How often are the dwelling-houses in our country a curious history of the gradual increase of a family in prosperity!

The kitchen of the Judge was evidently designed by a frontier architect, as a great hall of refuge for a large family. The windows were planned when there need not be loop-holes where Indians prowled around, and might need the admonition of a rifle-ball to teach them to keep at a respectful distance. The glasses in them were small, and the pieces of wood in which they were inserted would have been strong enough for the rounds of a ladder. There was room for all things. One could churn, another spin, another mend a net; children could find appropriate nooks where they could con the spelling-book and study the multiplication table in times when the rod was not spared; neighbors making a friendly call could find a vacant space where they could sit and partake of cider and homely cakes, and if they had any special business, which a citizen would settle in two minutes, could spend an hour in preliminaries of a very vague kind, in generalities not glittering, and coming to the subject, only when they were farthest from it, and all could be[Pg 42] transacted without any one being in the least degree incommoded.

[Pg 42]

One of the prominent objects in the kitchen at Overlook-House was the rafters above you. The ceiling was resting upon them, in the form of thick boards, which were the floor of the rooms above. From these guns were suspended on wooden forks, just as they were cut from the tree and stripped of their bark. Fishing rods were hung there in the same manner. In some places parcels of dried herbs were tied to large nails driven into the timbers. Here and there a board was nailed to the rafters, forming a shelf. On one side of the room was a great bench with a board back much higher than the head of any person who could sit upon it,—which back by an ingenious device could be let down and make a table,—the rude sofa beneath answering for solid legs.

Near this useful combination was a box on rockers—as a cradle. There lay the heir of Dinah. Its little dark head on the white pillow was like a large blackberry, could it have existed out of its season and fallen on the pure snow. Dinah, who was near it, was a character. Her sayings were memorable. One day she was speaking of a bad man who had found his way for a brief season to Overlook, and said in a state of great indignation, for he had cheated the people by some act of bare-faced villany, "Master, if the devil[Pg 43] doesn't get that man I want any of the folks to tell me what is the use of having 

 Prev. P 21/161 next