Page:A new England boyhood by Hale, Edward Everett.djvu/41

Rh Summer Street, and Washington Street (old Marlborough Street) between School and Winter seem to us now to be narrow streets, but they have all been widened considerably within my memory. Bromfield Street was called Bromfield's Lane.

On the other hand, so far as I remember the houses themselves and the life in them, every thing was quite as elegant and finished as it is now. Furniture was stately, solid, and expensive. I use chairs, tables, and a sideboard in my house to-day, which are exactly as good now as they were then. Carpets, then of English make, covered the whole floor, and were of what we should now call perfect quality. In summer, by the way, in all houses of which I knew anything, these carpets were always taken up, and India mattings substituted in the "living-rooms." Observe that very few houses were closed in summer. Dress was certainly as elegant and costly as it is now; so were porcelain, glass, table linen, and all table furniture. In the earlier days of which I write, a decanter of wine would invariably have stood on a sideboard in every parlor, so that a glass