adorns this spacious hall--the birch-root table, with its spreading
feet, the big chest with its richly wrought brass handles, in which
the Sunday and holiday clothing is kept, the tall arm-chair, hard
and uncomfortable as a church-pew, the painted wooden chairs, and
the spinning-wheel striped with green, to contrast with the scarlet
petticoat of the spinner.

Yonder stands the pot in which the butter is kept, and the paddle with
which it is worked, and here is the tobacco-box, and the grater of
elaborately carved bone.

And, finally, over the door which opens into the kitchen is a large
dresser, with long rows of brass and copper cooking-utensils and
bright-colored dishes, the little grindstone for sharpening knives,
half-buried in its varnished case, and the egg-dish, old enough to
serve as a chalice.

And how wonderful and amusing are the walls, hung with linen
tapestries representing scenes from the Bible, and brilliant with all
the gorgeous coloring of the pictures of Epinal.

As for the guests' rooms, though they are less pretentious, they are
no less comfortable, with their spotless neatness, their curtains of
hanging-vines that droop from the turf-covered roof, their huge beds,
sheeted with snowy and fragrant linen, and their hangings with verses
from the Old Testament, embroidered in yellow upon a red ground.

Nor must we forget that the floor of the main hall, and the floors of
all the rooms, both upstairs and down, are strewn with little twigs
of birch, pine, and juniper, whose leaves fill the house with their