I am not the spider, and you are not the fly; nor am I spinning you a web of deceit; but, since I have so "many curious things to show you when you're there," won't you walk into our dining-room - the "dining-parlour," as I like to think my beloved Jane Austen would have called it. In reality, it is nothing half so grand; it probably was the old farm kitchen; a very large room for my little cottage, because, at its greatest length, it measures twenty-six feet, and is quite fourteen wide. In those late-eighteenth-century days, when Democracy was something more than a mere name, no doubt farmer and farm hands alike ate in this long, low-ceilinged room. The fireplace has the old brick ovens at one end; brown bread, beans, and pies were baked there; and, as far as possible, we have restored its honest, useful appearance of domesticity as 1790 knew it.

The house was full of problems when we took it. As I said, it was badly placed - so built that it gets hardly any sun. Perhaps, in the free days when it was first planned, when it stood in the centre of wide fields, without shadowing trees or encroaching buildings, its aspect was different. Now, although the exposure of the dining-room is southwest, it is anything but overlight. Naturally I experimented with wall-papers - I knew, oh, so bitterly little, then! First a dense crimson cartridge-paper, because I wanted something "cheerful." That was an abomination! It not only swallowed up the light, but, by the relentless law of color, made the room seem smaller. My next venture was a flowered paper in a tapestry effect; better, but far too modern in design. Now, by a combination of great luck and the advice of my Candid Friend, I have found just the right background: a soft grayish-brown, - perhaps there is the merest mist of green in it, - not solid in surface, but faintly dappled so that there is the constant play of light and shade on it. Its color relation to my parlour is both fortunate and intended; one room leads directly into the other, and the gray in each paper binds them together. My curtains are fashioned from the same joyous "Kershaw" chintz that hangs in my hall, and three windows are made gay with its blossoms. It matches my old-fashioned garden outside; and, since it holds the bright hues of my faience, the dulled gold of my stencil chairs, and the gray-green of the wall-paper, it unites harmoniously the color-feeling of the whole room.

The woodwork is painted a glossy ivory, a trifle deeper in tone than my other room; and we now have the grandeur of a hardwood floor. It used to be soft pine: wide boards that splintered incessantly, and joggled if you stepped on them too hard; long-cracked things that permitted wavering lanternstreaks to flicker up as O------plodded his weary way to the furnace; for that was in the High and Far-Off Times, 0 Best-Beloved Collectors, when we lived with the light that our patient ancestors knew - probably the reason why to-day we have so many candlesticks. But at present the floor is a serviceable one, dulled to a darkish-brown with coats of oil and constant rubbing; and because of this treatment it tones in with the room as a light, overvarnished surface never could.. And I have four medium-sized rugs: three old "drawn-in," one modern braided - but these I want to tell you about in detail later on; as yet, it suffices to say that they complete my room as a larger central rug never could do, for that would lack the aspect of antiquity.

And now that I have shown you my background, I want to tell you about my furniture, its period and arrangement. I am flattering myself that you are standing beside me, listening to me as I talk, and not at all bored. We have just walked in from the study, and directly we are in front of a small Empire work-table, a wedding-gift, plain but quite charming. It is a type frequently met with through New England: a pedestal, two leaves that let down, two drawers with brass knobs - the upper one fitted for a discreet correspondence, with its little square of green felt, and tiny cubby-holes for ink and wafers; and a longer one, for pens, I suppose.

Even disregarding its older purpose, such a table is extremely useful to-day; the small drawers hold tea-napkins most agreeably, while the leaves, out- spread, are just the size for a stencil tray laden with pink lustre or gilt-banded china. At present its employment in my menage is a double one: the drawers are full of old linen, but the table-top supports my pottery lamp, which I like so well that I hope you will pay me the compliment of imitation by copying it. The base is a jar of old Portland ware, twelve inches high perhaps, gracefully shaped and with a beautiful glaze - brown, with a little green cast and splashes of yellow that give it a fine vitality. I bought it at a New Hampshire auction for half a dollar, because it was so good-looking; but it was not until I got it home that I saw how it would become my dining-room. Having it wired for electricity was fairly expensive, - about eight dollars if I remember rightly, - and the shade was nine more; for, to get the results I wanted, I had to have precisely the right fabric and color. In the daytime, the feeling of the lamp is a yellow-brown, so for the outside I bought luminous Tanjore silk, which precisely expressed the color-value. But for the lining, since the lamp was to glow with a saffron splendor at night, and hold the dining-room and parlour together, I chose the same material, but in an orange that gave a hint of rose. The combination is all I had dreamed of, and the flame-tinted bulbs that light it serve to increase its luminous radiance. Perhaps you think that such a lamp is extravagant for a Next-to-Nothing House to own, and, if you do, my answer is a thoroughly Yankee one: another question. "Did you ever try to buy a really beautiful and suitable lamp at a special shop, or even at a good department store? And if you bought it, how much did you pay?" Moreover, always remember this: that restful, fine, and appropriate lighting is never a thing for narrow economy. I like my lamp placed as it is, because it is so pleasant to sit by the hearth and read; and if it were not just there, I could n't, for the fireplace has been built in a peculiar fashion, quite at the end of the room. Whenever I look at ours, I like to remember what Lord Bacon wrote, that "there is no exceeding beauty without some strangeness in the proportions."