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Updated: June 19, 2025
The spacious halls and stairways were wainscoted, finished, and ceiled in oak; the drawing- room, the dining-room, and the library were furnished in solid mahogany; and the chambers were finished in poplar and pine. The great charm of the house was that each and every room, large and small, had its open fire-place, some of them surrounded by beautiful mantel-pieces, with carved wood and mirrors.
Two months passed on: nothing could possibly be done materially to raise the standard of those wretched accommodations which the house offered. The dilapidated walls, the mouldering plaster, the blackened mantel-pieces, the stained and polluted wainscots what could be attempted to hide or to repair all this by those who durst not venture abroad?
On the mantel-pieces of variegated marble, supported by fluted pillars, with exquisitely carved capitals, rested a full length picture of a gentleman, the heavy gilt frame tarnished and crumbling. The house was desolate, deserted, inexpressibly saddening from the evident contrast between its present and its past.
If the house is not as large nor in as good neighborhood as the one you formerly occupied, make the best of it. It is astonishing what a good time you may have in a small room. Your present neighbors are just as kind as those you left, if you only knew them. Do not go around your house sticking up your nose at the small pantry, and the ugly mantel-pieces, and the low ceiling.
Two months passed on: nothing could possibly be done materially to raise the standard of those wretched accommodations which the house offered. The dilapidated walls, the mouldering plaster, the blackened mantel-pieces, the stained and polluted wainscots what could be attempted to hide or to repair all this by those who durst not venture abroad?
Have I not taste enough for a princess?" How soft the carpet, how rich its colors! Those marble mantel-pieces, sculptured in female figures, how massive! How elegantly they set off each end of the hall, as we shall call this room; and how sturdily they bear up statuettes, delicately executed in alabaster and Parian, of Byron, Goethe, Napoleon, and Charlemagne-two on each.
Again Isabel's apron was heaped full, and again she glided, in all her bright, young beauty, through the sick wards. When she came down, an earthern pitcher, crowded with great white lilies, honeysuckles and sweetbriar, stood on the windows or mantel-pieces of every room. There was not a pillow without its pretty garland, or bouquet of buds, tied with the spray of some fragrant shrub.
You showed your new house and furniture to such a man, and with eagle eye he traced out and pointed out every scratch on your fine fresh paint, and every flaw in your oak and walnut; he showed you that there were corners of your big mirrors that distorted your face, that there were bits of your grand marble mantel-pieces that might be expected soon to scale away.
There were unaging pitch-pine doors of Gothic design in it; there were inlaid marble mantel-pieces and cut-steel fenders; there were stupendous wall-papers, and octagonal, medallioned Wedgwood what-nots, and black-and-gilt Austrian images holding candelabra, with every other refinement that Art had achieved or wealth had bought between 1851 and 1878. And everything reeked of varnish.
Flowers of the most rare and delicate kind are placed about the rooms, and on little japanned stands; and sweet bags lie about the tables and mantel-pieces. The house is full of pet dogs, Angora cats, and singing birds, who are as carefully waited upon as she is herself.
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