Page:Historic towns of the southern states (1900).djvu/112

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  • dren three houses that are like a castle; and

just across, hidden by the beautiful St. Mary's Church, lies Carrollton, the home of Charles Carroll.[1] It is occupied now by the Redemptorist priests, and the profane shoe of a woman can gain for its owner no nearer view than that to be had from the bridge that spans the waterway below. It looks a very charming place, built in the Dutch rather than the Georgian taste: gray, small windows, high-roofed, and set in a garden which is what all Annapolis gardens are, and what all gardens everywhere ought to be, an ordered wilderness of hollies, box, magnolias, roses, lilacs, more roses and yet more lilacs, jessamine, wallflowers, iris, lilies, violets, daffodils,—all the old-fashioned flowers which ever were and ever will be the dearest and sweetest flowers in the world.

It is hard to come back even to the first days of the century just closing. The defence

  1. Of all the deeds whereby Charles Carroll served his country, none, perhaps, was more noteworthy than the writing of the four letters to the Maryland Gazette, in 1773, signed "First Citizen." In them he pitted his young strength against the marvellous learning of Daniel Dulany, the greatest lawyer of all the colonies, whose letters to the same paper were signed "Antilon." His brave defence of the rights of the people brought Mr. Carroll the unprecedented honor of an adjournment of the Legislature that that body might visit his house en masse, to express its thanks and appreciation.