en odd stones or fossils picked
up upon the farm and kept as curiosities; twenty or thirty old almanacs,
and a file of the county paper for forty years; and a hundred similar
odds and ends. Above the drawers comes a desk with a few pigeon-holes;
a desk little used, for the farmer is less of a literary turn than
almost any other class. The pigeon-holes are stuffed full of old papers,
recipes for cattle medicines, and, perhaps, a book of divinity or
sermons printed in the days of Charles II., leather-covered and
worm-eaten. Still higher are a pair of cupboards where china, the
tea-set, and the sugar and groceries in immediate use are kept. On the
top, which is three or four inches under the ceiling, are two or three
small brown-paper parcels of grass seeds, and a variety of nondescript
articles. Opposite, on the other wall, and close above the chimneypiece,
so as to be kept dry, is the gun-rack with two double-barrels, a long
single-barrel duck gun, and a cavalry sabre, worn once a year by a son
of the house who goes out to training in the yeomanry.

There are a few pictures, not of a high class--three or four prints
depicting Dick Turpin's ride to York, and a coloured sketch of some
steeplechase winner, or a copy of a well-known engraving representing a
feat accomplished many years ago at a farm. A flock of sheep were shorn,
the wool carded and spun, and a coat made of it, and worn by the
flockowner, and all in one day. From this room a door opens into the
cellar and pantry, partly underground, and reached by three or four
steps.

On the other side of the hall is the parlour, which was originally
floored, like the sitting-room, with stone flags, since taken up and
replaced by boards. This is carpeted, and contains a comfortable
old-fashioned sofa, horse-hair chairs, and upon the side tables may,
perhaps, be found a few specimens of valuable old china, made to do duty
as flower-vases, and filled with roses. The room has a fresh, sweet
smell from the open window and the flowers. It tempts almost
irresistibly to repose in the noontide heat of a summer's day.

Upstairs there are two fair-sized bedrooms, furnished with four-post
wooden bedsteads. The second flight of stairs, going up to the attic,
has also a door at the foot. This house is built upon a simple but
effective design, well calculated for the purposes to be served. It
resembles two houses placed not end to end, as in a block, but side by
side, and each part has