I accepted that moujik as a priceless work of art, and it was not until I was well in middle age that it occurred to me that I was mistaken.
Now and then we children were taken round to our grandfather's house; a big house for the New York of those days, on the corner of Fourteenth Street and Broadway, fronting Union Square.

Inside there was a large hall running up to the roof; there was a tessellated black-and-white marble floor, and a circular staircase round the sides of the hall, from the top floor down.

We children much admired both the tessellated floor and the circular staircase.

I think we were right about the latter, but I am not so sure as to the tessellated floor.
The summers we spent in the country, now at one place, now at another.
We children, of course, loved the country beyond anything.

We disliked the city.