The most incongruous, most inadequate apartment on this floor was the pantry, a little dark box of a closet, to which one small greenish glass window dispensed a dingy light. We had intended to ask for our dinner, since it was then “high noon,” but a sight of this cooking sanctum dispelled all thought or wish for dinner. It was so cobwebby, so dusty, so poor-looking, that we could not wish to eat any dinner that could issue from its dark shadows. We found afterward, beyond the disused kitchen, a large square room which, in the early days of the prosperity and good cheer of this house, had doubtless been a pantry, but was now filled with broken grindstones, crushed Dutch ovens, fragments of crockery, pails and pans, “peels” and “slices,” yarn-winders, and part of an old rose still. Indeed, through this entire house, nothing could ever have been wholly destroyed or carried away, but was thrown, in its broken, grimy desuetude, into some neglected closet or room to gather years of dust and dirt, as if the owner, too poor to buy new furniture, still clung to the shattered remnants of past plenty. We rescued from the dingy little pantry, from among the litter of broken cups and plates and knives, bunches of dried herbs, empty spice-boxes, cracked woodenware, and greasy pans, a few treasures which we spread out on the kitchen table—half a dozen “Pain’s Hill” plates (a favorite pattern throughout New England), two open-work bordered Leeds platters, a dear little boat-shaped queen’s-ware creamer with dainty twisted handles, two helmet pitchers, two teacups, and half a dozen plates of a set of old Lowestoft china bearing a pretty armorial device and initials. We hardly dared ask to buy the latter pieces until we saw the evident contempt the farm-wife had for them. Nothing so American as a Lafayette or Pilgrim plate was to be seen.