure air on unwilling receivers; therefore they had kindly but firmly taken away the cause of dispute. At least this is what the pale man in a black suit, with the black mustache, said to his companion, the portly man in the middle row. ventilators, and they were no sooner open than somebody coughed, and he shut them again. I'm waiting to get at him!" "You were always impatient, Thorne; you were impatient at college !" Thorne smoothed his brown Vandyke beard and smiled a little. He looked like a genial man who might fall into fits of passion. "I don't seem to have ever got anything by being patient," he grumbled. "Look at that fool over there getting the last ventilator in the car closed, confound him! I hope he'll catch a cold from the bad air. That woman in front of us has more sense; see the poor thing hudd'ed up to the window for more air-fairly dying, I know." The other man looked curiously at the woman. She was of a truth huddled as close as she could get to the window; and she had raised the inner sash. She |