And so I grew up with my grandfather, spending the winters in town and the long summers on the Eastern Shore.  I loved the country best, and the old house with its hundred feet of front standing on the gentle slope rising from the river’s mouth, the green vines Mr. Carvel had fetched from England all but hiding the brick, and climbing to the angled roof; and the velvet green lawn of silvery grass brought from England, descending gently terrace by terrace to the waterside, where lay our pungies and barges.  There was then a tiny pillared porch framing the front door, for our ancestors never could be got to realize the Maryland climate, and would rarely build themselves wide verandas suitable to that colony.  At Carvel Hall we had, to be sure, the cool spring house under the willows for sultry days, with its pool dished out for bathing; and a trellised arbour, and octagonal summer house with seats where my mother was wont to sit sewing while my grandfather dreamed over his pipe.  On the lawn stood the oaks and walnuts and sycamores which still cast their shade over it, and under them of a summer’s evening Mr. Carvel would have his tea alone; save oftentimes when a barge would come swinging up the river with ten velvet-capped blacks at the oars, and one of our friendly neighbours—­Mr. Lloyd or Mr. Bordley, or perchance little Mr. Manners —­would stop for a long evening with him.  They seldom came without their ladies and children.  What romps we youngsters had about the old place whilst our elders talked their politics.

In childhood the season which delighted me the most was spring.  I would count the days until St. Taminas, which, as you knew, falls on the first of May.  And the old custom was for the young men to deck themselves out as Indian bucks and sweep down on the festivities around the Maypole on the town green, or at night to surprise the guests at a ball and force the gentlemen to pay down a shilling, and sometimes a crown apiece, and the host to give them a bowl of punch.  Then came June.  My grandfather celebrated his Majesty’s birthday in his own jolly fashion, and I had my own birthday party on the tenth.  And on the fifteenth, unless it chanced upon a Sunday, my grandfather never failed to embark in his pinnace at the Annapolis dock for the Hall.  Once seated in the stern between Mr. Carvel’s knees, what rapture when at last we shot out into the blue waters of the bay and I thought of the long summer of joy before me.  Scipio was generalissimo of these arrangements, and was always at the dock punctually at ten to hand my grandfather in, a ceremony in which he took great pride, and to look his disapproval should we be late.  As he turned over the key of the town house he would walk away with a stern dignity to marshal the other servants in the horse-boat.