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The Mansion (Illustrated)
The Mansion (Illustrated)
The Mansion (Illustrated)
Ebook37 pages35 minutes

The Mansion (Illustrated)

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Henry van Dyke (1852-1933) was the son of a prominent Presbyterian minister who instilled in him as a child the ability to love and to find peace in nature. Henry studied theology and English literature at Princeton University before accepting a position as the pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church of New York City in 1883. He gained wide popularity at this post for his energetic and compassionate style, and is particularly remembered for heading up a committee that in 1906 produced "The Book of Common Worship" of the Presbyterian Church. He produced over fifty books of stories, essays and verse, including several Christmas stories. "The Mansion" has been ranked next to Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" as a "must-read" during the holiday season. It tells the story of John Weightman, a rich man who sees heaven in a dream and is dismayed to see only a small shanty prepared for him. Sympathy, self-sacrifice and compassion are the overlying themes of this entertaining, easy-to-read story.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 1, 2011
ISBN9781596258280
The Mansion (Illustrated)
Author

Henry Van Dyke

Henry Van Dyke (1928–2011) was born in Allegan, Michigan, and grew up in Montgomery, Alabama, where his parents were professors at Alabama State College. He served in the Army in occupied Germany, playing flute in the 427th Marching Band. There he abandoned his early ambition to become a concert pianist and began to write. In 1958, after attending the University of Michigan on the G.I. Bill and living in Ann Arbor, he moved to New York, where he spent the rest of his life. Henry taught creative writing part-time at Kent State University from 1969 until his retirement in 1993, and was the author of four novels, including Blood of Strawberries, a sequel to Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes.

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A pillar of the community, a man of rectitude and charity, differs with his son about several matters. The son wants to give up business for a while and to assist a friend of his in need, both of which the father disapproves of. On Christmas Eve, the father dreams of his arrival in Heaven, which shows him the true worth of his life and actions.Van Dyke wrote several inspiring fables of this sort. This one takes aim at the self-satisfied and comfortable. The message is still apt.

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The Mansion (Illustrated) - Henry Van Dyke

THE MANSION

BY HENRY VAN DYKE

ILLUSTRATED BY ELIZABETH SHIPPEN GREEN

A Digireads.com Book

Digireads.com Publishing

Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-4240-8

Ebook ISBN 13: 978-1-59625-828-0

This edition copyright © 2012

Please visit www.digireads.com

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THE MANSION

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There was an air of calm and reserved opulence about the Weightman mansion that spoke not of money squandered, but of wealth prudently applied. Standing on a corner of the Avenue no longer fashionable for residence, it looked upon the swelling tide of business with an expression of complacency and half-disdain.

The house was not beautiful. There was nothing in its straight front of chocolate-colored stone, its heavy cornices, its broad, staring windows of plate glass, its carved and bronze-bedecked mahogany doors at the top of the wide stoop, to charm the eye or fascinate the imagination. But it was eminently respectable, and in its way imposing. It seemed to say that the glittering shops of the jewelers, the milliners, the confectioners, the florists, the picture-dealers, the furriers, the makers of rare and costly antiquities, retail traders in luxuries of life, were beneath the notice of a house that had its foundations in the high finance, and was built literally and figuratively in the shadow of St. Petronius' Church.

At the same time there was something self-pleased and congratulatory in the way in which the mansion held its own amid the changing neighborhood. It almost seemed to be lifted up a little, among the tall buildings near at hand, as if it felt the rising value of the land on which it stood.

John Weightman was like the house into which he had built himself thirty years ago, and in which his ideals and ambitions were incrusted. He was a self-made man. But in making himself he had chosen a highly esteemed pattern and worked according to the approved rules. There was nothing irregular, questionable, flamboyant about him. He was solid, correct, and justly successful.

His minor tastes, of course, had been carefully kept up to date. At the proper time, pictures of the Barbizon masters, old English plate and portraits, bronzes by Barye and marbles by Rodin, Persian carpets and Chinese porcelains, had been introduced to the mansion. It contained a Louis Quinze reception-room, an Empire drawing-room, a Jacobean dining-room, and various apartments dimly reminiscent of the styles of furniture affected by deceased monarchs. That the hallways were too short for the historic perspective did not make much difference. American decorative art is capable de tout, it

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