Pyramidal what-not in the corner, the shelves occupied chiefly with bric-a-brac of the period, disposed with an eye to best effect: shell, with the Lord's Prayer carved on it; another shell--of the long-oval sort, narrow, straight orifice, three inches long, running from end to end--portrait of Washington carved on it; not well done; the shell had Washington's mouth, originally--artist should have built to that.

These two are memorials of the long-ago bridal trip to New Orleans and the French Market.

Other bric-a-brac: Californian 'specimens'-- quartz, with gold wart adhering; old Guinea-gold locket, with circlet of ancestral hair in it; Indian arrow-heads, of flint; pair of bead moccasins, from uncle who crossed the Plains; three 'alum' baskets of various colors--being skeleton-frame of wire, clothed-on with cubes of crystallized alum in the rock-candy style--works of art which were achieved by the young ladies; their doubles and duplicates to be found upon all what-nots in the land; convention of desiccated bugs and butterflies pinned to a card; painted toy-dog, seated upon bellows-attachment--drops its under jaw and squeaks when pressed upon; sugar-candy rabbit--limbs and features merged together, not strongly defined; pewter presidential-campaign medal; miniature card-board wood-sawyer, to be attached to the stove-pipe and operated by the heat; small Napoleon, done in wax; spread-open daguerreotypes of dim children, parents, cousins, aunts, and friends, in all attitudes but customary ones; no templed portico at back, and manufactured landscape stretching away in the distance--that came in later, with the photograph; all these vague figures lavishly chained and ringed--metal indicated and secured from doubt by stripes and splashes of vivid gold bronze; all of them too much combed, too much fixed up; and all of them uncomfortable in inflexible Sunday-clothes of a pattern which the spectator cannot realize could ever have been in fashion; husband and wife generally grouped together--husband sitting, wife standing, with hand on his shoulder--and both preserving, all these fading years, some traceable effect of the daguerreotypist's brisk 'Now smile, if you please!' Bracketed over what-not--place of special sacredness--an outrage in water-color, done by the young niece that came on a visit long ago, and died.

Pity, too; for she might have repented of this in time.

Horse-hair chairs, horse-hair sofa which keeps sliding from under you.