In two of the rooms are queer corner fireplaces, where, doubtless, many pairs of dainty high-heeled slippers and great military jack-boots have been toasted at the huge hickory fires, long since extinguished.  In one of the upper chambers is an odd sort of closet, the shelves of which are furnished with low railings, presumably a protection for the handsome and valuable china that women have always loved to store up—­a check upon the ravages of careless housemaids.  It is quite worth while to climb the breakneck garret-stairs, which must have bruised many a shin in their day, and the short flight leading to the roof, in order to get the glorious view of the Park stretching away down to the city of Philadelphia, and of the beautiful Schuylkill River winding in and out among the trees and flashing so silvery white in the afternoon sunshine.

In the cellarage, where we disturb many busy spiders and stealthy centipedes, is a large, solidly-floored apartment, where possibly the house-servants were used to congregate in the old slave days.  There is no chimney-place in this room, nor, indeed, is there any convenience whatever for cooking purposes in the main building, which omission inclines me to the opinion that one of the detached wings was used for the kitchen offices, there being large fireplaces in both of them, very suitable for the getting up of good dinners.[3] The grounds about the house have been much altered of late years—­the gardens long since destroyed.  A smug, close-shaven turf replaces the old-fashioned flower-beds and shrubbery, amid which I love to fancy sweet Peggy Arnold trailing her French brocades and flowered chintzes, her rosy ear attuned to the high-flown compliments of the men of fashion whom her beauty and her husband’s lavish hospitality drew about her—­her husband the traitor who a few months afterward was flying, a detected felon, from justice, leaving his fair young wife, with her babe in her arms, to face the awful wrath of Washington.

[Footnote 3:  A proposition has been recently made to the Fairmount Park Commissioners by Colonel Frank W. Etting, a Philadelphia lawyer of well-known taste and culture, to fit up the Mount Pleasant mansion in the fashion of Colonial times, he having at his command a sufficient quantity of furniture, pictures, china, etc. for the proper representation of a house of the best sort in those days.  It is to be hoped that this generous offer may meet with the attention it deserves, as such a memorial could scarcely fail to prove a great attraction to our Centennial visitors.  Mount Pleasant is fortunately associated with the memories of better men than Benedict Arnold.  The brave Major Macpherson built the house for his own occupancy before the Revolutionary war, and General Baron Von Steuben passed a part of his honorable retirement there, dating his letters humorously from “Belisarius Hall, on the Schuylkill.”]