The show-room, or “holy of holies,” as the Dutch woman was pleased to call it, was furnished according to the means or class of the owner. Among the higher classes a party was often given in it. In such homes the floor was covered with expensive Turkish rugs, and the walls hung with tapestries, silk damask or gold leather. These were further adorned with Venetian mirrors and paintings worth their weight in gold. The chairs were of rare exotic or foreign woods supplied with embroidered cushions, or seats of Utrecht velvet, and the other furniture consisted of beautifully painted or inlaid or mosaic tables, beautifully carved cupboards, and rare cabinets inlaid with silver, ivory or tortoiseshell, and filled with the finest egg-shell porcelain. Porcelains and curios adorned the high carved chimney. In older aristocratic homes the “show-room” was less lavishly furnished, but none the less the pride of the mistress. The floor was covered with mats, the walls with painted linen, or handsome paintings; but in rare porcelain it was the equal of any alderman’s or mayor’s wife. As time wore on, the walnut cabinet supplanted the carved or oak cupboard, the _vitrine_ took the place of the china-cabinet and the console and glass appeared between the windows, and finally we arrive at the period when the small bookcase with glass or mirror doors appears and chairs covered with figured rep. The kitchen usually contained a bedstead with feather bed, pillows and curtains, a looking-glass in a black frame, a cupboard, chairs, a table, andirons, innumerable brooms and brushes, flint and steel for striking a light, shovels, tongs, gridirons, dripping-pans, whetting-boards for knives, tubs, butter firkins (earthenware, pewter, brass and tin), knives, forks, spoons, stills, churns, hanging boards, can-boards, pots, pails, skimmers, funnels, salt-boxes, candle-boxes, frying-pans, beakers, candlesticks, dripping-pans, skewers, stewing-pans with covers, copper kettles, chafing-dishes, hour-glasses, lamps, hammers, tankards, tin pans to roast apples, pot-hangers, dishes to boil fish on, mortars and pestles, waffle-irons, bellows, kettles, a birdcage, saucepans, platters, cans, pepper mills, tin ware to bake sugar cakes, marzipan pans, racks to hang clothes on, wicker baskets, hampers, tubs, glass knockers to beat clothes, smoothing irons, tin watering pots to wet clothes, rainwater casks, etc., etc.