The old man who sold it to me is dead now, but he lives in my memory, not only on account of this bed, but because of many other bargains. Because, too, of a certain whimsicality, which made conversation with him a beguiling pastime always. I remember once, - now, to get the full flavor of this, you must remember that it was a small, small village he lived in; one sleepy, wide main street with shading elms above it, - when we spoke of the city, and the magic name of Wanamaker was mentioned, he drawled: "Well, I can't say as I am pussonally acquainted with Mr. Wanamaker, but, of course, we've corresponded considerable."

Are n't my pillow shams attractive and becoming in their effect? A contemporary suggestion would ruin the bed, you know; but this pair I copied from some I saw way back in the country, and I am so devoted to them myself that I am happy in passing the pattern along to you. But, oh, my dears, do look at my counterpane! It is an heirloom, woven in East Tennessee surely a hundred years ago; woven and embroidered by my great-grandmother's slaves, diligent and beloved handmaids that they were. The pattern is even older; it has that central vase design that you see so much on old glass and samplers and faience, and in its myriad stitcheries it resembles a seventeenth-century fabric. The vine-sprays meander pleasantly, and there are large leaves of that variety which William Morris described as "inhabited," and little leaves and tendrils and grape-clusters and flowers. Lovely, original, and so easy to do! I know, for I tried; and all you really need is some good linen, not too closely woven, - I'd take an old sheet if I had one, - a moderate-sized embroidery needle, and white knitting-cotton, number eight for the heavier, outside stitches, twelve and fourteen for the more delicate effects. As to the stitches themselves, their name is legion: outline, long and short, chain stitch, feather stitch, satin stitch, buttonhole, and cross; simplicity itself, but such effective simplicity! The corners were not cut, but that was a fault easily remedied, and now, edged with ball-fringe, and hanging over a valance of striped "dimothy," it is precisely the modest adornment that my old bed needed.

Over it hangs Rubens's Madonna of the Parroquet, in brown tones that match the mahogany; a protecting little picture, too, and you can fancy so readily a small child every night kneeling down and saying, "Four corners to my bed, four angels round my head." It's that kind of low-poster, you see.

But the flowered background is not one to encourage many pictures, and so I have but four, and two mirrors; the first, that small Constitution hanging over the rope-carved worktable beside the bed. It is not the loveliest mirror of this type that I have ever seen, although it is very engaging; but it assuredly is the oddest. It is twenty-three inches long; it is carved with a rosette-like ornament both at top and bottom, and all its little curvings and shapings are delicately grooved. There is not a touch of gilt about it, and, somehow, this omission makes it all the more pleasing and unusual; I'm very sure that all of you would have been willing to pay what I did for it - a dollar and a half. Maybe I was the first person in the shop that morning and appealed to the proprietor's trade-superstition, or perhaps he was influenced by the fact that the mirror was in wretched shape, sans finish, sans glass; anyhow, it's my proving exception of buying furniture in good condition and so saving cabinetmaker's bills, for I paid five times the purchase price to have it renovated.

The worktable is my one piece of Southern mahogany, the first family piece to cross Mason and Dixon's line, and I am sure that all my "kinfolks" prayed for its soul when it did. We call it the "Table of the Grandmothers," because it was made for my daughters' great-great-grandmother in 1802. The little bead-bag that lies upon it, and echoes the colors of the room in its shading of pinks and blues, was given to the great-grandmother when she was a tiny girl, by a tribe of the Cherokee Indians in Tennessee; and the old papier-mache workbox, inlaid with roseate mother-of-pearl, was a Victorian tribute to the grandmother. Actually, and apart from all sentiment, this table is the most unique piece of old furniture I possess; rarer even, I think, than my Hepple-white tip-table; the kind of treasure, you know, that every connoisseur stops to look at, and pay the tribute of interested inquiry. It is made of San Domingo mahogany, with sides of old black cherry; and the little lower shelf is formed in a very unusual curve. It is the only table of precisely this design that I have ever seen.

The rocking-chair I bought in Vermont for a dollar and a quarter, too; a low, very comfortable rocking-chair of the early nineteenth century; and, indeed, being something of a Jingo, I am immensely proud of the defiant gold eagle stenciled with such bold, broad, sheltering wings upon the top-rail.

