phenomena that followed its disappearance, and gradually made us conscious that a mysterious influence prevailed in the room where we were sitting. By degrees the gaudy paper hangings around us faded into dullness, and then, while their gay colours were darkening into one uniform shade of brown, slowly in their stead panels of burnished oak grew out upon the walls, and glistened in the setting sun. And now each veined spot upon the mantelpiece of variegated marble, became gradually larger and more distinct in form and color, till every one at last assuming a rectangular shape, settled into a separate porcelain tile of smoky blue, like those one may still see ornamenting the fire-place in our old Dutch edifices. The disappearance of the grate we did not note; but it was gone, and there certainly was sufficient room where it had stood to swallow up a dozen between those yawning jams.
The most striking metamorphosis, however, was that which the furniture underwent. The slender maple chairs became gradually bloated and dropsical in their appearance, until they swelled at last into a most antiquated and preposterous size. Their backs became broad and crooked, and from their sides huge arms unfolded, while hideous claws protruded from the small round knobs on which they formerly rested, and slowly sprawled upon the floor; and next, the perforated cane work which erst formed their bottoms, after swimming thick before our eyes for a moment, became gradually opaque, and then plumped up into fat and portly cushions. Nor was this all; the very table upon which our elbow rested while watching the mysterious change going forward around us, was not exempt from its influence: sensibly could we perceive—and yet not so abruptly as to startle us—sensibly could we feel its velvet cover chilling and hardening and smoothing beneath our pressure into a slab of polished marble, while the one stout central supporter, severed into four slender legs, tattooed with quaint devices, each of which quietly slipped into a socket prepared for it under the carved head of a lion that grinned at either corner.
But the most remarkable of all amid these miraculous doings remains yet to be mentioned; our own figure reflected in the mirror opposite, seemed to share the general change, and after vainly trying to recognize its lineaments in those that met our gaze, we at length observed, upon looking more narrowly, that the frame of the mirror had disappeared. The mirror itself was gone, and instead of being a reflection
