Sometimes, during a winter cold-snap, when a ride in a surrey is not a pleasant thing to contemplate, when residents of old mansions have shut themselves into a room or two heated by grate fires, then the fly seems to have disappeared, but let the cold abate a little and out he comes again like some rogue who, after brief and spurious penance, resumes the evil of his ways.
The stranger going to a humble Charleston house will find on the gate a coiled spring at the end of which hangs a bell.

By touching the spring and causing the bell to jingle he makes his presence known.

The larger houses have upon their gates bell-pulls or buttons which cause bells to ring within.

This is true of all houses which have front gardens.

The garden gate constitutes, by custom, a barrier comparable in a degree with the front door of a Northern house; a usage arising, doubtless, out of the fact that almost all important Charleston houses have not only gardens, but first and second story galleries, and that in hot weather these galleries become, as it were, exterior rooms, in which no small part of the family life goes on.