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46

That low-browed apartment, with all its appointments, is before me, an indelible picture. I see its highly polished wainscot, crimson moreen curtains, the large brass andirons, with their silvery brightness, the clean hearth, on which not even the white ashes of the consuming hickory were suffered to rest, the rich, dark shade of the furniture, unpolluted by dust, and the closet whose open door revealed its wealth of silver, cans, tankards, and flagons, the massy plate of an ancient family.

Once or twice my infant eyes had enjoyed brief glimpses of that parlor, lighted by two stately candlesticks, and an antique candelabra, and methought it was as the hall of Aladdin. But to be extant in the evening, was a condition of being not contemplated for childhood, and with one long gaze I was gathered to my darkened chamber, possibly with some inner echo of the moan of our first mother: