Upon the ancient high-backed settee lies an item of
fancy work, unfinished--just as she left it. In the "study" an open
book, face downwards, has been left on a chair. It is the last book
he was reading--it has never been disturbed. A pipe of quaint design
is cold upon the lintel of the lattice window. No one will ever
smoke that pipe again: it must have been difficult to smoke at any
time. The sight of the artistic room, as depicted in the furniture
catalogue, always brings tears to my eyes. People once inhabited
these rooms, read there those old volumes bound in vellum, smoked--or
tried to smoke--these impracticable pipes; white hands, that someone
maybe had loved to kiss, once fluttered among the folds of these
unfinished antimacassars, or Berlin wool-work slippers, and went
away, leaving the things about.
One takes it that the people who once occupied these artistic rooms
are now all dead. This was their "Dining-Room." They sat on those
artistic chairs. They could hardly have used the dinner service set
out upon the Elizabethan dresser, because that would have left the
dresser bare: one assumes they had an extra service for use, or else
that they took their meals in the kitchen. The "Entrance Hall" is a
singularly chaste apartment. There is no necessity for a door-mat:
people with muddy boots, it is to be presumed, were sent round to the
back. A riding-cloak, the relic apparently of a highwayman, hangs
behind the door.
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