From this room we enter the kitchen. We hardly know what to notice first—the marble tiles shining like glass, the brass and pewter gleaming like gold and silver from the racks and dressers, the well-filled china closet, the rose-red painted table, with the yellow painted rush-bottomed chairs, or the general effect of charm, cheerfulness, colour and neatness. We are told that the lady of the house calls this her “holy” (as she calls the show-room the “tabernacle”), and allows no cooking to be done here. There is a small back kitchen built for this purpose called “_snuiver_” (cooking shed), where all the food is prepared. Before leaving this room we must describe the dresser, in which all the articles for breakfast service are kept and, in poor houses, left-over food. The used napkins are folded and placed here, and there are drawers for table linen and other small utensils. It contains a candle-drawer, and upon one of its shelves stands the heavy brass candlestick. The peculiar extinguisher is called familiarly “the cat’s head,” on account of its resemblance to the head of a cat. This is narrower at the bottom than the top, and has a handle on each side. This stands next to the peat-box, often the lower part of a pot cupboard opened and shut with a slide Underneath the chimney is placed the fire-pot, for stoves are not known. These innovations, imported from Germany, were heartily despised and called contemptuously “stink-pots” and “muff-boxes.” Omitting the cellar and store-rooms, we pass upstairs to the bedroom of the master and mistress on the second floor. Pictures, chiefly family portraits, adorn the walls. The floor is of wood, highly polished, and so slippery that great care is required in walking across it. The furniture consists of chairs with tall backs and low seats, a carved table with a tapestry or rug cover, a large oak cabinet and a cupboard on four legs, the treasure-chest and the wash-buffet, with wash-mops and toilet appliances. A heavy green damask curtain hangs before the bed, which is so high above the floor that it must be entered with the aid of a small stepladder that stands in one corner of the room next to the brass warming-pan. Sometimes a cradle, called “coach,” for the baby stands at the foot and sometimes under the bed. These beds have often been ridiculed. The bedstead, however, soon supplanted the panelled bed, although it has never banished it altogether.