o the wall, was wide open, and beyond it
was one of glass, frosted over like our windows on a snapping cold
morning, and under my feet was a checkered marble floor. I found the
knob of a bell sunk into the door jamb, and pulled it a little, feeling
half-scared to death. Then I just stepped in and waited in front of the
glass door.

A colored person of remarkably genteel appearance opened the door, and
gave me a look from head to foot that riled the old Adam in my bosom;
then he muttered something about the basement; but I put him down with
just that one lift of my finger.

"Is my cousin, Mrs. Dempster, at home?" says I.

"I--I'll inquire," says he, as meek as Moses; "walk in."

Walk in I did.

"Have you a card?" says he.

"No," says I; "as a general thing cards ain't desirable among relations,
nor moral under any circumstances with religious friends. Say that Miss
Frost is here--Miss Phoemie Frost, from the State of Vermont. No cards!"

The fellow opened a door on one side of the hall, and I went through.
Don't expect me to describe that room. It isn't in me to give the least
idea of it. Great chunks of glass like the hub of a wheel, with crooked
spokes of glass starting every way from it, and what seemed like
hundreds of icicles falling from them, dropped down from the ceiling.
When the negro opened the blinds and let in a drift of sunshine, they
turned into a snarl of rainbows that fairly blinded me. Then there was a
carpet soft as spring grass in a meadow, and bright as a flower-garden;
chairs shining with gold and silk; marble women, white as milk, with not
a thing on worth speaking of, and looking-glasses half as large as our
spring ponds.

I turned my looks away from the women without clothes, while that
colored person was by; but gave them a skimpy peep or two the minute he
was gone. Really, it was dreadful. I would not have believed such things
of Cousin Elizabeth.

Oh mercy on me! while I was looking, in came a gentleman, who bowed, and
took a chair, and sat smiling on those creatures just as if he was used
to it. Talk of blushing--my face was one blaze of fire.

While I was wondering what I should do, a girl, or what ought to have
been a little girl, came sidling into the room, gave me a look as if I'd
been a dog in the wrong place, and went up to the gentleman.

"Mamma will be down directly, and has sent me to entertain you," says
she, shaking out her short skirts, and almost sitting down on the