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This cry, or rather yell, reached my ears as I sate reading in the parlour by myself, and fearing I knew not what, I rushed to the apartment; before I reached it, the sound had subsided into low but violent sobbing; and, just as I arrived at the threshold I heard, close at my feet, a fierce protracted growl, and something rubbing along the surbase.
Within, the entrance doorway leads into a hall some nine feet wide and extending entirely across the house from side to side. The remainder of the first floor consists of a large parlor with windows opening on a portico overlooking the river. A beautiful stucco cornice and ceiling and a carved wood surbase are its best features.
The best parlor is a little, dingy room, low of ceiling, and skirted with a sombre-colored surbase, above which is papering, the original color of which it would be difficult to discover.
Except for the single, simple turned newel, the staircase is much like that at Mount Pleasant. There is the similar ramped balustrade and paneled wainscot with ramped surbase and dark wood cap rail along the wall opposite. Little pilasters likewise support this rail, but they are paneled rather than fluted. There are similar scroll-pattern stair ends and paneling under the stairs.
The whole construction was usually projected from twelve to eighteen inches into the room, however, and as the surbase and skirting or a paneled wainscot and the cornice above was carried around it, the effect was much like that of a chimney piece, especially when a large, ornamental framed mantel mirror occupied the space over the chimney breast.
In the dining room the embrasures are cased down to the window seats, while in the parlor the casings with their broader sections at top and bottom do not extend below the surbase, although the embrasure continues to the floor. In this latter room one of the Colonial builder's favorite motives, ever recurring with minor variations throughout many houses, occupies the string course of the cornice.
The party was a bachelor's one, and, when we walked up the front steps, there was our host in person, standing to receive us at the door; while, on each side of him, there were five or six of his visitors, all sitting with their legs cocked up, their feet resting on a sort of surbase, above which the jealousies, or movable blinds of the piazza, were fixed.
Sometimes a dado effect was secured by means of a surbase above the skirting, the plaster space between being left white as in the parlor at Cliveden or in the hall and dining room at Whitby Hall, or papered like the wall above, as in the parlor at Whitby Hall and in some of the chambers at Upsala.
The best parlor is a little, dingy room, low of ceiling, and skirted with a sombre-colored surbase, above which is papering, the original color of which it would be difficult to discover.
That young lady was established in the drawing-room the vast foreign chamber, which never looked like a home illuminating a new set of Gothic texts for the adornment of her school. She sorely missed the occupation and importance afforded her by the model village. In Paris there was no one afraid of her; no humble matrons to quail as her severe eyes surveyed wall and ceiling, floor and surbase.
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