"I arrived here last evening and found all well. One of the latter trials, as it happened, comes on this very day, or is expected to. This may delay me,--otherwise I expect to be at home on Saturday. A note enclosed, as this falls due the 9th. Please do the needful. "D. WEBSTER." The house has stood practically unchanged since the day of building, some slight changes having been made, but not enough to mar the colonial architecture. It is large and square, three stories in height, of simple, dignified proportions, and showing colonial details. The windows are the small-paned ones that were used in the long ago, with the exception of one of stained glass, which has been introduced over the entrance porch. The house is one which reflects the period,--a notable mansion filled with interesting colonial relics which formerly were owned by some of the most prominent men in our country. CHAPTER XVII THE DALTON HOUSE Because of the distinctive place that houses of the middle period hold in the present architectural world, architects from all over the country are now looking for specimens of these dwellings to which they may turn for copy. The master builders of that time knew well their art, and their work is characteristic of us as a nation. Houses of that period, while comparatively similar in type to those of the old world, yet show enough variation to make them interesting, and stand in favorable comparison. There is the large, square house, three stories in height, which came into vogue early in the nineteenth century. Then there is the double-decked house with its roof ornamentations, and the plain house of the purest colonial type, an illustration of the latter being the Dalton house at Newburyport, Massachusetts. This house stands on the principal street in Newburyport, a seaport city, where in the days of commercial prosperity ships lined the wharves, as they came and went in their traffic with foreign lands. Those were the days when merchants made and lost fortunes, the days of golden prosperity and of flashes of romance. To these days we turn as a most interesting period of our country's architectural history. In fancy we see the Newburyport of that day, situated on the banks of the Merrimac River, a breezy old town propped up on a granite base. Its principal street, three miles in length, overlooked the quays, where in the olden days vessels arrived from Russia or Antwerp or perhaps from the West Indies, laden with rich furs, strange wooden shoes, guava jellies, wonderful old shawls, and many other exports that were piled high on the now silent wharves. [Illustration: PLATE LXX.--The Dalton House, Newburyport, Mass.]