One might tell endlessly of paneling, of the delicate carving of mantels and overmantels, of chairs, tables, desks, and sofas of Chippendale, Hepplewhite, Phyfe and Sheraton, yet giving such an inventory one might fail utterly to suggest the feeling of that great house, with its sense of homelike emptiness, its wealth of old furniture and portraits, blending together, in the dim light of a late October afternoon, to form shadowy backgrounds for autumnal reverie, or for silent, solitary listening—­listening to the tales told by the soughing wind outside, to the whisper of embers in the fireplace, the slow somber tick of the tall clock telling of ages past and passing, the ghostly murmur of the old house talking softly to itself.

From the windows of the great dining-room one looks away toward Hampton Gate, a favorite meeting place for the Elkridge Hunt, or, at another angle, toward the stables where the hunters are kept, the old slave cabins, and the overseer’s house, with its bell tower—­a house nearly two hundred years old.  But the library is perhaps the more natural resting place for the guest, and it looks out over the garden, with its enormous descending terraces, its geometrical walks and steps, its beautiful old trees, and arbors of ancient box.  Such terraces as these were never built by paid labor.

We were given tea in the library, our hostess at this function being a young lady of five or six years—­a granddaughter of Captain John Ridgely, present master of Hampton—­who, with her pink cheeks, her serious eyes and demeanor, looked like a canvas by Sir Joshua come to life, as she sat in a large chair and ate a large red apple.

Nor did Bryan, Captain Ridgely’s negro butler, fit less admirably into the pervasive atmosphere of fiction which enveloped the place.  In the absence of his master, Bryan did the honors of the old house with a style which was not “put on,” because it did not have to be put on—­nature and a good bringing-up having supplied all needs in this respect.  There was about him none of that affectation of being a graven image, which one so often notices in white butlers and footmen imported from Europe by rich Americans, and which, of all shams, is one of the most false and absurd, as carried out on both sides—­for we pretend to think these functionaries the deft mechanisms, incapable of thought, that they pretend to be; yet all the time we know—­and they know we know—­that they see and hear and think as we do, and that, moreover, they are often enough observant cynics whose elaborate gentility is assumed for hire, like the signboard of a sandwich man.

Bryan was without these artificial graces.  His manner, in showing us the house, in telling us about the various portraits, indicated some true appreciation of the place and of its contents; and the air he wore of natural dignity and courtesy—­of being at once acting-host and servitor—­constituted as graceful a performance in a not altogether easy role as I have ever seen, and satisfied me, once for all, as to the verity of legends concerning the admirable qualities of old-time negro servants in the South.