"Whate'er was wasted in our earthly state, Here safely treasured--each neglected good, Time squandered, and occasion ill-bestowed; There sparkling chains he found, and knots of gold, The specious ties that ill-paired lovers hold; Each toil, each loss, each chance that men sustain, Save Folly, which alone pervades them all, For Folly never quits this earthly ball." In the garret, are the old spinning wheel, the clock reel, the linen wheel with its distaff, your grandfather's knapsack and cartridge-box and Continental coat, your great-aunt's Leghorn bonnet and side-saddle, or pillion, great files of the village newspapers--the "_Morning Cry_" and "_Midnight Yell_," besides worn out trunks and boxes without number. In the cellar, are the substantiate--barrels of beef, and pork, and apples, "taters" and turnips; in short, the Winter stores of the family. Many, perhaps most, of the cellars in New England are in some way drained, usually by a stone culvert, laid a little lower than the bottom of the cellar, into which the water is conducted, in the Spring, when it bursts through the walls, or rises at the bottom, by means of little ditches scooped out in the surface. In some districts, people seem to have little idea of drains, even for cellars; and on flat land, endeavor to set their houses high enough to have their cellars above ground. This, besides being extremely inconvenient for passage out of, and into the house, often fails to make a dry cellar, for the water from the roof runs in, and causes a flood. And such accidents, as they are mildly termed by the improvident builders, often occur by the failure of drains imperfectly laid. No child, who ever saw a cellar afloat, during one of these inundations, will ever outgrow the impression. You stand on the cellar stairs, and below is a dark waste of waters, of illimitable extent. By the dim glimmer of the dip-candle, a scene is presented which furnishes a tolerable picture of "chaos and old night," but defies all description. Empty dry casks, with cider barrels, wash-tubs, and boxes, ride triumphantly on the surface, while half filled vinegar and molasses kegs, like water-logged ships, roll heavily below. Broken boards and planks, old hoops, and staves, and barrel-heads innumerable, are buoyant with this change of the elements; while floating turnips and apples, with, here and there, a brilliant cabbage head, gleam in this subterranean firmament, like twinkling stars, dimmed by the effulgence of the moon at her full. Magnificent among the lesser vessels of the fleet, "like some tall admiral," rides the enormous "mash-tub," while the astonished rats and mice are splashing about at its base in the dark waters, like sailors just washed, at midnight, from the deck, by a heavy sea.