Old Furniture. 127 
successive additions at different dates, and in various 
styles. , 
When a homestead, like this, has been owned and 
occupied by the same family for six or seven genera- 
tions, it seems to possess a distinct personality of its 
own. A history grows up round about it; memories 
of the past accumulate, and are handed down fresh 
and green, linking to-day and seventy years ago as if 
hardly any lapse of time had intervened, The in- 
mates talk familiarly of the ‘comet year, as if it were 
but just over; of the days when a load of wheat was 
worth a little fortune; of the great snows and floods 
of the previous century. They date events from the 
year when the Foremeads were purchased and added 
to the patrimony, as if that transaction, which took 
place ninety years before, was of such importance 
that it must necessarily be still known to all the 
world. 
The house has somehow shaped and fitted itself 
to the character of the dwellers within it: hidden and 
retired among trees, fresh and green with cherry and 
pear against the wall, vet the brown thatch and the 
old bricks subdued in tone by the weather. This 
individuality extends to the furniture ; it is a little 
stiff and angular, but solid, and there are nooks and 
corners—-as the window-seat—suggestive of placid 
repose: a strange opposite mixture throughout of 
flowery peace and silence, with an almost total lack of 
modern conveniences and appliances of comfort—as 
