Roxana took advantage of every opportunity for culture. From a French gentleman who, after the massacres at San Domingo had taken refuge in this country and settled in Guilford, she learned French and became able to speak it fluently. He lent her the best French authors, which she studied as she spun flax, tying the book, face forward, to the distaff. She had a brother who went into business in New York; while visiting him she studied drawing and painting with water colors and in oils; afterwards when any problem in perspective puzzled her she flew to the encyclopedia and was not content till she had overcome the difficulty. She was highly gifted in artistic execution of many kinds. She painted miniature portraits upon ivory for various members of her family and for her pupils and rarely failed to get a good likeness. Her needlework was a marvel in its delicacy and complexity; bobbin lace and cobweb stitch like hers have now passed out of memory. The house was full of works of ingenuity devised by her which adorned wall and furniture and drapery. Her famous Russian stove, made with the aid of a mason from the description in her encyclopedia, warmed six rooms with less fuel than many of her neighbors used for a single fire. In fact, the second Mrs. Beecher declared that this wonderful stove entirely annihilated the winter indoors. Under her mother’s guidance, Catherine, at about fourteen, decorated with landscapes a new chamber set of beautiful white wood, the bureau, dressing-table, candlestand, washstand and bedstead. She surrounded the pictures with garlands of flowers and fruits, and then varnished them according to a recipe in the same encyclopedia. Once Dr. Beecher sent home a whole bale of cotton which he bought just because it was cheap. Roxana found a use for this commodity. She conceived the idea of making a carpet of it--a thing unheard of in the little Long Island town where they began their housekeeping together. In that primitive place they still covered their floors with sand dampened and smoothed over, marking this smooth surface with the broom in zig-zag lines if they wanted decoration. But Mrs. Beecher’s artistic mind took a higher flight. She carded and spun the bale of cotton, had it woven, cut and sewed it to fit the parlor, and then stretched it on the garret floor to begin the operations. Here she brushed it over with thin paste to make a stiff foundation. Meantime she had sent to her brother in New York for paints and had learned from the invaluable encyclopedia how to use them. She painted flowers and leaves in groups on this background, taking for models the plants in her own garden. The carpet, when it was done, was the admiration of the whole town, but the deacons, when they came to the door, did not dare to step on anything so splendid; they also thought it a sin to make the room so magnificent that the splendors of Heaven would lose their attractiveness! “Do you think,”