Straight from the parlour you step into the "parlour bedroom," a small space that in reality was just cut off from the length of the old farm kitchen. Yet, frankly, I am very proud of it, for it is quite twelve feet square and has two doors, whereas, most of these spare chambers were large enough to hold only a bed, a bureau, and a chair (our ancestors' hospitality being infinitely greater than . the space they had to bestow), and boasted but one entrance. So, you see, my room has a certain aspect of grandeur. Also it has had varying fortunes: first it was a day nursery (we fairly rattled round in our eight rooms when the Big Daughter was the only baby), then it was a guestroom, and now, at last, it has come to the high estate of O------'s study.

The reason I am so positive about the dimensions is because, very recently, I have spent two happy days on my hands and knees, painting the floor a, warm yellow-brown. Theoretically, I loathe painting; actually, clad in large, protecting rubber gloves and sheltering apron, with all the time in the world at my disposal, I love to spend leisurely mornings making a floor just the color I want it to be. And this is such a delightful floor, with the old, old, irregular boards, some of them more than twenty inches wide. Even when my ship comes in, or the Powers That Be see fit to bestow upon me the suavity of polished oak, never, never shall this floor be changed! Such a nice color it is, too. Spruce was over-yellow, and brown too dark and uninteresting, so I just mixed them both together and stirred and stirred, and the result is a sunlit effect, precisely the hue I wanted; for the study had to glow, to deepen the roses of the parlour into a crimson, to warm the buffs of the dining-room into richer tones - and all to live up to our splendid, gorgeous coverlet, an heirloom from the eighteenth-century Lowlands, which hangs like a gallant banner on the wall.

No mediaeval chatelaine ever was prouder of her costly tapestries of haute-lisse than I am of this simple, homespun web. The pattern is very old, far older than the coverlet, I suppose; the bow-and-arrow design might date back even to Anglo-Saxon days. The warp is linen - in itself a sign of many years - and it is overshot with wools of crimson and deep indigo, until it is as rich in color as an Oriental rug. And yet, with all its beauty, it is a wholesome, homely thing; it has qualities that completely unite it in feeling with my woven rag carpet, a "hit-or-miss-it" pattern, which has reds and blues and ecrus and blacks mingled with kaleidoscopic charm.

Now I was lucky about that, for I bought it at a country-town auction for two dollars and thirty cents. Yards and yards I bought - enough to make a nine-foot square for the study, and to cover the ell-chamber. Often this happens: nobody wants these old carpets; maybe the colors are not right; perhaps the rural buyers have grander Axminster aspirations; more than once I've seen rag rugs literally go a-begging. But for me it was gallant good fortune; and when I had paid three dollars to have it dry-cleansed, you can see that the cost was not excessive. Let's call it two dollars and sixty-five cents. Do you like my color-scheme? Then let me show you the whole room, that you may observe its harmonies. We'11 walk in through the parlour and out by the dining-room. (Ah, those two doors are such blessed avenues of escape! Never are you cribbed, cabined, and confined. O------ can elude an afternoon tea-party with easy unconcern; and bands of inquiring students be piloted to the safe haven of the study, without disturbing the rest of the family. Take my advice, especially if you are professor-people, and always have two doors.) As you enter, at the left hand, is a small walnut dictionary-table - early nineteenth century, prettily turned, and with wood deepened to real beauty by time. O------'s father picked it up years ago in the Provinces, for a small sum; and, as it was gently used, it never has needed anything more than occasional waxing and rubbing. Brown walnut is as lovely a wood as this world affords, and our table has all the golden lights and glints that belong to it when properly finished.

And now we are come to the silhouette wall. The paper, a warm, deep-toned ecru with a little self-figure running over it (not enough to break the unity but sufficient for interest), makes an admirable background for these shadows of the past. I always wanted to have a silhouette gallery, and here was my chance. You know, one of the explanations of the name is that Etienne de Silhouette, wise and luckless Minister of Finance to prodigal Louis the Fifteenth, was so charmed with these profiles a la Pompadour, as they used to be called in eighteenth-century France, that he devoted a whole room in his chateau to their displaying. That's why I think a silhouette wall in a French professor's study is eminently appropriate. It's an interesting group, is n't it? And valuable! It numbers two extremely rare Austrian shades and four fine American profilists: Brown, Doyle, Hanks, and Howard. The rest are nameless, as so many of these bygone shadows are; but all are excellently done, with, perhaps, the exception of the small boy at the right, for that is O------,"scissorgraphed" at the age of fourteen, on a windy Boston street-corner. (Like rosemary, it is for remembrance.)

Of course, a photograph never can do silhouettes justice; but still, can't you see the abstraction and dignity of worthy Dr. Prince as he walked through Salem streets, knee-breeched, shovel-hatted, literally in a Brown study; or the characteristic pose of Mr. William Oliver, locally known as "Old Step-Over-to-Lynn" (you perceive him at the moment of stepping); or the extreme delicacy of that miniature head cut by Everett Howard - a shadow portrait as rare as it is small? A few of the frames are old, but most of them are new. And here, by the way, is a silhouette suggestion for you: if you have one of these antiquated profiles, but lack a frame, do not despair, but instead bind it with simple black passepartout, and the effect will be both becoming and appropriate. Not only was this method employed in America, but I have two eighteenth-century Austrian silhouettes which are miracles of black-and-gold passepartout delicacy. The group, framing and all, cost me twenty-three dollars (to be quite frank, four of the most valuable were given to me); but even a conservative estimate would place their worth well beyond a hundred.