296 A Walk front 



into one pair of jaws, like a musk-rat trap. What was 

 the use of that thing, conductor ? " That, sir, they 

 put the 'ands in of them as shirked and didn't drink 

 up all the wine as was poured into their cups, and 

 there they made them stand on tiptoe up against that 

 door, sir, before all the company, sir, until they was 

 ashamed of theirselves." Descend into the kitchen, all 

 scarred with the tremendous cookery of ages. Here 

 they roasted bullocks whole, and just back in that dark 

 vault with a slit or two in it for the light, they killed 

 and dressed them. There are the relics of the shambles. 

 And here is the great form on which they cut them up 

 into manageable pieces. It would do you good, you 

 Young America, to see that form, and the cross-gashes of 

 the meat-axe in it. It is the half of a gigantic English 

 oak, which was growing in Julius Caesar's time, sawed 

 through lengthwise, making a top surface several feet 

 wide, black and smooth as ebony. Some of the bark 

 still clings to the under side. The dancing hall is 

 the great room of the building. All that the taste, 

 art and wealth of that day could do, was done to make 

 it a splendid apartment, and it would pass muster still 

 as a comfortable and respectable salon. As we pass out, 

 you may decipher the short prayer cut in the wasting 

 stone over a side portal, " GOD SAVE THE YERNONS ! " 

 I hope this prayer has been favorably answered ; for 



