fforded,
may furnish the imagination of the reader with materials to create in
his own mind a vague yet not unjust notion of Neck-or-Nothing Hall; but
certain details of the Hall itself, its inmates and its customs, may be
desired by the matter-of-fact reader or the more minutely curious, and
as the author has the difficult task before him of trying to please all
tastes, something more definite is required.

The Hall itself was, as we have said, a rambling sort of structure.
Ramifying from a solid centre, which gave the notion of a founder well
to do in the world, additions, without any architectural pretensions to
fitness, were _stuck_ on here and there, as whim or necessity suggested
or demanded, and a most incongruous mass of gables, roofs, and chimneys,
odd windows and blank walls, was the consequence. According to the
circumstances of the occupants who inherited the property, the building
was either increased or neglected. A certain old bachelor, for example,
who in the course of events inherited the property, had no necessity for
nurses, nursery-maids, and their consequent suite of apartments; and as
he never aspired to the honour of matrimony, the ball-room, the
drawing-room, and extra bed-chambers were neglected; but being a
fox-hunter, a new kennel and range of stables were built, the
dining-room enlarged, and all the ready money he could get at spent in
augmenting the plate, to keep pace with the racing-cups he won, and
proudly displayed at his drinking-bouts; and when he died suddenly
(broke his neck), the plate was seized at the suit of his wine-merchant;
and as the heir next in succession got the property in a ruinous
condition, it was impossible to keep a stud of horses along with a wife
and a large family, so the stables and kennel went to decay, while the
ladies and family apartments could only be patched up. When the house
was dilapidated, the grounds about it, of course, were ill kept. Fine
old trees were there, originally intended to afford shade to walks which
were so neglected as to be no more walkable than any other part of the
grounds--the vista of aspiring stems indicated where an avenue had been,
but neither hoe nor rolling-stone had, for many a year, checked the
growth of grass or weed. So much for the outside of the house: now for
the inside.

That had witnessed many a thoughtless, expensive, headlong and irascible
master, but never one more so than the present owner; added to which, he
had