TMJS HOUSE BEAUTIFUL. 559
quartz, with gold wart adhering; old Guinea-gold locket, with circlet
of ancestral hair in it; Indian arrow-heads, of flint; pair of bead
moccasins, from uncle who crossed the Plains ; three * alum' baskets
of various colours—being skeleton-frame of wire, clothed-on with
cubes of crystallised alum in the rock-candy style—works of art
which were achieved by the young ladies; their doubles and dupli-
cates to be found upon all what-nots in the land; convention of
desiccated bugs and butterflies pinned to a card; painted toy-dog,
vsated upon bellows-attachment—drops its under jaw and squeaks
when pressed upon; sugar-candy rabbit—limbs and features merged
together, not strongly defined ; pewter presidential-campaign medal;
miniature card-board wood-sawyer, to be attached to the stove-pipe
and operated by the heat; small Napoleon, done in wax; spread-open
daguerreotypes of dim children, parents, cousins, aunts, and friends,
in all attitudes but customary ones; no templed portico at back, and
manufactured landscape stretching away in the distance—that came
in later, with the photograph; all these vague figures lavishly chained
and ringed—metal indicated and secured from doubt by stripes and
splashes of vivid gold bronze ; all of them too much combed, too much
fixed up; and all of them uncomfortable in inflexible Sunday-clothes
of a pattern which the spectator cannot realise could ever have been
in fashion ; husband and wife generally grouped together—husband
sitting, wife standing, with hand on his shoulder- - and both preserv-
ing, all these fading years, some traceable effect of the daguerreotypist's
brisk * Now smile, if you please ! * Bracketed over what-not—plact
of special sacredness—an outrage in water-colour, done by the young
niece that came on a visit lung ago, and died. Pity, too; for she
might have repented of this in time. Horse-hair chairs, horse-hair
sofa which keeps sliding from under you. Window shades, of oil
stuff, with milk-maids and ruined castles stencilled on them in fierce
colours, Lambrpquins dependent from gaudy boxings of beaten tin,
gilded. Bedrooms with rag carpets; bedsteads of the * corded' sort,
with a sag in the middle, the cords needing tightening; snuffy
feather-bed—not aired often enough; cane-seat chairs, splint-bottomed
rocker; looking-glass on wall, school-slate size, veneered frame;
inherited bureau; wash-bowl and pitcher, possibly—but not certainly;
brass candlestick* tallow candle, snuffers. Nothing else in the room*