QUOTE : <i>Friday, March 28th. 1884</i><br /><br />...<br /><br />I am afraid grandmamma Potter will be disappointed, and I very much wished to go, but it is the last chance of seeing the old house. Not that I look forward to that as an unmixed pleasure.<br />I have a very pleasant recollection of it, which I fear may be changed. I have now seen longer passages and higher halls. The rooms will look cold and empty, the passage I used to patter along so kindly on the way to bed will no longer seem dark and mysterious, and, above all, the kind voice which cheered the house is silent forever.<br />It is six or seven years since I have been there, but I remember it like yesterday. The pattern of the door-mat, the pictures on the old music-box, the sound of the rocking-horse as it swung, the engravings on the stair, the smell of the Indian corn, and the feeling of plunging one's hands into the bin, the hooting of the turkeys and the quick flutter of the fantail's wings. I would not have it changed.