The Frankland mansion stood upon the old highway, now a country road, pleasant and shady, midway between Hopkinton and Ashland. The old mansion was destroyed by fire in 1858, and in its place now stands a modern structure, said, though questionably, to bear a resemblance to the original building. A bit of the ancient woodwork is seen in a shed, at the rear; and at the side is a beautiful and gigantic flower vase, made from the upturned stump of one of Frankland’s great trees. This is the tree to which Dr. Holmes refers in his poem, “Agnes,” where he says,— “Three elms, high arching, still are seen, And one lies stretched below.” This elm, too, is said to have had a girth of twenty-five feet. Indeed, this is the legend which attaches to all of the ancient trees hereabout, so that I concluded that it was a figure of speech equivalent to the forty-eleven of my boyhood and the _trente-six_ of the French. The fine, noble elms at the west of the lawn, said by Dr. Chadwick to have been planted by the lovers, cast a broad curtain of shade over the drive and lawn. Dr. Nason,[1] writing in 1865, records the circumference of the largest two of these as twelve feet each, but doubtless by this time they have reached the conventional girth of twenty-five. [Illustration: Great Elms, Hopkinton] Since Dr. Nason’s time the old box of Sir Harry’s borders, described as having a height of ten or twelve feet, has nearly disappeared except a few plants remaining before the house, and on the terraces built by Sir Harry’s slaves. One who knew some of the descendants of Agnes and Frankland well says that, in her youthful days, the young girls were wont to gather this box, for Christmas greens, with which to deck the old church. A bright, sunny day will serve to dispel the terrible ghost of Dr. Nason’s early days, and the bewitched pump no longer displays its weird waywardness, but yields, instead, a cool, refreshing draught. [Illustration]