Description

"See that house? The one with the tower? That's the Crowningshield place."

Ana peered closely. They were downstairs, in the front room occupying one corner of the museum. It might have once been a kitchen. Before them lay a sprawling, intricately painted, glassed-in diorama. It stretched nearly from wall to wall, with just enough space on either end for a viewer to squeeze by.

"This is the town as it was in the 1880s," Violet explained. "The Crowningshield estate was brand new. Of course, back then, it was still called Butler's Point. The Butler family had always lived there. They built a lovely hotel, which sadly burned down, and before that, the first excursion boats to the island landed at Butler docks. They ran the first stagecoach tavern. When Judge Butler died, in 1909, the family sold the entire Point to Charles Crowningshield. He did a lot of fix-up on that old place. Queen Anne Victorians, you see, were no longer in vogue."

Ana stared down at the tiny, intricately constructed world. Tiny houses, tiny sailboats and tiny paddle steamers, a tiny locomotive, cotton smoke streaming from its tiny smokestack, huffing its way down a tiny grade into the village. A tiny, horse-drawn dray, its tiny driver urging two tiny horses down a tiny country lane, delivering tiny goods to a tiny market. Everything was in perfect proportion; late nineteenth century America in miniature.

"Incredible," Ana whispered. "Such detail."