IT is an experience worth the having to pass a delightful May-day in an old colonial mansion; to be able to wander about a spacious dwelling built more than two hundred years ago, still in excellent repair, and not fatally modernized. Think of it! I passed a postprandial hour in a cozy room wherein Franklin and his friend Galloway were wont to discuss electricity and the coming crisis. Whether or not Galloway thought Franklin a crank in the matter of electricity, possibly no one knows; but these intellectual giants took opposite sides politically, and for aught I know, parted, during Revolutionary times, for their remaining years.

It was a happy thought, on mine host's part, to give me an inkling of the mansion's history; forthwith my imagination did me good service in peopling every nook and corner with the old-time folk. The stately, high-backed chairs were occupied by grave, but not forbidding, men; the wide hall resounded with the pleasant patter of fun-loving youth, whose romping savored of the wild woods about them. Life had its drawbacks, doubtless, then as now; but who has not cast loving backward glances and thought of the boundless forest before the moccasin-print of the Indian had vanished? It was so to-day. The hands of the world-clock were set back two centuries while I tarried in the house.

Then, the afternoon's ramble. It is an unfortunate taste, perhaps, but tales and traditions of long ago, howsoever teeming with comedy or with tragic events, are soon forgotten when, in the shade of clustered hemlocks, the wild-bird's song and flaunting blossoms champion the passing hour. It was so to-day. Strolling over grassy fields and pausing only to pay due respect to an enormous hawthorn that stands like a sentinel in a wide reach of pasture, we soon reached the creek-side woods. No sound save the rippling of rapid waters stayed our progress; for who is not ready to pause when the wood-thrush sings? Then, afar off, was heard the vehement reiteration of the oven-bird and the pleasant lisping of a passing warbler. Reading here and there in the open pages of the woodland almanac, my mind ran to orchids, and, careless of the treacherous foot-path, my eyes sought the damp soil between mossy rocks, hoping at every step to find some treasure of fantastic bloom. Nor did I look in vain. That pink-and-white beauty, the showy orchis, unknown at the home hill-side, grew here in great profusion. Still, despite their numbers, it needed constant care to spy them out, they were so carefully guarded by overtopping growths. It is not strange that many people pass through the woods and re-enter the open world empty-handed, and worse, without a new idea. In matters botanical, as well as those of more practical and prosy nature, eternal vigilance is the price of novelty.

But the woods were not all green and orchid-spotted. The pinxter flower held its showy head aloft, and whenever the genial sunbeams struggled through the interlocking branches of the trees, bluebells and snowy wind-flower brightened the grim, gray rocks. It was a fitting place to rest and ruminate, here, where the sloping rocks offered a tempting seat; but our rumination was strictly physical. We were lost, for the time, to nature's beauties, and vigorously chewed sweet cicely.

It may seem to many a sad fall to quit the higher pleasures of contemplation and seek comfort in eating weeds, but the merit of sweet cicely lies hidden in the aromatic root rather than in its inconspicuous white flowers, which, as yet, had not appeared. Why not, then, if the weed be mentioned, tell the whole truth? It is good to eat, and good for nothing else; and its merit as food is not merely that it is pleasantly aromatic; it has, too, the magic charm of recalling other days. He who chewed sweet cicely forty years ago, and had no other care than the fear that the supply might some day be exhausted, will know what joy in after-years lies in reclining on a rock in the woods, and while listening to birds and rippling waters, chewing sweet cicely again. It is worth a small fortune, after weeks of worry, to be able, if but for a brief hour, to be a boy once more.

The goal was not yet reached. On through the tangled underbrush and over hill-side brooks we came at last to other rocks that jutted from the steeply-sloping bank and the creek's bed. These up-tilted rocks also offered us most tempting seats, and had not a shower threatened, I, for one, should have gladly remained until now. It is not enough to see the world by daylight. There is a night side of nature full of meaning and attractiveness, and he who knows it not has but half of the world's story wherewith to please him. It would have been jolly indeed to camp at such a spot, notwithstanding the rain, for the prospect of an early return to the city was a blacker cloud than any the sky above could ever boast of.

Regardless of the distant mutterings of the coming storm, I looked for garnets in the glistening rocks, and saw hundreds that were still held fast, but found none that I could carry away. They were dingy anyhow, so I do not care; and perhaps in anticipation of such a result, I was given a huge rosy crystal from Alaska that out-glittered all the gems in the Neshaminy valley.

It was the old story of the many against one; there were none to bear me company, and I paused when it came to perching alone upon the wrinkled rock. All reluctantly, I turned my face homeward, and there was something soothing in the silence of the woods. Scarcely a bird twittered save the restless swallows, and blossoms lost their brightness. Sorrow, it seems, sees the world through a smoked glass.

If a summer shower is to be avoided as though there was pestilence in its touch, we were none too soon in reaching the kindly shelter of the old mansion. It rained steadily for a short time, and so I was given again opportunity to linger in the historic rooms. The subdued light fitted well with the surroundings, for antiquity loses something of its charm when exposed to too bright sunlight. In the gloaming time's ravages are veiled, and what might have marred the scene at noonday was now an added glory.

The rain ceasing, a second start was made, and with those pleasing impressions that such a visit is sure to give, we hurried down a long lane, pausing a moment to look once more at the giant hemlocks that overshadowed the gate, and then Trevose, the one-time home of the Growdens, was to us a thing of the past.