Inside the house there is a great hall in the center. On the right from the main entrance is the dining-room and on the left a large drawing-room. Everywhere are works of art, statuary and paintings. The house has a multitude of rooms in it and is built on a generous plan throughout. It is an ideal country home. Every window commands a beautiful view, but those on the west front have the finest. The Hudson can be seen for miles to the south and north. The palisades are seen in a magnificent sweep across the river, and the town of Nyack looks like a toy city on the further shore of the river. To the north are the mountains of the Highlands. The lawn at the west of the house slopes down to the edge of the bluff. Then there is a steep descent to the railroad track, which is hidden from view by thickly planted trees and shrubs growing on the declivity. A path leads down to a bridge over the track and a short distance on the other side brings one to the little wharf and boathouse. It was off this wharf that the Atalanta used to lie when Mr. Gould was at Lyndhurst. The library in the house contains a splendid collection of books, which Mr. Gould bought from a man who had spent many years and much money in collecting them in all the markets of the world. He erected a short distance away one of the largest and most handsomely equipped conservatories in the country. It covers nearly four acres, and from a distance looks like the fabled palace of Kubla Khan. Here there was another source of pleasure for the weary financier. He employed Ferdinand Mangold, Mr. Merritt’s former gardener, to take charge of the conservatory, and gave him carte blanche to procure the rarest flowers and exotics from all over the world. Mangold performed his work well. When the leaves grew yellow around Lyndhurst the autumn following the conservatory contained the finest palm garden on the Western hemisphere. There are over 250 varieties, from the size of a maidenhair fern to great shadowy trees, thirty feet high and with leaves as wide as the jib of a pilot boat. They range in value from $20 to $500; but what is money to a millionaire in pursuit of the butterfly of pleasure. These palms were brought from Africa, Central and South America, Samoa, the Sandwich Islands, the heart of India and from beyond Trebizonde, for the simple purpose of wooing Mr. Gould’s pale face into a smile. There were _Viridifolium_, _Hyophorbe Americanlis_ and _Plectocomia Assamica_ palms without number, and Mr. Gould knew every one of them by name.