Transcription

By SARAH LOGAN WISTER STARR
SARAH LOGAN WISTAR STARR Philadelphia, Pa.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Ded/caLed to
SARAH LOGAN STARR
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The data for this brief sketch, which I hope will serve to preserve a few unpublished facts, has been gathered chiefly from stories told me by my grandmother and my parents, and from letters furnished by my sister, Margaret Wister Meigs, and other members of the family. The extract from Deborah Logan’s diary was given me by my cousin, Maria Dickinson Logan.
For the illustration on the cover, the Chinese courtyard, as well as that of the sun dial, I am indebted to my friend, Mary Grace Carroll, of Baltimore. The photographs of the tenant house and the wisteria in flower are given me by another friend, Vida Hunt Francis.
My thanks are due to two descendants of the artist, Charles Willson Peale. One, Rebecca Burd Peale Patterson furnished the extract from his autobiography which is printed exactly as to spelling, punctuation and phraseology; while her sister, Caroline E. Peale, has verified several dates that I have included. The picture of the original house is an enlargement of a thumb nail sketch taken from the margin of Peale’s Diary and presented to me by the late Horace Wells Sellers, also a Peale descendant.
Erwin W. Moyer is responsible for the arrangement of material and illustrations, while from the camera of my husband came the house in winter garb. To him also acknowledgment is due for the scroll and lettering of the dedication page and the map at the back of the booklet.
To all of these relatives and friends my grateful thanks are extended.
f^BELFIELD^
CHAPTER I
Charles Willson Peale
The small stone house in the rear of the present mansion, which was a separate building within my own recollection, is the original dwelling on the property now known as Belfield.
The first deed I have seen is dated 1708, and conveys a certain portion of the Stenton tract to one Nevie, which portion is hereafter styled The Nevie Place. In 1810 a descendant of the first Nevie, named Richard, sold the property to the artist Charles Willson Peale, who at once made extensive alterations both inside and out to his new estate, to which he gave the name Belfield, after an estate in Maryland. The property is enthusiastically mentioned in a letter to Thomas Jefferson in which Peale describes his gardens and buildings with which he is “mighty pleased”. The large addition to the house made at this time is the same as the present structure, although the front entrance is now to the west, while in the enlargement of the thumb sketch from Mr. Peale’s diary, presented to me by the late Mr. Horace Wells Sellers, and reproduced in this booklet, the front faced the east. It will be seen from the extracts from Mr. Peale’s autobiography, which were given me by a descendant, Rebecca Burd Peale Patterson (Mrs. George Patterson), that the elaborate terraced gardens, summer houses and ponds were all built by Peale, who describes his estate in detail. (This account appears in a separate chapter.) So much remains to the present day that it is difficult to realize how long ago the plan was laid out. The Chinese summerhouse, with its motto on Meditation, still invites the wanderer to rest; for while the Wingohocking Creek has been encased in a city sewer, the broad boulevard running on top of it winds through beautiful Wister’s Woods Park, a wild flower preserve, very lovely to look upon. The fish pond is still fed by an inexhaustible spring,
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while the cave, described as too “warm in winter, causing vegetables to rot”, stands near by, and has proven itself a veritable fireless cooker, for, although during this winter of 1933-1934 the thermometer fell to 16 degrees below zero, the camellias housed there did not freeze.
The obelisk has rotted down, but its site is still to be seen, and great hedges of box, in some places six feet high, still mark the original edges of the paths, and have remained undisturbed since Mr. Peale’s planting.
Mr. Peale painted the portraits of many distinguished statesmen at Belfield. The large drawing room at the north side of the house, with no windows on the east, was added by him as a studio. Its very high ceiling causes the low one in the room above it, and accounts for the uneven windows across the front of the house.
Peale was married three times; Miss Elizabeth de Peyster, his second wife, was the mistress of Belfield. The house must have been taxed to its capacity to shelter his numerous progeny. While living at Belfield beside painting portraits, creating his celebrated Museum and lecturing, Peale was active in establishing the Academy of the Fine Arts, his many patrons assisting him in what he terms his “great and glorious enterprise”.
