INTERIOR OF HOUSE. 125 



sizes to suit their different uses, being of plain deal boards varnished 

 or painted as there is no table-cloth laid at the meals on top. 

 The chairs are also home made, plain, high in the back, and with 

 seats of woven strips of deerskin or sealskin with or without a 

 cushion of patchwork or white cloth filled with ducks' feathers, — 

 withal quite comfortable. A rocking chair made after this fashion, 

 as it often is, is a comfortable affair, if not quite a luxury. In 

 the smaller of the two rooms is, as the expression goes, ''a. 

 poor apology" for a book-case containing a few catechisms and 

 books on the Bible, with perhaps the old times Fox's " Book of 

 Martyrs," a dilapidated Pilgrim's Progress, one or two Bibles, 

 a number of indescribable volumes many of which are in French, 

 besides a volume of ''The Leisure Hour," a London magazine 

 of good reading for the household in general, and perhaps one 

 or two torn books for children. The shelves are loose or crooked, 

 and the books present the appearance of having been caught in 

 the act of tumbling. 



The small room down stairs is a bedroom ; it contains a bureau, 

 and, as do the two rooms up stairs, a bed each, either boarded or 

 corded to hold it together, in which is of course a tick filled with 

 feathers from ducks and other birds, as are the pillows also ; 

 the bedding is of the coarsest kind suitable for cold winters of 

 from 20° to 40° below zero with fierce winds of unknown velocity 

 per hour. A simple mention of the angular pantry, built in the 

 corner of the house down stairs, with the lower part cupboarded 

 and the upper part shelved and open, holding the plates, cups, and 

 saucers, a platter, a bowl, and one or two pitchers (of a small, 

 brown, glazed stone pattern) with the knives and forks, will do for 

 this table furniture. Placed in the opposite corner is a small table 

 with a washbowl and dish of soap, below which is a pail of water 

 with a small pail inside for a dipper, above which, at the side, hangs 

 a towel, and in front of which is a quadrangular piece of glass, 

 with or without a frame, with mercury parcelled behind it promis- 

 cuously, — the whole called a looking-glass; with these one or two 

 carpenters' chests for tools containing clothing or other articles, and 



