The construction of his house took much of his attention, and he ransacked his collections of sketches, and photographs of villas, palaces, and cottages in the Old World, to find such a plan as he could be satisfied to adopt. It was no child’s play with him to construct the building wherein to make his home. He had thought of the matter from boyhood, and that clump of oaks on the highland, about a mile to the westward of Kennett Square, and within a short distance of the old homestead, had ever been his choice. His years of wanderings had sharpened his desire for a permanent home, and, with characteristic care and thoroughness, he investigated his plans and means. He had owned the land for five years, and had gloried in being the owner of American soil, without which one can hardly claim to be an American. He attended to all the details of rooms, closets, stairways, windows, brick, stone, cornices, roof, tower, with caution and deliberation; and when he contracted with the masons, carpenters, and gardeners, he knew just what was needed, and told to each what was expected of them. There was a ceremony attendant on breaking the ground, a procession, and a box of records deposited in the foundation, when the corner-stone was laid, and such a house-warming when it was dedicated October 18 and 19, 1860, as Americans seldom enjoy. There was feasting, singing, original poetry, original plays, and one of the happiest, merriest companies ever gathered under a hospitable roof. But while the building was being slowly and carefully constructed, with its thick walls of stone and brick, Mr. Taylor, was engaged no less in his editorial tasks. The summer after his return from Europe, he made several excursions in an editorial capacity, one of which took him again to California. The great changes in the city of San Francisco, and in the appearance of the entire State, so far as he visited it, were marvellous, and were as marvellously pictured to the minds of his readers. His time was much occupied in delivering lectures in the various cities of the State; but he used his disciplined eyes and ears to such advantage that he gave in his book the most full and accurate account of California,—its agriculture, its institutions, its lakes, its mountains, its great trees, its mines, its enterprises, and its people,—to be found in any work of the kind now in print. It is astonishing how much he could put into a paragraph, without giving it a crowded appearance!