The parsonage where Dr. Beecher lived, and where seven of his thirteen children were born, was a roomy edifice that seemed to have been built by a succession of afterthoughts. It was first a model New England house, built around a great brick chimney which ran up like a lighthouse in the center of the square roof; but various bedroom additions had been gradually made and a new kitchen had been built on, and out of the kitchen a sinkroom, and out of the sinkroom a woodhouse, and out of the woodhouse a carriage house, and so on through a gradually lessening succession of out-buildings, until it might seem as if the house has been constructed on the model of a telescope. And besides all this, there were four great attics! What a wonderful house in which to play tag or blind-man’s bluff! The house stood at the highest point on North Street in the midst of a colony of noble elms that gathered about the plain, old-fashioned parsonage like classic pillars, giving it a grand air of scholarly retirement. The surroundings of this rambling old house were delightful. There was the tall well-sweep, and a gate that swung with a chain and a great stone. From the pantry window could be seen a whole neighborhood of purple-leaved beets and feathery parsnips; the gooseberry bushes were rolled up by the fence in billows, and here and there stood an aristocratic quince tree. Far off in one corner a little patch penuriously devoted to ornament flamed with marigolds, poppies, snappers and four-o’clocks. Then there was a little box by itself with one rose geranium in it, which looked around the garden in a frightened way, as much a stranger as a French dancing master would be in a Yankee meeting-house. The little foreigner, however, received delicate attention at the hands of Harriet’s beauty-loving mother. But, although the house was a big one, there was not too much room for the Beecher family. Besides the father and mother, there were, when the last arrival completed the magic number, thirteen children in all. Then there was sometimes an aunt, or a grandmother, or a cousin; there were generally a number of students as boarders, and these, together with one Rachel and one Zillah, both black, completed the household circle.