fashionably
painted in blue, and looking as dainty as the State's white glove. This,
reader, is the abode of the testy but extremely dignified Mrs. Swiggs.
If you would know how much dignity can be crowded into the smallest
space, you have only to look in here and be told (she closely patterns
after the State in all things!) that fifty-five summers of her crispy
life have been spent here, reading Milton's Paradise Lost and
contemplating the greatness of her departed family.

The old steps creak and complain as the young man ascends them, holding
nervously on at the blue hand-rail, and reaching in due time the stoop,
the strength of which he successively tests with his right foot, and
stands contemplating the snuffy door. A knocker painted in villanous
green--a lion-headed knocker, of grave deportment, looking as savage as
lion can well do in this chivalrous atmosphere, looks admonitiously at
him. "Well!" he sighs as he raises it, "there's no knowing what sort of
a reception I may get." He has raised the monster's head and given three
gentle taps. Suddenly a frisking and whispering, shutting of doors and
tripping of feet, is heard within; and after a lapse of several minutes
the door swings carefully open, and the dilapidated figure of an old
negro woman, lean, shrunken, and black as Egyptian darkness--with
serious face and hanging lip, the picture of piety and starvation,
gruffly asks who he is and what he wants?

Having requested an interview with her mistress, this decrepit specimen
of human infirmity half closes the door against him and doddles back. A
slight whispering, and Mrs. Swiggs is heard to say--"show him into the
best parlor." And into the best parlor, and into the august presence of
Mrs. Swiggs is he ushered. The best parlor is a little, dingy room, low
of ceiling, and skirted with a sombre-colored surbase, above which is
papering, the original color of which it would be difficult to discover.
A listen carpet, much faded and patched, spreads over the floor, the
walls are hung with several small engravings, much valued for their age
and associations, but so crooked as to give one the idea of the house
having withstood a storm at sea; and the furniture is made up of a few
venerable mahogany chairs, a small side-table, on which stands, much
disordered, several well-worn books and papers, two patch-covered
foot-stools, a straight-backed rocking-chair, in which the august woman
rocks her straighter self, and a