CHAPTER II
Sarah Logan Fisher and William Wister
The following extract from Deborah Logan’s unpublished diary, Vol. 9, Page 34, was kindly sent me by my cousin, Miss Maria Dickinson Logan, of Loudon: “28th of the 12 mo. 1826. Billy Fisher had bought Charles W. Peale’s place for 11,000 Dollars. It was very pretty in its way whilst they lived there, and they were almost too hospitable for their own comfort; for their kindness was abused by unreflecting people for their own pleasure”.
This entry bears testimony to the beauty of Mr. Fisher’s purchase and to the tradition of hospitality at Belfield. In the same year, 1826, my grandmother, Sarah Logan Fisher, for whom I am named,
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eldest child of William Logan Fisher, married William Wister, eldest son of John Wister, of Vernon. She was given by her father, as a part of her marriage settlement, that portion of the Peale property on which was located the mansion, out-buildings and gardens, originally about 12 acres. The opening and widening of streets has reduced the acreage to “8 acres, more or less,” as described in the present deed. The property joined his estate, Wakefield, and was part of the original Stenton tract.
My grandparents had eight children, seven sons and one daughter, six sons living to a goodly age, the other son and only daughter dying in infancy. The house suffered numerous alterations and additions, as the requirements of their growing family demanded. A hand elevator became a necessity for the latter years of my grandmother’s life. A laundry was made in the space between the small Nevie house and the mansion. The fashion of gentlemen wearing white suits made this addition almost a necessity. My grandmother has often told me that as many as forty shirts and twenty white suits could be seen on her clothesline at a time. As the three house servants did all washing and ironing, as well as their regular work, the achievement seems all the more remarkable. The old mangle used for the sheets and flat pieces is still to be seen in my kitchen. It was my grandmother’s old cook, Margaret, who initiated me into the mysteries of ironing a boiled shirt. This knowledge has stood me in good stead, as I have frequently produced a very good finished product.
Many entertainments were given in my grandparents’ time, and the house continued as in Mr. Peale’s regime to be the center of great social activity. My grandfather’s gentlemen’s suppers were quite noted. Terrapin, which lived in a room behind the dining room, were prepared in the kitchen, as were also wild turkey and venison. A family reunion at Christmas often reached sixty in number, while visits of sons and cousins frequently filled the sleeping quarters for weeks at a time.
In 1876 the golden wedding of my grandparents was celebrated. This was a very large affair. Several garden parties were also given,
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and each year on May 18th, which was my grandmother’s birthday, many persons came to pay her their respects. The largest of these gatherings was when she celebrated her eightieth birthday. At this time, surrounded by her children and grandchildren, and a host of friends, a giant cake, ablaze with eighty lighted candles, bore the words :“Her children and her children’s children shall rise and call her blessed”.
CHAPTER HI
Sarah Tyler Boas and John Wister
My father, John Wister, the second son of Sarah Logan and William Wister, and my mother, Sarah Tyler Boas, of Harrisburg, came to live at Belfield in 1892, after my grandmother’s death. My father, having been living since his 16th year at Duncannon, Pa., where the Iron Works owned by his grandfather, William Logan Fisher, of Wakefield, and his cousin Charles Wain Morgan, of New Bedford, Mass., were located, was given the first opportunity to purchase the property and thus have a home in Philadelphia for his family.
Again many alterations took place. The shape of the roof was restored to its original form, a sort of hip; several partitions were removed and a furnace was installed.
My mother was greatly interested in flowers. She built a greenhouse to shelter the many valuable and interesting plants she brought with her from Duncannon, and reproduced her garden, a formal affair of five oval beds around a five pointed star, squared by four beds in the shape of a heart, club, diamond and spade, grass paths between, and the beds edged with small box.
She was very talented, painting miniatures and china, as well as in oil and water color, and entertained a great deal. The wedding reception of her oldest daughter, Elizabeth, to Charles Stewart Wurts, Jr., took place on October 20, 1892. A large tent was erected at this time to accommodate the many guests. My own wedding to James Starr on October IS, 1901, performed by the Rev. James deWolf Perry, a classmate of my husband and now the presiding Bishop
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of the Episcopal Church, was the only wedding actually to take place at Belfield.
