Nevertheless, the life of Annapolis in colonial days, and in the days which followed them, was very brilliant, and we learn from the diary of General Washington and from the writings of amazed Englishmen and Frenchmen who visited the city in its period of glory that there were dinners and balls night after night, that the theater was encouraged in Annapolis more than in any other city, that the race meets compared with English race meets both as to the quality of the horses and of the fashionable attendance, that there were sixteen clubs, that the women of the city were beautiful, charming, and superbly dressed, that slaves in sumptuous liveries were to be seen about the streets, that certain gentlemen paid calls in barges which were rowed by half a dozen or more blacks, in uniform, and that the perpetual hospitality of the great houses was gorgeous and extravagant. The houses hint of these things. If you have seen the best old brick mansions of New England, and will imagine them more beautifully proportioned, set off by balancing wings and having infinitely finer details as to doorways, windows, porticos, and also as to wood carvings and fixtures within--as, for instance, the beautiful silver latches and hinges of the Chase house at Annapolis--you will gather something of the flavor of these old Southern homes. For though such venerable mansions as the Chase, Paca, Brice, Hammond, Ridout, and Bordley houses, in Annapolis, are not without family resemblance to the best New England colonial houses, the resemblance is of a kind to emphasize the differences, not only between the mansions of the North and South, but between the builders of them. The contrast is subtle, but marked. Your New England house, beautiful as it is, is stamped with austere simplicity. The man who built it was probably a scholar but he was almost certainly a Calvinist. He habited himself in black and was served by serving maids, instead of slaves in livery. If a woman was not flat-chested and forlorn, he was prone to regard her as the devil masquerading for the downfall of man--and no doubt with some justice, too. Night and morning he presided at family prayers, the purpose of which was to impress upon his family and servants that to have a good time was wicked, and that to be gay in this life meant hell-fire and damnation in the next.