ing about the "bord." As family and guests gathered round, the host
and hostess took places side by side at one end; near them the more
important guests were given seats "above the salt," while lesser folk
and children sat "below the salt."

Then, from the distant kitchen in the quadrangle, came slaves or
indentured servant bearing the steaming food in great chargers and
chafing-dishes. Doubtless, in those earliest days, the food was eaten
from wooden trenchers, not plates; while from lip to lip the communal
bowl went round. Knives and spoons were plentiful, but even in such a
home as Shirley forks were still a rarity; and the profusion of napkins
was well when helpful fingers gave service to healthy appetites.

But that was the hall life of very early days. Gradually, in the
colonies as in England, the evolution of refinement specialized the
home; developed drawing-rooms, dining-rooms, libraries; and so took
away from the "great halls" almost all of this intimate life of the
household.

There is something pathetic in this desertion of the ancient, central
hearthstone. We thought of Shirley's old hall growing sadly quiet and
chill as it lost the merry chatter about the "tabull-bord"; as saddles
and bridles jingled there for the last time on their way to some far
outbuilding; as the gentlewomen carried their needlework away, and the
little maids followed with their samplers. At last, all the old life
was gone. Even the master himself came no longer to mull his wine by
the andirons; and the very dogs stretched themselves less often and
with less content at the chimney-side.

All the rooms at Shirley are richly panelled to the ceiling, and have
heavy, ornate cornices and fine, carved mantelpieces and doorways. The
examples of interior woodwork especially regarded by connoisseurs are
the panelling in the morning-room, the elaborately carved mantel in the
drawing-room, and the handsome doorway between that room and the
dining-room.

Upstairs, a central hallway runs through the house, double doors
opening at both riverward and landward ends upon broad porticoes. The
bedrooms on either hand are panelled to the ceiling. They have deep-set
windows, open fireplaces, and quaint old-time furnishings.

And people slept here back in the seventeenth century; dreamed here in
those faraway times when James Towne, now long buried and almost
forgotten, was the capital of the little colony. Here, in succeeding
generations, have slep