Everyone who visited the hospitable "Kinzie mansion" was glad to do so again. Let us follow the good example. The structure, as put up by Pointe de Saible, and passed through the hands of Le Mai to John Kinzie, was a cabin of roughly squared logs. In Kinzie's time it was beautified, enlarged, improved and surrounded by out-houses, trees, fences, grass plats, piazza and garden. "The latch string hung outside the door,"[AT] and all were free to pull it and enter. Friend or stranger, red-man or white could come and go, eat and drink, sleep and wake, listen and talk as well. A tale is told of two travelers who mistook the house for an inn, gave orders, asked questions, praised and blamed, as one does who says to himself, "Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?" and who were keenly mortified when they came to pay their scot and found that there was none to pay. In front (as the picture shows) were four fine poplars; in the rear, two great cotton-woods. The remains of one of these last named were visible at a very late period. (Who knows just how lately?) In the out-buildings were accommodated dairy, baking-ovens, stables and rooms for "the Frenchmen," the Canadian engages who were then the chief subordinates in fur-trading, and whose descendants are now well-known citizens, their names perpetuating their ancestry--Beaubien, Laframboise, Porthier, Mirandeau, etc. [AT] This odd expression of welcome came from the old style of door-fastening; a latch within lifted by the hand or by a string which was poked through a gimlet hole, so that it could be pulled from the outside. To lock the door the household simply pulled in the string and kept it inside. Captain Andreas says: The Kinzie house was no gloomy home. Up to the very time of their forced removal, the children danced to the sound of their father's violin and the long hours of frontier life were made merry with sport and play. Later the primitive court of Justice Kinzie must have been held in the "spare room"--if spare room there was. [Illustration: ROBERT ALLEN KINZIE.] Hurlbut, in his "Chicago Antiquities," says: The last distinguished guest from abroad whom the Kinzies entertained at the old house was Governor Cass; in the summer of 1827. This was during the Winnebago Indian excitement. Gurdon Hubbard says: "While at breakfast at Mr. Kinzie's house we heard singing, faint at first but gradually growing louder as the singer approached. Mr. Kinzie recognized the leading voice as that of Bob Forsyth, and left the table for the piazza of the house, where we all followed. About where Wells Street crosses, in plain sight from where we stood, was a light birch bark canoe, manned with thirteen men, rapidly approaching, the men keeping time with the paddles to one of the Canadian boat-songs; it proved to be Governor Cass and his secretary, Robert Forsyth, and they landed and soon joined in."