But, ah! how can I describe it, when I have no other light but memory to enable me to grope through it? Yet will I endeavor, as well as I can, to throw a little light upon this dark, silent abode of mysteries.

We open the door, then. A strong odor,—compounded of various ingredients, the chief of which seem to be salt fish, bacon, grease, dried herbs and old leather,—assails our olfactories;—“A most ancient and fish-like smell, a sort of, not the newest, poorjohn.” We enter a dark apartment, with a low ceiling, the greater part of it sloping with the roof, and very much stained by the rains which have leaked through. A dim light beams through a single window, the panes of which are very dusty and cracked. We will seat ourselves on a couple of old candle-boxes, and commence our inventory of the contents in all due form, as well as the light of memory and the dim window-glass will permit.

Item. A pair of old buckskin breeches hanging on the wall, which once adorned the legs of my Uncle Fabbins himself, some forty-five years ago. Alas! where are the buff waistcoat, the sky-blue coat, the buckled-shoes, the three-cornered hat, and the long cane that used to accompany this affecting relic of the past? And could Echo speak, in an apartment so crowded as this, she would answer, as she does to the poets—where?

Item, secondly. An old sword—also hanging against the wall. We will take it down—we will draw it from its rusty scabbard. What! can that be blood upon its blade? Ah, no! nothing but spots of rust—and the blade is duller than my uncle’s dullest hoe. It was never sharpened for the battle—it is guiltless of ever shedding a drop of blood—it never was used but in piping times of peace, by my uncle’s eldest son Ebenezer, when he belonged to a company of cavalry. It will never again see a training day—it will remain in its corner till my uncle and aunt’s effects descend to their children.

Item, thirdly. A barrel of old business letters, receipted bills, leaves torn out of Latin grammars and books of arithmetic; old newspapers, that were fresh once—in the days of the Revolution—but are now so stale and fusty that the very rats turn from them with disgust. “All this old paper will come into use, yet,” says my Aunt Fabbins.

Item, fourthly. But I see plainly that at this rate we shall never get through—we must take the garret en masse, and present a rough sketch of the whole.

Picture, then, to yourself a medley somewhat like what follows; to wit: old broken bedsteads, and worn-out sacking; a battered warming-pan; a copper kettle, with a great hole in the bottom; a quantity of old bottles and phials, pots of paint dried up as hard as granite, old stumps of paint brushes, shreds of canvas, broken casts and an easel, once the property of a poor painter who once was a boarder in my uncle’s house; pine-boards and scraps of mahogany furniture, of every shape and size—old rags—old mouldy boots and shoes—old picture-frames; bits of window-glass and looking-glass; old rusty keys, old coffee-mills—and great iron wheels that seem as incomprehensible as those of Ezekiel; old greasy boxes, with something old and mysterious in every one of them—battered old trunks, without tops to them; quantities of empty bottles, and one or two forsaken demijohns, (my uncle and aunt have joined the Temperance Society;) great heaps of rusty iron—saws without handles or teeth; locks without keys or springs; scraps of bell-wire; bells without tongues; doll-babies without heads or legs; broken-down chairs and tables; knives and forks without handles, broken pitchers, bags of dried sage, antiquated andirons, fire-shovels, tongs, fenders and battered fire-boards, and—but I can remember no more—the rest the reader may fill out ad libitum. My recording muse halts, and hastens out to take a whiff of fresh air, and refresh her soul with something green and living—something that belongs to the present rather than to the past. We will leave this museum of antiquities, though we have not half described it, and transport ourselves to my aunt’s snug little breakfast parlor, on the first floor. Time—about a year ago, one fine spring morning, after breakfast. Present—Aunt Fabbins, Uncle Fabbins, the five Miss Fabbinses, and the three Mr. Fabbinses, my cousins, myself and the cat. The ladies were washing up the breakfast things and putting the room in order, my uncle was reading the paper, and the three sons and myself—contemplating the rest of the party; when the following conversation arose.

