Mr. Carvel’s house stands in Marlborough Street, a dreary mansion enough.  Praised be Heaven that those who inherit it are not obliged to live there on the memory of what was in days gone by.  The heavy green shutters are closed; the high steps, though stoutly built, are shaky after these years of disuse; the host of faithful servants who kept its state are nearly all laid side by side at Carvel Hall.  Harvey and Chess and Scipio are no more.  The kitchen, whither a boyish hunger oft directed my eyes at twilight, shines not with the welcoming gleam of yore.  Chess no longer prepares the dainties which astonished Mr. Carvel’s guests, and which he alone could cook.  The coach still stands in the stables where Harvey left it, a lumbering relic of those lumbering times when methinks there was more of goodwill and less of haste in the world.  The great brass knocker, once resplendent from Scipio’s careful hand, no longer fantastically reflects the guest as he beats his tattoo, and Mr. Peale’s portrait of my grandfather is gone from the dining-room wall, adorning, as you know, our own drawing-room at Calvert House.

I shut my eyes, and there comes to me unbidden that dining-room in Marlborough Street of a gray winter’s afternoon, when I was but a lad.  I see my dear grandfather in his wig and silver-laced waistcoat and his blue velvet coat, seated at the head of the table, and the precise Scipio has put down the dumb-waiter filled with shining cut-glass at his left hand, and his wine chest at his right, and with solemn pomp driven his black assistants from the room.  Scipio was Mr. Carvel’s butler.  He was forbid to light the candles after dinner.  As dark grew on, Mr. Carvel liked the blazing logs for light, and presently sets the decanter on the corner of the table and draws nearer the fire, his guests following.  I recall well how jolly Governor Sharpe, who was a frequent visitor with us, was wont to display a comely calf in silk stocking; and how Captain Daniel Clapsaddle would spread his feet with his toes out, and settle his long pipe between his teeth.  And there were besides a host of others who sat at that fire whose names have passed into Maryland’s history,—­Whig and Tory alike.  And I remember a tall slip of a lad who sat listening by the deep-recessed windows on the street, which somehow are always covered in these pictures with a fine rain.  Then a coach passes,—­a mahogany coach emblazoned with the Manners’s coat of arms, and Mistress Dorothy and her mother within.  And my young lady gives me one of those demure bows which ever set my heart agoing like a smith’s hammer of a Monday.

CHAPTER II

SOME MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD

A traveller who has all but gained the last height of the great mist-covered mountain looks back over the painful crags he has mastered to where a light is shining on the first easy slope.  That light is ever visible, for it is Youth.