lowed to smother the lower
story almost to the exclusion of light and airy so that, what with small
windows and small windowpanes, and the darkness made by these choking
growths of shrubbery, the front parlors of some of these houses were the
most tomb-like, melancholy places that could be found anywhere among the
abodes of the living. Their garnishing was apt to assist this
impression. Large-patterned carpets, which always look discontented in
little rooms, haircloth furniture, black and shiny as beetles' wing
cases, and centre-tables, with a sullen oil-lamp of the kind called
astral by our imaginative ancestors, in the centre,--these things were
inevitable. In set piles round the lamp was ranged the current
literature of the day, in the form of Temperance Documents, unbound
numbers of one of the Unknown Public's Magazines with worn-out steel
engravings and high-colored fashion-plates, the Poems of a distinguished
British author whom it is unnecessary to mention, a volume of sermons, or
a novel or two, or both, according to the tastes of the family, and the
Good Book, which is always Itself in the cheapest and commonest company.
The father of the family with his hand in the breast of his coat, the
mother of the same in a wide-bordered cap, sometimes a print of the Last
Supper, by no means Morghen's, or the Father of his Country, or the old
General, or the Defender of the Constitution, or an unknown clergyman
with an open book before him,--these were the usual ornaments of the
walls, the first two a matter of rigor, the others according to politics
and other tendencies.

This intermediate class of houses, wherever one finds them in New England
towns, are very apt to be cheerless and unsatisfactory. They have
neither the luxury of the mansion-house nor the comfort of the
farm-house. They are rarely kept at an agreeable temperature. The
mansion-house has large fireplaces and generous chimneys, and is open to
the sunshine. The farm-house makes no pretensions, but it has a good
warm kitchen, at any rate, and one can be comfortable there with the rest
of the family, without fear and without reproach. These lesser
country-houses of genteel aspirations are much given to patent
subterfuges of one kind and another to get heat without combustion. The
chilly parlor and the slippery hair-cloth seat take the life out of the
warmest welcome. If one would make these places wholesome, happy, and
cheerful, the first precept wou