Most of them were of frame and in their architecture
illustrated the decadence of the eighties and nineties, but here or
there was a fine old brick homestead with a noble columned portico, or a
formal Georgian house, disposed among beautiful trees and gardens and
sheltered from the street by an ancient hedge of box. So, though
Columbus is, as I have indicated, not too easily reached by rail, and
though, as I have further indicated, walks before breakfast are not to
my taste, I am compelled to say that for both the journey and the walk I
felt repaid by the sight of some of the old houses--the Baldwin house,
the W.D. Humphries house, the J.O. Banks house, the old McLaren house,
the Kinnebrew house, the Thomas Hardy house, the J.M. Morgan house, with
its garden of lilies and roses, its giant magnolia trees and its huge
camellia bushes; and most of all, perhaps, for its Georgian beauty, the
mellow tone of its old brick, its rich tangle of southern growths, and
its associations, the venerable mansion of the late General Stephen D.
Lee, C.S.A.--now the property of the latter's only son, Mr. Blewett Lee,
general counsel of the Illinois Central Railroad, and a resident of
Chicago.
It was apropos of our visit to the Lee house that I was told of a
dramatic and touching example of the rebirth of amity between North and
South.
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