The bookshelves had to be built in; a room of this sort in a house of this kind would never have had such things, you know; but, as we decided before, rooms must be alive, must n't they? Notice, please, the small brass bedroom candlesticks sitting there in each corner. How many, many, little sleepy children they must have lighted to bed!

The curtains at my windows are a good quality cotton crepe; a happy, vigorous shade, the color of the geraniums on the window sill, and of the old hundred-leaf roses on the lawn: roses as old as the house itself; roses that look, when they first bloom in early summer, like folded bands of pink satin. But just because my curtains are happy and vigorous, they must not hang in direct contrast to the very green blinds; and so, between them, there is the coolness of sheer, creamy voile, finished with bobbing ball-fringe to match the bed. Still, I like to think that my pinky curtains go together in friendliness with the roses outside. Once, in some book, I read: "And there was nowhere in the room an indication of any sort of recognition of the loveliness of the view from the window." I hope it is n't so with me, and especially in "the prettiest room," the only place where the windows command a view. The other glimpses are friendly: white barns and houses, my neighbor's white Wyandottes, and a village street that curves under arching elms; but from here we look upon high Romance - a wondering hill, with a sky line of trees that curvet and prance along in the guise of a circus procession. Night after night we have watched them limned against the saffron background: first the coach, then the camels and elephants, and last the cages of r-r-roaring lions. Ah, my poor, starved country children have seen just one circus in all their lives! Do you suppose they mind? For our magic trees belong to us alone; as pleasant as familiar fairies they are, and the only-fee, a willingness to look at the western sky before the first stars come out.

But I digress. Now you are round to the bureau; but stop a minute first, please, and look at my old Valentines, characteristically early Victorian and larmoyant. The one at the left depicts a gentleman in black smallclothes and Byronic despair; the other, a lachrymose lady in rose tendre. From London they came, and the verses are so beguiling that I am quoting them entire to you.

The Gentleman

Amid these wilds I wander in despair; J sigh for her, so faithless yet so fair. Ye streams, ye woods, ye breezes tell The agony of love for her I feel.

The Lady

In this recess my passion here let sway; To disappointment my heart's a prey. I cannot long these pangs endure, Despair alone will yield a cure.

Evidently love was a most unhappy thing then!

The bureau is more prosaic, but useful and suitable; of a good plain Empire type, the wood being butternut and mahogany - a frequent combination with us in New England. I bought it for ten dollars, and the brasses - which are reproductions and an accurate copy of what might originally have been on it - were three dollars more.

It's the mirror above that's perplexing my soul! If I count it at what the dealer charged me, eight dollars, then my room, for everything, - furniture, refinishing, curtains, cushions, rugs, even the bookcases, - would come to eighty-nine dollars and fifty-eight cents. And yet, you know, it did n't cost that much, because I "swapped" things for the mirror - dreadful modern things that I loathed and never intended to use again; for we have a way, L------and I, of going through the streets like Aladdin's magician crying out, "New lamps for old, new lamps for old!"

Why, once L------traded a pair of andirons, some tongs, a cot-bed and mattress, and a wicker chair - all twentieth century, of course - for a lustre pitcher; but then, the pitcher was lovely, and the other things - weren't! However, these gilt mirrors, long, and without a division, are rare, and I was very glad to get mine at any reasonable price.

Do you remember the wee chair beside the bureau? It is the one that the old, old lady way up in the hills gave the Littlest Daughter; and although it antedates the rest of the furniture, perhaps, by more than fifty years, I like to keep it here because it seems to belong to the setting.

It really is "the prettiest room." I wish you could have seen it in all its pinkness the other evening, when we sat and told fairy tales about Rosy and Mousey, two wonderful little bears, the marvel of whose adventures gilds the dullness of our workaday world.

Outside, the sky was streaked with rose, too; and at my feet, in the wee chair, the Littlest Daughter listened, her cheeks as pink as the curtains, her dress and eyes matching the room's blues. And I sat and rocked and was very happy. It was one of the experiences which make you rejoice in life.

But still something troubles me, and I want you to help me solve this problem in moral values. Since I "swapped" for my mirror, what did my room really cost?