306 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



November, 1906 



containing a bed built for 

 Lafayette's use and loaned to 

 the house by Miss Blanche Shim- 

 min, of Boston. In this room 

 Washington, Sir Harry Frank- 

 land, of romantic memory, Pres- 

 ident Grant and Benjamin 

 Franklin have all slept. The 

 last-named presented to his host 

 after one of his visits the Frank- 

 lin stove there to-day. 



In the room across the hall 

 was born, in 1709, the Dorothy 



the chair in which Hancock was inaugu 

 rated, a table which belonged to Presi- 

 dent John Quincy Adams (a gift to this 

 house from the Daughters of the Revo- 

 lution of Quincy) and a curious terres- 

 trial globe presented by Miss Edith Dana, 

 granddaughter of the poet Longfellow. 

 Directly across the hall from the par- 

 lor is the dining-room, with walls hung in 

 quaint old paper portraying a Chinese 

 villa. The furniture here is mostly Chip- 

 pendale, and includes a long table that di- 

 vides into three, an inlaid cone-shaped re- 



A View of the Parlor. In the Background is the Music-room Containing an Old Spinet 



ceptacle for knives, forks and spoons (Sheraton?), a gen- 

 unine old buffet dating back to 1700, and on its shelves 

 dinner-plates which were used by Hancock, a tea-pot from 

 which Washington was often served, and a brick and key 

 brought from the fort at Louisburg when it was taken by 

 the Massachusetts and other provincial troops in 1745. Over 

 the mantel hangs a hatchment embroidered about 1790 by 

 Mary Willard, daughter of President Joseph Willard, of 

 Harvard College. 



Upstairs over the parlor is the guest- or bridal-chamber, 



Q whose girlish portrait her great-grandson, Oliver Wen- 

 dell Holmes, described. 



Dorothy's room now contains an old sofa which was 

 in Longfellow's family and a pincushion made from bro- 

 cades which decorated Hancock's home on Beach Street, 

 Boston. On the bed are genuine old chintz hangings and 

 a rare homespun spread over which arts and crafts devo- 

 • tees wax enthusiastic. 



It is, however, to the Butler room, so-called, that we 

 must go if we would be in the really old part of the house. 

 Here one sees black beams hewn off the farm away back 

 in 1636. Fittingly are the chairs and china here both an- 

 cient and historic. A "thousand-leg" table, such as one 

 almost never comes across nowadays, a cup and saucer 

 used by Daniel Webster for twenty years, and another 

 Franklin grate of interesting lineage, are also here. Per- 

 haps the most fascinating thing about this room, though, 

 is its low roof, so made in order to accommodate a secret 

 room above. 



The kitchen is also in the oldest part of the house. Here 

 are huge oak beams, a fireplace of mammoth proportions, a 

 chest which belonged to the brother of William Penn, and 

 curious housewife appliances of Colonial days. Fastened to 

 the table is a "swift," upon which wool used to be wound 

 with a reel which clicks sociably at the end of each forty 

 threads; near by is a piggin with which water was dished 

 up; and there are churns, a tin-kitchen for baking, and re- 

 ceptacles in which to make cottage cheese and sausage meat. 



