heartless barrenness and remember that in our house
in East Hartford, all unpretending as it was, you
couldn't go into a room but you would find an
insurance-chromo, or at least a three-color God-
Bless-Our-Home over the door; and in the parlor
we had nine. But here, even in my grand room of
state, there wasn't anything in the nature of a
picture except a thing the size of a bedquilt, which
was either woven or knitted (it had darned places
in it), and nothing in it was the right color or the
right shape; and as for proportions, even Raphael
himself couldn't have botched them more formidably,
after all his practice on those nightmares they call
his "celebrated Hampton Court cartoons." Ra-
phael was a bird. We had several of his chromos;
one was his "Miraculous Draught of Fishes," where
he puts in a miracle of his own--puts three men
into a canoe which wouldn't have held a dog with-
out upsetting. I always admired to study R.'s art,
it was so fresh and unconventional.

There wasn't even a bell or a speaking-tube in the
castle. I had a great many servants, and those that
were on duty lolled in the anteroom; and when I
wanted one of them I had to go and call for him.
There was no gas, there were no candles; a bronze
dish half full of boarding-house butter with a blaz-
ing rag floating in it was the thing that produced
what was regarded as light. A lot of these hung
along the walls and modified the dark, just toned
it down enough to make it dismal. If you went out
at night, your servants carried torches. There were
no books, pens, paper or ink, and no glass in the

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