That card-table by the door is another heirloom; a piece, too, of which I can say again that it is one of the finest of the type I have ever seen. Most of these lyre-based tables - I do not include Phyfe's designs in this statement, for they are in a class by themselves - are either overtrimmed and ornately ugly, or underdecorated and stingy in proportion. This, with its tiny carved rosettes and really graceful base, is as good-looking as such a table well can be. When I first saw it, it was standing isolated from the mid-Victorianness of the rest of the room, though draped disguisingly into respectability by some sort of tapestry cover, and was used as a telephone table. I rescued and repolished it, and my reward was immediate. The "fire" in the mahogany is wonderful - all life and tone and warmth. No other period shows off the actual value of the wood itself so well as Empire does.

The candlesticks and tray, all are gifts; I cannot itemize them in my expenses. The teapot and cup I picked up at a village sale for a dollar and a half. They are old Staffordshire, the decoration the loveliest thing, soft roses on a deep-cream ground; I felt proud and happy when lately I tried to buy a tiny creamer of the same pattern, not half so good, and found that it cost nearly five times as much. The platter above is pewter, an auction trophy which I bore away for a dollar and twenty cents, and it hangs from an old hand-wrought nail that was taken from the house where the plans for the "Boston Tea Party " were made. (I think it must have been the meeting-place of the South End Caucus, for, of course, the "North Enders" met at Paul Revere's beloved Green Dragon Inn.) Hanging high on the wall over my platter are my French faience plates - Strassbourgware, dating back to the late eighteenth century; perhaps they were being made in that ancient city when the fiery young lieutenant, Rouget de l'Isle, was writing the triumphant "Marseillaise." The potteries in which my plates were fashioned were burned to the ground in 1830, but in the Luneville china of to-day you can still trace a family resemblance of motif and feeling. I am perfectly aware that it is anathema to certain decorators to think of using plates in any scheme of room-furnishing. I know this rule, and, knowing it, I am perfectly justified in breaking it. The side wall of my dining-room is blank and dark and rather uninteresting; these plates, in their happy, naive colors, are the cheerfulest things you can imagine, and they bring the sensation of warmth so necessary in an under-lighted interior. These, too, were gifts; I am fortunate in my friends.

On either side of my table are stenciled chairs; a pure Empire type developed about 1815. I have six of them. I bought them way, way up in a little hill-village, from the nicest old farmer in New Hampshire. They were in perfect condition; cane seats and stenciling looking just as well as they did a hundred years ago, with the added benison of gentle Time - Time who to me is n't a brusque, white-bearded man, with hourglass and terrifying scythe, but a mild and elderly lady, who brushes away the ugly newness from our possessions, who fades gaudy colors, and folds memories away in rose-leaves and lavender and lays them in prim old drawers. I don't know whether this was the farmer's philosophy or not. When I asked him how he had ever been able to keep them so unspoiled, he answered, with the drollest twinkle in his eye, "Well, ye see, up here in the hills we's so busy hustlin' round for a livin' that we don't scurcely git a chance to set down." He was delighted to sell them at a dollar apiece; it was his own price, and, lest you think me a Shylock, I want to say at once that these chairs were up in the attic, neglected, and his parlour was filled to overflowing with plump, green-upholstered, exuberant mahogany.

In the corner is my sideboard - Empire of the plainest type, but dignified and ample. The handles - old pressed glass - and the brass escutcheons are the original ones, and the mahogany veneering, particularly that on the doors, is beautifully toned. Under the drawers there is a quaint little butler's slide, which pulls out when you tug at a small brass knob; and at each end are panels made of rich, dark curly maple, an interesting and thoroughly New England combination of woods. I paid sixty-five dollars for it, when I bought it some years ago from our Favorite Dealer, and this price included its complete renovation.

