papering nabob. How fortunate that the walls were so high it was almost out of sight!
Over our heads were the two plaster of Paris centerpieces from which lighting fixtures sprang, first hanging lamps with prismatic fringes, later gas chandeliers. These fruits and flowers were tinted and gilded. Around them was a cream colored sky, set with golden stars, small ones, not planets,—limited in extent by an oval band of brocaded red velvet, this being the pet aversion of Aunt Martha. Outside this pale there was a field of metallic colored paper with an all-over design like chicken wire; next came a border of flowers and something modest to connect the whole artistic creation with the side wall.
We had a ceiling, but there were many things characteristic of the period that we did not have. We never had a “throw,” nor a gilded milking stool with a ribbon bow on one leg; we never had a landscape painted on the stem of a palm leaf, nor oranges on a section of orange wood; we did not hang in any door a portière made of beads, shells, chenille ropes or eucalyptus seeds, all of which things were abroad in the land.
The room contained four bookcases, a rosewood square piano, a large table, a sofa and several easy chairs. From the walls looked down upon us Pharoah’s Horses, The Stag in the Glen, and the Drove at the Ford, (suitable subjects the vogue provided for a family dependent upon livestock), but these were not all, for there were a few reproductions of old masters, a fine portrait of grandfather in his youth, and a
