he higher class were generally constructed of wood,
excepting the gable end, which was of small black and yellow Dutch
bricks, and always faced on the street, as our ancestors, like their
descendants, were very much given to outward show, and were noted for
putting the best leg foremost. The house was always furnished with
abundance of large doors and small windows on every floor, the date of
its erection was curiously designated by iron figures on the front, and
on the top of the roof was perched a fierce little weathercock, to let
the family into the important secret which way the wind blew. These,
like the weathercocks on the tops of our steeples, pointed so many
different ways that every man could have a wind to his mind; the most
stanch and loyal citizens, however, always went according to the
weathercock on the top of the governor's house, which was certainly the
most correct, as he had a trusty servant employed every morning to climb
up and set it to the right quarter.

In those good days of simplicity and sunshine a passion for cleanliness
was the leading principle in domestic economy and the universal test of
an able housewife--a character which formed the utmost ambition of our
unenlightened grandmothers. The front door was never opened except on
marriages, funerals, New Year's days, the festival of Saint Nicholas, or
some such great occasion. It was ornamented with a gorgeous brass
knocker, curiously wrought, sometimes in the device of a dog, and
sometimes of a lion's head, and was daily burnished with such religious
zeal that it was ofttimes worn out by the very precautions taken for its
preservation. The whole house was constantly in a state of inundation
under the discipline of mops and brooms and scrubbing brushes; and the
good housewives of those days were a kind of amphibious animal,
delighting exceedingly to be dabbling in water, insomuch that an
historian of the day gravely tells us that many of his townswomen grew
to have webbed fingers like unto a duck; but this I look upon to be a
mere sport of fancy, or, what is worse, a willful misrepresentation.

The grand parlor was the sanctum-sanctorum where the passion for
cleaning was indulged without control. In this sacred apartment no one
was permitted to enter excepting the mistress and her confidential maid,
who visited it once a week for the purpose of giving it a thorough
cleaning and putting things to rights, always taking the precaution of
leaving