The wedding breakfast of her third daughter, Margaret, and Edward Browning Meigs took place on June 8, 1910.
Mary Stuart Wurts, eldest grandchild of my mother, was introduced at a large garden party at Belfield, and upon her marriage to Samuel Grey Dayton, her reception was held there.
A reception to introduce my daughter, Sarah Logan Starr, was the next large party given.
The last entertainment given by my mother was in celebration of her eightieth birthday on March 1st, 1922. Here, surrounded by her family and many friends, she cut her cake with its eighty candles and which bore this inscription: “She hath a merry wit”. She was quite well at the time, although her death occurred within three weeks of this date.
CHAPTER IV
Sarah Logan Wister and James Starr
In 1922, upon the death of my mother, who was left a life interest in the property, Belfield came into my possession by will from my father. Again alterations were made, extensive ones, bathrooms added and a modern heating plant installed in the stable, also electricitv. A cellar, with an electric refrigerator, completed the modernization of the house. The kitchen in the old Nevie quarters has been restored. When the original flagstone floor was uncovered, a large open fireplace with the old crane irons in position was discovered, and a smoke house, long sealed, was opened and found to be black with soot. One could imagine it having hams and jowls hanging from the old hooks in the ceiling. A large caldron is in one corner, while several copper kettles bring to mind apple butter and scrapple making of a century ago.
Telephone and electricity are brought in underground, thus saving the marring of the garden by unsightly poles. There are now sixteen
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separate buildings on the property, and all but the ice house are used for the purpose for which they were originally built. A large stable houses the three cows and a horse, as well as the heating plant, which makes comfortable all parts of the house and the greenhouses. Two comfortable tenant houses serve as homes for the chauffeur and gardener. A chicken house shelters our poultry, and this year over 200 ducks and fowls have wintered there. A pigeon house, a corn crib, a carriage house, where a number of buggies, a Brewster and a Caffrey, are stored, along with sleighs and other vehicles, a cow shed and a three story spring house, a play house and a garage for visiting cars complete the number. These buildings, while requiring constant care, tend to make the property a self-sustaining one, and life here very comfortable.
The house from its many changes has no definite plan of architecture, being of an oblong shape; and is built on a slight hill. The dining room and kitchen are on the lower floor with drawing and living rooms above. The fifty-eight windows are individualists, as to size and also as to glass; practically none are exactly centered, some open outward, some not at all, some have weights, some are held up by old fashioned pegs. In spite of these peculiarities, the house, while not a handsome one, lays claim to a charm distinctly its own, and sturdily asserts its individuality as it clings firmly to the hillside.
With the opening of Twentieth Street on the eastern boundary of the property, which caused a deep cut, it was necessary to build a retaining wall nine hundred feet long and in some places fourteen feet high. This has proven a great protection. The gate is closed at night, giving an added feeling of security from the heavy traffic which is ever increasing on the highways bounding the property. Since the building of the wall, a small covey of partridges and several pheasants have made their home on the property, choosing a tangled mass of blackberry canes as their shelter.
A series of water gardens in a ravine in the cow pasture has been added by my husband as his gift to the place, as well as several
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well built and planted rock gardens. He has also reset the many stone steps which lead from one terrace to another, as well as budding several new flights and regrading paths which were greatly damaged bv constant washouts. A garden of 100 hybrid tea roses is my contribution to the place.
Since our return from China in 1933, my husband and daughter arranged the piece of ground directly in the rear of the dining room to conform with the pattern of many gardens in that country. A plastered stone wall, topped by a tiny hip roof, separates this court from the service yard, and entrance to it is made through a large vase-shaped gate, on one side of which appears, in red, the Chinese characters which denote the year, month and day of its erection.
A small pool is fed from the mouth of a bronze Chinese dragon, while three red-headed Ibis stand on its edge. The whole is covered by a stone flagging in the cartwheel pattern and a few iron chairs and a table make this an inviting spot for outdoor meals. This enclosure, protected on three sides, opening to the south, makes an excellent place for the orange and lemon trees, some of which were given me from the orangery of Butler Place when Mr. Owen Wister sold it.