“I wish,” said Jemima, partly to herself, and partly that her father and mother might hear—“I wish, upon my soul, that something would happen which would clear this house of some of its rubbish. I can’t find room for these books on the shelf, for the old newspapers have taken complete possession. I am obliged to convert the top of my piano into a book-shelf—and I don’t think I shall submit to it. There is no room for half the things that are in the house. I have half a mind, I declare, to turn some of these piles of trash into the street.”

“Those are just my sentiments, Jemima,” said doctor Peter, the youngest son—“I’ll help you, Jemima—just go ahead, and I’ll second you. The fact is, I’ve long been of the opinion that the whole house, from top to bottom, needs a thorough treatment. It is as full as a boa constrictor that has swallowed a calf—it will tumble down with its own weight, one of these days, and die of repletion. It needs blood-letting. Confound me, if I can find an inch of room for my chemical experiments.”

“Yes,” said Susan, “and all my beautiful plants I am obliged to keep out of doors, exposed to the night frosts, to make room for that old desk of father’s, which is filled with empty ink-bottles and pamphlets and sermons half a century old, that nobody, not even he, ever thinks of reading. It would be such a nice little corner for my flowers.”

“In my opinion,” said Frank, “I really think a fire would do the house good.”

“What!” said my aunt, in a tone of horror.

“I mean,” said Frank, “if the old house caught fire, and burned—a little—I don’t mean much—but just a little, it would greatly purify us. We should have room to breathe—and I should have room for my gun and dogs and fishing-tackle. I really should laugh to see the old garret go.”

“My child,” said my aunt, solemnly, “you speak like a fool. When you get to be as old as your father and mother, you will alter your tone. Will my children ever learn economy?”

My uncle here looked up over his spectacles, solemnly at Frank, and approvingly at his wife, but said nothing, and went on reading the paper.

The rest of my cousins said little, and rather took sides with their parents. The fact was, they were growing old and conservative.

Ebenezer thought the house was very well as it was; and he for one did not wish to see any thing cleared out—unless, indeed, it were in some places, where he needed a closet or two for his bugs and butterflies and geological specimens.

But my good aunt still persisted in maintaining that there was nothing in the whole house that could be spared, and that sooner or later every thing would come into use.

Such little altercations as this not unfrequently arose in the Fabbins family circle; but I have not yet heard that they have resulted in any change or reform in the administration of the internal affairs.

O, Spirit of Conservatism! I have seen thee in the first green buds of thy spring time and thy youth, when thou wast a necessary and wholesome plant, in commonwealths as in families;—I have beheld thee again bursting into bloom, when thou wast still a beautiful and fragrant flower, smiling serenely and lovingly in thy green shady nooks, a blessing and a protecting angel, when the weeds of fanaticism and anarchy would spread a poisonous blight over the fairest and most venerable things of life;—but again, and too often, have I seen thee, when thy blossoms have shriveled up and fallen to the earth, and thy stalk was flowerless and leafless, and covered with nothing but dry seed-dust, with bugs and with cobwebs—keeping thy place in the garden merely because thou wast once beautiful, but now an unsightly cumberer of the ground, a brother to the meanest weeds and stubble of the field!

But such high-flown conceits as this I have just uttered, never entered the brains of my Uncle and Aunt Fabbins, and least of all would they see that it had any thing whatever to do with their house and its arrangements. But, good reader, if thou wilt look into it, thou mayest find a deeper significance in this family picture than at first meets the eye. The most homely and common things often cover a moral which is grounded in the very heart of universal and primal truth. If thou readest not merely to laugh, but to think, this little sketch may guide thee into the light of spiritual facts of infinite value; may teach thee the great lesson which in our age all must learn—to separate the spirit from the letter, the substance from the form—and to see that the best principle, carried to extremes and pursued with exclusive rigor, will, in its latter end, so differ from its beginning, that men will say, “I know it not; this is not the friend of my youth.” And if a straw like this I throw into the stream, may show thee how the current sets, I shall have done something more beside the attempt to amuse thee.

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BY J. B.

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