104 AX AMERICAN FARMER LV EXGLAXD. 



To be sure, it is a California and not a Cavalier sombrero that 

 shades my friend, and the men of war outside are gentle yeomen, 

 carrying percussion-lock carbines indeed, but who have fought 

 for nothing so valiantly as for the corn laws. But when shall I 

 again get as near as this to Prince Charlie or the Ironsides ? 

 At least, there will be no prompter's bell summoning carpenters 

 to slide off the picture. That 1539 over the way is TRUE ; I 

 can see the sun shine into the figures. Away with 1850 ! 

 What, lio! a cup of sack! 



The house is full of most unexplainable passages and unac- 

 countable recesses, of great low rooms and little high rooms, with 

 ceilings in various angles to the walls, and the floor of every one 

 at a different elevation from every other, so that from the same 

 landing you step up into one and down into another, and so on. 

 Back of a little kitchen and big pantry, down stairs, we have an- 

 other parlor. In it is a grand old chimney, and opposite the 

 fireplace a window, the only one in the room. It is but three 

 feet high, but, except the room occupied by a glass buffet in one 

 corner and a turned-up round-table in the other, reaches from 

 wall to wall. To look out of it, you step on to a platform, about 

 four feet broad, in front of it, and on this is an old, long, high- 

 backed settee. 



As I lay in bed last night, I counted against the moon seventy- 

 five panes of glass in the single window of our sleeping apart- 

 ment. The largest of them was four by three, and the smallest 

 three by one inches. They are set in lead sashes, and the outer 

 frame is of iron, opening on hinges. 



There are none but timber houses all about us ; the walls 

 white or yellow, and the timbers black. The roofs are often as 

 steep as forty-five degrees with the horizon, and the gables always 

 front on the street If the house is large there will be several 

 gables, and each successive story juts out, overhanging the face 