The Sesqui-Centennial Exhibition held in 1926 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the founding of our country, brought many distinguished persons to Philadelphia. Belfield joined in offering hospitality to them at a luncheon at which our Mayor and fifty representatives of foreign governments sat down. This was certainly the most cosmopolitan gathering ever assembled here. The officers of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America, and the presidents of several of the Corporate Societies, held a meeting and lunched at Belfield at the time of the dedication of the reproduction of Sulgrave Manor, their exhibit at the Fair.
This year was, therefore, an eventful one in Belfield’s history. A reception was given to our friends and relatives in honor of our Twenty-fifth Wedding Anniversary. The following record of dates of family interest was enclosed in the invitation.
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1826 1326

1823
My cousin, Frances Anne Wister, wrote, for this occasion, an interesting poem describing many of the guests present.
At this time, to mark the event, I contributed the following lines to be placed on our old sundial:
A Century of Belfield I record Four Mistress Sarahs here have lived and served the Lord And now I stand midst birds, bees and flowers And mark for all their sunlit hours.
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A new sundial was presented to the place by Mr. Horace Wells Sellers, Chairman of the Committee on Preservation of Historic Monuments, Philadelphia Chapter, American Institute of Architects, and a descendant of Charles Willson Peale, upon the occasion of his visit to Belfield in 1933, at the Garden Party given for rhe Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. The gnomon of this sundial was made by Mr. Peale for Belfield and is marked: “Hoc Loco—Charles W illson Peale—1810 Belfield 1825”.
The charm of Belfield, which has been felt by many visitors past and present, has been delightfully described in the column of Sarah D. Lowrie. “As One Woman Sees It”, which so interests the readers of the Philadelphia Public Ledger. This distinguished successor to the late Mrs. Cornelius Stevenson, on the Ledger staff, draws attention to the power of the past to hold the attention of the present, and reminds us that the charm of the years can not be reproduced.
So Belfield remains safe in its invulnerable simplicity.
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THE GARDENS
A volume could be devoted to describing the old and new gardens and greenhouses.
By referring to the Peale Autobiography printed in the back of this booklet, a mind’s eye picture of his place can be drawn. Much is still to be seen—the terraces, the native stone steps by which they are reached, the two summer houses, the fish pond, and the greenhouses (one heated, the other unheated) are connected b\f the original winding paths leading to each point of interest. The wide flower border edged with box may truthfully be described as “hardy”, as much of the original planting has survived.
All but two of the seven springs of which the place boasted have disappeared or have been diverted. One feeds the fish pond with a continuous stream of clear, cold water, and nourishes the water cress along its edges. The other, a deep, free flowing one at the back of the gardener’s cottage, has to be kept in a locked house for fear that children may be drowned in it.
One in the cellar has been diverted. This one was always troublesome. My father often told me of the “voyages” he made m a washtub when he was a little boy at the time when this spring overflowed. Indeed, one time when he upset he was nearly drowned. Another troublesome spring appeared in the lower part of the stable, and threatened to drown our new heating plant when it was first installed. Another fed a well by the kitchen.
The best one was destroyed when Twentieth Street was opened. This spring fed our spring house, where, after cooling the milk, it supplied the water gardens. Its loss has been irreparable, chemically treated city water proving not so desirable for the plants as the pure, cold water of this fine old spring.
We have a number of interesting trees. A fig tree on the south side of the gardener’s cottage has survived many hard winter freezings,
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never having been covered for years. A box tree that flowers once in a century told its age by blooming a few years ago. A very beautiful linden in front of the house was transplanted by my grandfather Wister from the railroad cut when the Philadelphia, Germantown and Norristown Railroad Co. was opened in 1832. Many have died. Replacements, however, have been made from time to time and thus the general aspect of the property has been preserved.
The wisteria on the south side of the house threatened to demolish it. Its great trunk sent up shoots four stories to the roof. An iron frame now carries the load, and leads this veritable boa to a nearby tulip poplar, where for the time being it can do no damage. On the north side of the house an English ivy covers the house from basement to attic.
