The kitchen fireplace was high as well as wide, and disclosed a vast smoky throat. When the week’s cooking was ended and the Sabbath was approaching, this great fireplace was dressed up, put on its best clothes for Sunday, as did all the rest of the family; across the top was hung a short petticoat, or valance, or little curtain gathered full on a string. This was called a _schouwe-kleedt_, a _schoorsteen valletje_, or sometimes a _dobbelstee-tiens valletje_, this latter in allusion to the stuff of which the valance was usually made,--a strong close homespun linen checked off with blue or red. This clean, sweet linen frill was placed, freshly washed and ironed, every Saturday afternoon on the faithful, work-worn chimney while it took its Sunday rest. In some houses there hung throughout the week a _schoorsteen valletje_; in others it was only Sunday gear. This was a fashion from early colonial days for both town and country. In the house of Mayor Rombouts in 1690 were fine chimney-cloths trimmed with fringe and lace, and worth half a pound each, and humbler checked chimney-cloths. Cornelius Steenwyck a few years earlier had in his “great chamber” a still gayer _valletje_ of flowered tabby to match the tabby window-curtains. Peter Marius had calico valances for his chimneys. A description given by a Scotchwoman of fireplaces in Holland at about this date shows very plainly from whence this form of hearth-dressing and chimney were derived:-- “The chimney-places are very droll-like; they have no jams nor lintell, as we have, but a flat grate, and there projects over it a lum in a form of the cat-and-clay lum, and commonly a muslin or ruffled pawn around it.” When tiles were used for facing the fireplace and even for hearths, as they often were in the _kamer_, or parlor, they were usually of Delft manufacture, printed in dull blue with coarsely executed outline drawings of Scriptural scenes. In the Van Cortlandt manor-house, the tiles were pure white. I have some of the tiles taken from the old Schermerhorn house in Brooklyn, built in the middle of the seventeenth century and demolished in 1895. There were nearly two hundred in each fireplace in the house. The scenes were from the Old Testament, and several, if I interpret their significance aright, from the Apocrypha. The figures are discreetly attired in Dutch costumes. Irving says of these Scripture-tiles: “Tobit and his dog figured to great advantage; Haman swung conspicuously on his gibbet; Jonah appeared most manfully bursting out of the whale, like Harlequin through a barrel of fire.” To these let me add the very amusing one of Lazarus leaving his tomb, triumphantly waving the flag of the Netherlands.