he contents of a wide mantel board flounced with fringed dimity,
(venerable prototype of macrame and Arrasene lambrequins), would have
filled with covetousness the soul of the bric-a-brac devotee; and
graced the counters of Sypher.

There were burnished brass candle-sticks, with extinguishers in the
shape of prancing griffins, and snuffers of the same metal, fashioned
after the similitude of some strange and presumably extinct saurian;
and a Dresden china shepherdess, whose shattered crook had long since
disappeared, peeped coquettishly through the engraved crystal of a tall
candle shade at the bloated features of a mandarin, on a tea-pot with a
cracked spout--that some Darrington, stung by the gad-fly of travel,
had brought to the homestead from Nanking. A rich blue glass vase
poised on the back of a bronze swan, which had lost one wing and part
of its bill in the combat with time, hinted at the rainbow splendors of
its native Prague, and bewailed the captivity that degraded its
ultra-marine depths into a receptacle for cut tobacco.

The walls, ceiled with curled pine planks, were covered with a motley
array of pasted and tacked pictures; some engraved, many colored, and
ranging in comprehensiveness of designs, from Bible scenes cut from
magazines, to "riots" in illustrated papers; and even the garish glory
of circus and theatre posters.

In one corner stood an oak spinning-wheel, more than centenarian in
age, fallen into hopeless desuetude, but gay with the strings of
scarlet pepper pods hung up to dry, and twined among its silent spokes.
On a trivet provided with lizard feet that threatened to crawl away,
rested a copper kettle bereft of its top, once the idol of three
generations of Darringtons, to whom it had liberally dispensed "hot
water tea," in the blessed dead and embalmed era of nursery rule and
parental power; now eschewed with its despised use, and packed to the
brim with medicinal "yarbs," bone-set, horse mint, life everlasting,
and snake-root.

In front of the fire which roared and crackled in the cavernous
chimney, "Mam' Dyce" rocked slowly, enjoying her clay pipe, and
meditatively gazing up at an engraved portrait of "Our First
President," suspended on the wall. It was appropriately framed in
black, and where the cord that held it was twined around a hook, a bow
and streamers of very brown and rusty crape fluttered, when a draught
entered the apartment.

Obese in form, and glossy black in complexi