the Sunday mornings of
winter became characteristic. Always late for the service, and often
coming in after the sermon had begun, he walked deliberately forward up
the main alley, clad in the great fur coat which had served him for the
cold drive from Hyde Hall. Arrived at his pew, the front one at the
left, he would stand there while he slowly removed his coat, meantime
gazing curiously at the preacher, as if wondering what the text might
have been. Still standing, his hand described circles over his head
while he unreeled the long muffler wrapped about his throat. Then,
turning about, he would give a wide stare at the congregation, produce
his handkerchief, and with a trumpet-blast sit down to compose himself
for the rest of the sermon.

Hyde Clarke was exactly the man to have lived in what Levi Beardsley
called the "Baronial establishment" of Hyde Hall, amid broad acres of
wooded hill, and farm, and pasture. Besides being a practical farmer and
hop-grower, he was a leader among politicians of the better sort in the
Democratic party of the county and State. Through many avenues of
interest he reached all sides of life, and gained experiences that saved
his culture from dilettanteism, and made him a man among men, a true
democrat. In his judgments of men, he was big enough to overlook the
little imperfections that often conceal a fundamental soundness of
character; he saw the good in all, and spoke evil of none. He had
friendships among people of all sorts and conditions. Nor did he limit
his friendship to the human race; he knew horses and cows and dogs. He
loved all moods of nature, and faced all kinds of weather.

Hyde Hall, in the first century of its existence, measured the lives of
three men, passing from father to son, and leaving its traditions to the
great-grandson of the builder, another George Hyde Clarke, who, in 1915,
married Emily Borie Ryerson, a daughter of Arthur Ryerson of Chicago, a
gentleman affectionately remembered as the host of "Ringwood" at the
head of the lake, and mourned for his untimely death at sea, in the loss
of the _Titanic_.

[Illustration: A WEDDING-DAY AT HYDE]

Hyde Hall is at its best as the centre of a function, crowded with
guests, buzzing with conversation, while the company overflows from the
house to the lawn, presenting a kaleidoscope of color in the shifting
throng that moves to and fro in the spacious foreground of the venerable
mansion. There are those to whom one scen