eets and nonpareils]

While in Alexandria, a romance developed which resulted, in 1857, in
the marriage of Melissa Hussey and Robert Lewis Wood. Their wedding took
place in New York, and the young couple returned to take up life in
Alexandria. No colonial house was desired by this bride of nineteen. She
must have something new and fresh and modern, and as though preordained,
they came upon the large red brick house at Franklin and Washington
Streets, much like those so well known to her in Portland, Longfellow's
"beautiful town that is seated by the sea."

With Melissa came to her new home a collection of rare birds in such
numbers that the room over the kitchen was devoted to the cages of
cockatoos, parakeets, parrots and nonpareils. Here these feathered
friends in spectrum-hued plumage lived among the potted plants and
charmed the little bride with their beauty and sweet tricks. Other
appendages included a chimpanzee, and a small Chinese slave boy, bought
by her father from one of the innumerable sampans in the harbor of
Canton. "Chinese Tom" was reared and educated by Melissa Wood and after
the War Between the States she gave him his freedom. For years he was
the only Chinaman in Alexandria. Mrs. Wood's granddaughter remembers the
visits of this man to her grandmother. He would station himself at the
entrance to her door and a long conversation would go on between the
guttural-voiced Oriental and the gentle little "Missey" whom he adored.

Almost unchanged is Melissa Hussey Wood's house. Her exquisite wax
flower arrangements, colored and molded by her hands, her mother's
tete-a-tetes, made in England and purchased in India, paintings of her
father's ships and his ivory chessmen, her silver wedding bouquet
holder, her baby's shoulder clips, her brass and crystal girandoles, her
pictures, books and chairs, have all been used by her two daughters, her
granddaughter, and her great-granddaughters. Old pressed brass cornices
decorate the windows above the lace curtains. Unusual, too, are the very
large silver daguerreotypes, made in California for the new house, and
the haircloth "pouf" rocking chairs. An Italian clock, bought by her
father in Florence, which arrived in Bangor, Maine, on the day Melissa
Ann was born in 1838, stands on its original music box base upon the
dining-room mantel. Strangest contrast of all, above the doors of this
high-ceilinged room are steel engravings in their contemporary oval
frames of Gen