Item. A pair of old buckskin breeches hanging on the wall, which once adorned the legs of my Uncle Fabbins himself, some forty-five years ago. Alas! where are the buff waistcoat, the sky-blue coat, the buckled-shoes, the three-cornered hat, and the long cane that used to accompany this affecting relic of the past? And could Echo speak, in an apartment so crowded as this, she would answer, as she does to the poets—where? Item, secondly. An old sword—also hanging against the wall. We will take it down—we will draw it from its rusty scabbard. What! can that be blood upon its blade? Ah, no! nothing but spots of rust—and the blade is duller than my uncle’s dullest hoe. It was never sharpened for the battle—it is guiltless of ever shedding a drop of blood—it never was used but in piping times of peace, by my uncle’s eldest son Ebenezer, when he belonged to a company of cavalry. It will never again see a training day—it will remain in its corner till my uncle and aunt’s effects descend to their children. Item, thirdly. A barrel of old business letters, receipted bills, leaves torn out of Latin grammars and books of arithmetic; old newspapers, that were fresh once—in the days of the Revolution—but are now so stale and fusty that the very rats turn from them with disgust. “All this old paper will come into use, yet,” says my Aunt Fabbins. Item, fourthly. But I see plainly that at this rate we shall never get through—we must take the garret _en masse_, and present a rough sketch of the whole.