Many transplantings from other gardens are now comfortably established at Belfield. From Grumblethorpe, the home of John Wister built in 1728, came a sage bush, rhubarb, and poke berry. Miss Clara Middleton presented some beautiful cactus plants, palms, and a pidisporum when she sold her old place on Limekiln Pike. My cousin, Miss Mary Fisher Wright, has furnished many rock plants from her Logan Nurseries for our new rockeries; while we have to thank another cousin, John Caspar Wister, our next door neighbor, for many gifts of bulbs and shrubs, a very fine forsythia, some Japanese tree peonies, specimen daffodils, grafted lilacs and ins from his noted collections, as well as for much expert advice.
We have collected in our travels, ivies from Prague, from Spain and Mount Vernon, sedums from the old church at Jamestown, Va., and from the top of the Rigi, in Switzerland, and wild orchids from Nova Scotia. Plants raised from seed secured from countries visited when we went around the world in 1931, and again in 1933, have added interest and beauty to the place.
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THE GREENHOUSES
My grandmother mentions a small hothouse, built on the side of the hill, as there when she arrived as a bride in 1826. I am for this reason assuming that our old, tumble down lean-to is of the vintage of Mr. Peale, and therefore its contents of interest. Its first attraction is a large prickly cactus variety of cereus clinging to the back wall. This plant is growing from the floor, and although it has been broken off several times, and in spite of neglect and abuse in years past, it has finally triumphantly reached the very top of the house. Last year forty-one blooms opened in one night, making a never-to-be-forgotten picture. This variety grows luxuriously in Honolulu. The flowers are larger and more fragrant than those on the flat leaved and non-clinging variety, which is also to be found in the old house.
A number of cacti that seldom bloom, I found under the potting bench, where oxahs and tradescantia seem to be equally content.
A large pale green aloe has grown to an unusual size, its spikes and spines causing bloodshed whenever it requires moving. A good sized camellia with lovely pale pink flowers, as well as several white ones, a bougainvillea of a cherry red color, the largest euphorbia (crown of thorns) I have ever seen, rose geraniums, among them cinnamon and tiny nutmeg, the stately pelargonium, several varieties of fuchsias—dwyarf and giant—lantanas, purple, white and yellow, and many other plants could lay claim, I think, to being original inhabitants of this old greenhouse.
My mother had fine glass houses at Duncannon, Penna., and was very successful in her efforts in Floriculture. A splendid Marechal Neil covered one side of her rose house, and bouvardia, arums, yellow and white, geraniums of endless variety, passion flower vines and many rarities flourished under her care. She was left by the will of my great aunt, Miss Anne Wister, of Vernon, many of the valuable
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collection of plants from her greenhouse—acacia, mimosa, stnhtsia, lasiandra, camellias, gardenias, lemon and orange trees, as well as many soft-wooded plants. These were shipped to Duncannon in an ordinary freight car. The contents of both of my mother’s greenhouses, including the legacy from Vernon, were sent in the same way to Belfield when my parents came to live here in 1892. I mention this to show what a plant can endure, as is proved by the rough handling that these received.
As my mother was so fond of flowers, it was but natural that offerings from the family greenhouses should come to her, and as these houses were abandoned, many plants found their way to the shelter of the Belfield greenhouse, to which from time to time were added bays and wings to house them.
1 have known a number of these estates. The oldest, Stenton, the country residence of James Logan built in 1728, had an orangery and was noted for its gardens and flowers, lists of which may still be seen. I like to think that the greenhouses of his grandson, William Logan Fisher, of Wakefield, my grandmother’s father, and that of his son, Thomas Fisher, of Little Wakefield, were stocked from this parent house. Plants from both of these houses are now at Belfield. A large white flowering azalea came from Wakefield, while several sweet olives, oleander, and a pidisporum, an English crepe myrtle and several palms came from Little Wakefield.
