When the yachting visitors were gone that day and we were at the old home engrossed in the architecture of the Harrison colonial cradle, there came the long blasts of the steamer Pocahontas blowing for the Brandon landing. Not that she had any passengers or freight for Brandon perhaps, or Brandon for her, but because all these river estates are postoffices and the Pocahontas carries the river mail. After a considerable time (for even the United States mail moves slowly through the sleepy old garden), a coloured boy brought in a bag with most promising knobs and bulges all over it. The postoffice at Brandon is over in the south wing where there are pigeon-holes and desks and such things. But the family mail is brought into the great dining-room and there, in the good plantation way, it is opened on the old mahogany. The mail that morning made a very good directory of the present-day family at Brandon. There were letters and packages for the mistress of the plantation and for the daughter and the son living in the manor-house with her, and also for the other daughter and her husband, Mr. Randolph Cuyler, who live across the lawn in Brandon Cottage with its dormer windows and wistaria-draped veranda. Mrs. Harrison is the widow of Mr. George Evelyn Harrison, and the daughter of the late William Washington Gordon, who was the first president of the Central Railroad of Georgia and one of the most prominent men in that state. [Illustration: "VENERABLE FOUR-POSTERS, RICHLY CARVED AND DARK."] Brandon to-day keeps up correspondence with relatives and friends in England and on the Continent, reads English papers and magazines, sends cuttings from rosebushes and shrubs across seas, makes visits there and is visited in turn. So, it was pleasant to have the reading of our own welcome letters diversified by bits of foreign news that came out of the bag for Brandon. We could imagine an expression of personal interest on the handsome face of Colonel Byrd, as he stood in court costume on the wall above us, when the wrappings were taken from a volume containing the correspondence of his old friend, the Earl of Orrery, and sent by the present Earl to Mrs. Harrison. In it were some of the Colonel's letters written from his James River home, and in which he spoke of how his daughters missed the gaieties of the English Court. The torn wrappings and bits of string were gathered up and a little blaze was made of them behind the old fire-dogs. Then we were shown more of Brandon. Up quaint staircases in the wings we went to the roomy bedrooms with their ivy-cased windows, mellow-toned panelling, and old open fireplaces. As daily living at Brandon is truly in the paths of ancestral worthies, so, at night, there are venerable four-posters, richly carved and dark, to induce eighteenth century dreams in the twentieth century Harrisons. Massive mahogany wardrobes, bureaus, and washstands are as generations of forebears have used them.