The top looks much better than it did my first experimental year. Because a "beginning collector " finds it hard not to put everything pretty or odd she has out for admiring eyes to see: brass, pewter, silver, stencil, and glass - she wants to show it all. "To-morrow is also another day" is not a favorite maxim of hers, nor has she a sense of Japanese restraint. It took me months before I realized how much better my sideboard looked with very little on it; that glass and pewter or silver became it, but never the deeper tones of stencil and brass. Now it bears the burden of my Lafayette decanter, flanked by two pressed-glass candlesticks, my Stiegel flip-glass, - ah, that's a treasure! - and a graceful Victorian sugar-bowl of the bellflower pattern. This is just the glass; but, besides, there are two discreet pewter teapots, a little English pepper-shaker, three idle dram-glasses on their eighteenth-century tray, and a plain substantial hundred-year-old silver mug. It sounds like a lot, I know; but, oh, you should have viewed it in the days of my unrestrained youth!

Can you see the old "drawn-in" rug that lies in front of my sideboard? If I had planned its size, it could n't be more accurate. This is one of my great and fairly recent "finds" - the reward, really, of taking a long, muddy, exhausting tramp with some camp girls, after maple sugar. I think the old woman we visited must have been a domestic artist, for she made excellent sugar and super excellent rugs. This to her was an old carpet that she had hooked thirty or forty years before, and the central design was in memory of her former home - an attempt at Late Georgian architecture, I am sure, and certainly an effort which increased the rug's value, for landscape and house-designs rank next to historical patterns. The coral-and-gray border, however, reveals a much earlier motif, and the work is even and fine, more durable since it is not clipped. Of course, I am careful with these antiquated rugs; I mend them solicitously as soon as there is the least sign of wear; I prefer proper brushing to vacuum-cleaning, since sometimes this method catches loose strands, and I never shake them, for that is apt to snap the worn fibres of the burlap. The other two rugs lie in front of the kitchen-door and the radiator; but as they are agreeable blendings of hues rather than definite patterns, they hardly merit detailed description.

My dining-table is simple, one of those drop-leaf cherry tables so common in the early nineteenth century; square, with slightly rounded corners, and very serviceable. It is not my ideal of what a dining-table should be, - it cost just ten dollars, - but I know where there is one: six-legged, rope-carved, and charming. Some day I hope to have it, and then I'l1 be obliged to tell you that my dining-room is forty dollars more expensive than it was. That's another joy of collecting; always the distant horizon of anticipation; forever one more block to place upon our House of Dreams.

My last piece of furniture is my secretary. This, also, is plainest Empire, made beautiful by the dignified simplicity of the line and the richness of the mahogany. The handles and escutcheons are all old, cast from that delightful brass which polishes to such a clear pallor. (May I recommend lemon and salt vigorously applied, as an excellent remover of age-stains?) Years ago this secretary was bought on the common of a near-by village, for five dollars, and next was "swapped off" for a roll-top desk. Then the owner sold it to me for forty-five dollars, and, even at that advance, I'm sure I got a bargain. Now the cabinet above holds, not books, but my collection of old pressed glass against a background of gay china.

I hope you like my dining-room? I have tried so earnestly to make you see it - this long, low, eighteenth-century farm kitchen of mine; furnished in a little later period, but always in honest faience feeling, not a single bit of imitation porcelain about it. Have you counted the doors? Seven of them, and there used to be nine, but two were ruthlessly done away with. Still, there are enough to sigh suddenly open on lonely nights, as if some gentle ghost had just flitted through. And have you observed my stable, that little embrasure between the sideboard and the closet? That's where my wheeled-tray lives; my useful wheeled-tray which bears the names of two famous steeds, for it is Rosinante when, gaily caparisoned, it carries my Queensware tea-set into the parlour, but Dapple when it disappears through the kitchen-door, laden with the discarded dishes. You see, I want you to notice all our improvements. I know that the whole effect must be pleasant; so many people have used that very word to me. And I have been told that my fireplace is the "most delightful one in the world to sit and talk by." I like to believe it is true, because I have been able, even with my simple things, and only a little money, to combine the harmonies of rest and warmth and color. After all, it is the "presence" of a room that is the final thing, that really counts.