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Now, however, when without a gendarme we entered the smart little town of Lampa, we found ourselves immediately and unquestionably the objects of extreme suspicion and distrust. Yet we could not help admiring the well-swept streets, freshly whitewashed houses, and general air of prosperity and enterprise.
They entered the dark woods by a little well-swept pathway and for a while there was a strip of sky above their heads; but presently the trees grew tall and dense, the sky was shut out and their footsteps and voices began to echo about them as they straggled along, grouping and regrouping as the pathway widened and narrowed, gathering their skirts clear of the wet undergrowth.
There was no candle lit when they entered, but there was a bright turf fire "blinkin' bonnilie" in the fireplace, from which a mellow light emanated that danced upon the few plain plates that were neatly ranged upon her humble dresser, but which fell still more strongly upon a clean and well-swept hearth, on one side of which was an humble armchair of straw, and on the other a grave, but placid-looking cat, purring, with half-closed eyes, her usual song for the evening.
It is as big as the Coliseum, shaped like an old-fashioned hoop-skirt with a petticoat of glass, and connects with one of the most beautiful bridges in the world. It has two immense waiting-rooms, with historical frescos on the walls and two huge fireplaces supported on nudities shivering with the cold, for no stick of wood ever blazes on the well-swept hearths.
Do not try to see evil: have on your kind eyes, magnify every dot of goodness. If you have not fine carpets, luxurious chairs, fresh bouquets every morning, remember you can better appreciate a cane- seated rocker when you are tired, a well-swept floor which has a rug or two, and a single flower purchased with well-earned money.
I smelt the rich scent of the heating spices; and admired the shining kitchen utensils, the polished clock, decked in holly, the silver mugs ranged on a tray ready to be filled with mulled ale for supper; and above all, the speckless purity of my particular care the scoured and well-swept floor.
And, within, everything was clean and well kept, excepting all that belonged to Annetta. There were airy upper rooms, with well-swept floors of red brick or of beaten cement, furnished with high beds on iron trestles, and wooden stools of well-worn brown oak, and tables painted a vivid green, and primitive lithographs of Saint Benedict and Santa Scholastica and the Addolorata.
In conclusion, we wish our countrymen of Peter's class would imitate him in his better qualities, and try to avoid his failings. One summer evening Mary Sullivan was sitting at her own well-swept hearthstone, knitting feet to a pair of sheep's gray stockings for Bartley, her husband.
"Then when Jack came home in the winter nights, it would do your heart good to see Nancy sitting at her wheel, singing, 'Stachan Varagah, or 'Peggy Na Laveen, beside a purty clear fire, with a small pot of murphys boiling on it for their supper, or laid up in a wooden dish, comfortably covered with a clane praskeen on the well-swept hearth-stone; whilst the quiet, dancing blaze might be seen blinking in the nice earthen plates and dishes that stood over against the side-wall of the house.
That the pastoral tradition was a wholly impossible, not to say an absurd one, bearing no true relation to nature at all, may be admitted; and it may be lamented by such as love to shed bitter tears because the sandy shore is not a well-swept parquet, or because anything you please is not something else to which it bears not the smallest resemblance.
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