Some plants from the greenhouse of Miss Mary D. Fox, of Champ-lost, are now at Belfield, Miss Fox having willed them to Mrs. Owen Wister, Sarah Butler, of Butler Place. When this lovely estate was sold for city development, her son, Owen Wister, gave into my care a number of citrus varieties originally from Miss Fox’s orangery, a lime, lemons (among them two giant lemons), tangerine, orange, and a grape fruit. John Good, Mr. Owen Wister’s gardener, who died a few years ago, over eighty years of age, has told me many interesting bits of history of the greenhouses and plants under his care. As a boy he went into the service of Miss Fox at Champlost, where he first raked leaves. After her death he was
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employed by Dr. and Mrs. Owen Wister and remained until his death with their son, Mr. Owen Wister, after he took up his residence on the Main Line. Heliotrope, jasmine (yellow and white), two gardenias, a camellia japonica, and a lemon verbina came from Butler Place.
The following extract from a letter of Fanny Kemble, the mother of Sarah Butler Wister, mother of Owen Wister, is of interest to me as having been written in the month and year of my birth, and also as it refers to a plant that I can identify. The “flower pot”, alas, has disappeared.
Extract from a letter of Fanny Kemble—December, 1873:
“I have had beautiful flowers given to me. Mary Fox sent me, in a magnificent china flower pot of English fabric (a pale delicate green, with birds, butterflies, and flowers spotted all over it), a large Catalonia Jasmine in full bloom.
“It was Mr. Butler’s first gift to me before we were married; and on Christmas Day, Mary Fox, to whom I had given it years ago, and in whose gardener’s care it has been ever since, sent it back to me in this beautiful vase, and covered with fragrant blossoms, a strange flowering again of former memories of the ‘tempo passato che non torna piu’
Two very large Sago palms, that John Good told me had come packed in hogsheads in a sailing vessel from China, were also given me^by Mr. Owen Wister. I sought a home for these monsters, now standing over fifteen feet high. They required six men to move their tubs, so must remain stationary. One of the solaria of the new Hospital of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania has proved an ideal solution to this problem. There, basking in full sunshine, these rare specimens are content and give great pleasure to all who look upon their beauty.
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EXTRACT FROM AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF CHARLES WILLSON PEALE
That Garden now became his hobby-Horse, it was in the first beginning of it, a very difficult business to prevent it from ruin, when heavy gusts of rain occurred, but by making drams in many parts, thus dividing the streams into five passages, the evil in a great measure was overcome. And this Garden became the admiration of numerous visitors; it was in some measure like the Vaux hawl of Germantown —and although every precaution was made to prevent trespass, yet it could not always be prevented when the multitude was admitted at all times, but at last he found it absolutely necessary to shut the Gates on Sundays, as then all the labouring classes of society was let loose, and it was impossible to restrain them from plundering the fruit, and the farm and garden had by the aid of Rubens Peale provided with the most choice of every sort. The Proprietor made summer-houses (so called) roofs to ward off the sunbeams with seats of rest—one made of the Chinese taste, dedicated to meditation, with the following sentiment round within it:
“Meditate on the creation of worlds, which perform their evolutions in proscribed periods! on the changes and revolutions of the Globe which we inhabit, on the wonderful variety of animals inhabiting the Earth, the air, and the waters: their immense number and diversity—their beauty and delicacy of structure; some, immensely’ large, and others gradually descending into a minuteness almost eluding our sight, even when aided by the microscope! All have ample support:—Then let me ask myself why am I here? Am I blessed with more profound reason than other animals, if so, let me be thankful; let me meditate on the past, on the present, and on the future.”
And an obelisk which terminated a walk for the back part of the House, on the pedestal of it was inscribed, on one side: “Never return an injury, it is a noble triumph to overcome evil by good.” On another
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side, “Labour while you are able, it will give health to the body, and peaceful content to the mind!” On the third side, “He that will live in pease and rest, must hear and see and say the least. Oy, voy, and te tas, si tu veaux, vivre en paix.” This distich is taken from the Dictionary of Bailey and there is given four languages. On the fourth side of the pedestal, “Neglect no duty.”
He made those momentas to remind him of his duties, as he would often see them in his walks for exercise or amusement, and having made them, he declares that he considered them as sacred laws to govern himself thereby.
