, in a Gothic
garden shaded by slender cypresses, walked the golden youth of the land;
there, feminine lunch parties, pink teas, highly exclusive musicales and
fashionable hops, flourished mightily; now the former side-door served
as the front entrance to all that was left of the mansion; the stone
that was rejected had become the headstone of the corner, as it were; it
was an abrupt corner to be sure, with the upper half of its narrow door
filled with small panes of glass; its modest threshold was somewhat
worn; but upon the platform before it a large egg-shaped jar of
unmistakable Chinese origin encased the roots of a flowing cactus that
might have added a grace to the proudest palace in the Misty City. This
was the modest portal of the Eyrie; ivy vines sheltered it like a dense
thatch; ivy vines clung fast to a deep bay window that nearly filled one
side of the library of the old mansion, now a living-room; ivy vines
curtained the glazed wall of a conservatory where some one slept as in a
bower. A weird dwelling place was this the moon shone upon, where
pigeons nested and cooed at intervals in all the green nooks thereof.

She shone on the tall slim panes of glass in the bay window till they
shimmered like ice, and brightened the carpet on the floor of the
room--a carpet that was faded and frayed; she threw a soft glow upon the
three walls beyond the window; where were low, convenient shelves of
books; there were books, books, books everywhere--books of all
descriptions, neither creed nor caution limited their range. Many
pictures and sketches in oil or water-color--some of them unframed--were
upon the walls above the book-shelves; there were bronze statuettes,
graceful figures of lute-strumming troubadours upon the old-fashioned
marble mantel; there were busts and medallions in plaster, and a few
casts after the antique. Heaped in corners, and upon the tops of the
book-shelves lay bric-a-brac in hopeless confusion; toy canoes from
Kamchatka and the Southern seas; wooden masks from the burial places of
the Alaskan Indians and the Theban Tombs of the Nile Kings; rude
fish-hooks that had been dropped in the coral seas; sharks' teeth; and
the strong beak of an albatross whose webbed feet were tobacco pouches
and whose hollow wing-bones were the long jointed stem of a pipe; spears
and war-clubs were there, brought from the gleaming shores of
reef-girdled islands; a Florentine lamp; a roll of papyrus; an idol from
Easter