The stranger going to a humble Charleston house will find on the gate a coiled spring at the end of which hangs a bell. By touching the spring and causing the bell to jingle he makes his presence known. The larger houses have upon their gates bell-pulls or buttons which cause bells to ring within. This is true of all houses which have front gardens. The garden gate constitutes, by custom, a barrier comparable in a degree with the front door of a Northern house; a usage arising, doubtless, out of the fact that almost all important Charleston houses have not only gardens, but first and second story galleries, and that in hot weather these galleries become, as it were, exterior rooms, in which no small part of the family life goes on. Many Charleston houses have their gardens to the rear, and themselves abut upon the sidewalk. Calling at such houses, you ring at what seems to be an ordinary front door, but when the door is opened you find yourself entering not upon a hall, but upon an exterior gallery running to the full depth of the house, down which you walk to the actual house door. In still other houses--and this is true of some of the most notable mansions of the city, including the Pringle, Huger, and Rhett houses--admittance is by a street door of the normal sort, opening upon a hall, and the galleries and gardens are at the side or back, the position of the galleries in relation to the house depending upon what point of the compass the house faces, the desirable thing being to get the breezes which are prevalently from the southwest and the westward. * * * * * Charleston is very definitely two things: It is old, and it is a city. There is the story of a young lady who asked a stranger if he did not consider it a unique town. He agreed that it was, and inquired whether she knew the derivation of the word "unique." When she replied negatively he informed her that the word came from the Latin _unus_, meaning "one," and _equus_, meaning "a horse"; otherwise "a one-horse town."