From time to time, he found some new object of conveniency, in his improvements of the Garden, and with every conveniency, he always wished to combine with it some moral sentiment to augment the utility. He wanted a place to keep the garden seeds and tools, and in a part of the Garden where a seat in the shade was often wanted, he built a shed or small room, and to hide that salt like box, and to try his art of painting, he made the front like gate-way with a step to form a seat, and above, steps painted as representing a passage through an arch beyond which was represented a western sky, and to ornament the upper part over the arch, he painted several figures on boards cut to the outlines of said figures in representing statues in sculpture. And his design of those figures might be fully understood by visitors, he painted two pedestals ornamented with a bull to crown each, and the die of the pedestals, on one the explanation of the figures, viz. America with an even balance—as justifying her acts.
The classic emblematical of the several states, are bound together, inscribed by a rattle-snake, as innocent if not meddled with, but terrible if molested. This emblem of congress is placed upright as that body ought to be, with wisdom its base, designated by the owl; the beehive and children; industry and increase, the effects of good government supported on one side, Truth and Temperance, on the other. Industry, with her distaff, resting on the cornicopia,—consequence “a wise policy will do away wars, hence Mars is fallen.”
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The figure of Mars was made on the end of shed roof to hide it. The making of this is rather of the political cast, yet he had long given over being active in politics, but choose by it to shew his dislike of war. At the termination of one other walk he made a pedestal with a peremidical finish, on the die of it he had inscribed ninety memorable events of North America with their dates beginning with first discoveries of North America and ending with the battle of New Orleans; a space was left to inscribe this memorable event, that the genius of America sent the first ship across the ocean by Steam.
A refreshment to the memories of visitors to the Garden. In other parts of the garden he had inscribed other sentiments all of a moral tendency, but we are fearful of tiring the reader, and it will be acknowledged that we have been sufficiently prolix already. But as the object of this work is to make the portrait of the man, it is proper to give all his friperies and follies, more properly, as all these things were made of wood and paint, which could last only for a few years, if they even were deserving of a better state of workmanship.
Having a good spring-house, the water from it supplied a small fish pond, in which he put many cat-fish brought from the Schuylkill, and although they lived and perhaps might be bred there, yet being pets, never were served at his table.
The same with Pidgeons, they had commodious house, and once a pair of squabs was taken to the kitchen, but the parent came after them, and alighting on the kitchen window, Mrs. Peale’s delicate feelings would not suffer them to be killed, and according they were returned to the Pidgeon-House.
Finding a spring-stream in the garden, he followed it up the side of the hill, until it became of some depth and among large stones— and having at this place made a considerable cavity in the bank round the source of the spring, to wall it up, this hollow and arch it over, it was thought that it might be an excellent place to keep cabbage and turnips, etc. during the winter season, but on trial it was found too moist and warm, for those vegetables sprouted and took a second growth, and they were obliged to take them out, in
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the first of January, and cover them with earth in the usual mode. This trial gave the idea of building a green-house, joining to the arched cave—and that green-house kept all exotic plants perfectly well without the aid of stoves in the severest winters. Below the green-house he made a round basin to receive the water from the cave back of it—and from the fish-pond near the spring-house to this basin in the Garden is a fall of fifteen feet and in order to have a fountain in the basin, he put log pipes under ground, and thus had a jet of 13 feet high, but of small diameter, in order that it might constantly rise, but unfortunately he made the bore of his logs onlv of one inch diameter, the consequence was, that frogs in two instances got into the bore of the logs and not being able to pass through all the joints, stopped the water. Of course, to free the passage of the logs, gave much labour; had these things been foreseen, trouble might have been prevented, by making the bore of the logs of a greater diameter, with other provisions to keep the passage free.
These amusements cost some money and much time, the labour gave health and happiness as the result of constant employment. His inventions pleased himself, and they gave pleasure to others and offended none—being perfectly innocent, but the economist will say, it was time misspent. He answers that happiness is worth millions.
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MOYER * LOTTER, PRINTERS PHILADELPHIA, PA.