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Updated: June 11, 2025
The entrance-hall opens right upon the quadrangular court; and is a large, low room, with a settle of carved old oak, and other old oaken furniture, a centre-table with periodicals and newspapers on it, some family pictures on the walls, and a large, bright coal-fire in the spacious grate.
The walls were hung in some dark, unfigured tapestry, which added to the somberness of the apartment, and tended to spread over all an air of gloom. The dimness of the place was in some degree relieved by a crackling fire burning upon the hearth, and two silver candelabrums holding lighted tapers, stood upon an oaken table occupying the middle of the room.
Those on the ground floor were heavily boarded up, those above, though glazed, boasted neither blinds nor curtains. Cragmire Tower showed not the slightest evidence of tenancy. We mounted three steps and stood before a tremendously massive oaken door. An iron bell-pull, ancient and rusty, hung on the right of the door, and Smith, giving me an odd glance, seized the ring and tugged it.
Many of them, by the vast strength and soundness of their oaken substance, have been preserved through a length of time which would have tried the stability of brick and stone; so that, in all the progressive decay and continual reconstruction of the street, down our own days, we shall still behold these old edifices occupying their long-accustomed sites.
The room contained a strong furnace and a rude laboratory. There were several strange-looking mechanical contrivances scattered about, several manuscripts upon some oaken shelves, and a large pannier of wood and charcoal in the corner.
Clean and dry in his dressing-gown and slippers, Mr. Larcher turned toward his easy chair and oaken bookcase, and thanked his stars that no engagement called him forth.
The conductor of the band halted here, and knocking thrice upon an oaken door, studded with huge iron nails, it was opened silently, and the party entered a dark, subterranean passage of stone, lighted only by a smoky cresset lamp swinging in a recess.
Then, in the place previously determined, a cofferdam, with its sides formed of oaken stakes with ties between them, is to be driven down into the water and firmly propped there; then, the lower surface inside, under the water, must be levelled off and dredged, working from beams laid across; and finally, concrete from the mortar trough the stuff having been mixed as prescribed above must be heaped up until the empty space which was within the cofferdam is filled up by the wall.
It stood on the landing just at the bottom of the dark flight that led to the garret. An oaken case six feet high or more, and a vast dial, with a mysterious picture of a full moon and a ship in full sail that somehow indicated the quarters of the year, if you had been imitating Rip Van Winkle and after a sleep of six months wanted to know whether it was spring or autumn.
The greater part has undergone alterations and been adapted to modern tastes and modes of living: there is a fine old oaken staircase, and the great hall, that noble feature in an ancient manor-house, still retains much of the appearance it must have had in the days of Shakespeare. The ceiling is arched and lofty, and at one end is a gallery in which stands an organ.
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