Read it through once

Specially privileged and greatly esteeming the privilege, we have wandered through the rooms of this house; seen the breakfast room round which were ranged the books of Grandpa Russell’s library; seen the curiously contrived sash-window—the like of which we have never seen in any house before or since—fashioned so cunningly that its entire height slides upward into a recess quite out of sight; stepped through the opening thus made on to the flagged pathway leading by quaint outbuildings and stable to the garden and orchard beyond, where, as we have already noted, took place those dashing rides on a human mount, with a powdered, beribboned pig-tail in lieu of reins.