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might and did ride; first, with great contentment, on a Narragansett pacer, “Jeanie Deans,” later on a thoroughbred mare, a golden bay named Cora.
Cora was beautiful but “very pranky.”
After being several times run away with and once thrown off, it was observed by her sisters that Julia generally read her Bible and said her prayers before her ride: she has herself told us how, after being thrown off and obliged to make her way home on foot, she would creep in at the back door so that no one might see her.
She calls the “cottage” a “delightful house,” and speaks with special pleasure of its garden planted with roses and gooseberry bushes by Billy Bottomore, a quaint old Newport sportsman, who took the boys shooting, and showed them where to find plover, woodcock, and snipe.
Billy Bottomore passed for an adopted son of old Father Corne, another Newport “character” of those days.
This gentleman had come from Naples to Boston, toward the end of the eighteenth century, as a decorative artist, and had made a modest fortune by painting the walls of the fine houses of Summer Street, Temple Place, and Beacon Hill.
He chose Newport as his final home, because, as he told Mr. Ward, he had found that the climate was favorable to the growth of the tomato, “that most wholesome of vegetables.”
The Ward boys delighted in visiting Father Corne, and in hearing him sing his old songs, French and Italian, some of which are sung to-day by our grandchildren.
Father Corne lived to a great age. When past his ninetieth year, a friend asked him if he would not like
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York. 1916.
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