During the Gilded Age, the equipage, the livery and the horses as well as the skill in driving were sources of great pride. A local newspaper even gave a whole column for the length of the page to recounting the teams and mounts of local cottagers.
Beecher preached that love was the basis of religious experience and that God would forgive all sins. For the last decade, there were rumors that he practiced what he preached.
This sale of Cranwell will be the tenth in a series, and it will not be the last. It is not the first attempt to turn an epitome of indulgence – a Berkshire Cottage -- into a profit center. It is not the first attempt to change a building symbolic of another age into something useful in this age.
