Opposite the highboy is an old-fashioned kitchen dresser, part of which was found in the house, and the rest designed to match. Its shelves now contain samples of crockery and old salt glaze, with specimens of Bennington and tortoise-shell ware. If the visitor is up on such matters, he will have noticed that certain articles in the room are of much later date than others. He is then told that the idea in furnishing the house is to make it look as an old, conservative Salem house would have looked in 1840, the period of the story. That is to say, there is practically no furniture later than 1840, and most of the pieces are much earlier--survivors, so to speak, of the many periods through which the house has passed. The later and more elegant pieces of furniture (generally speaking, mahogany of about 1800) are to be found in the parlor and dining-room, while the earlier pieces of walnut, cherry, pine, and oak have been relegated to the kitchen and attic; the same is to be said of the china--Lowestoft and lustre supplanting the earlier wares in the parlor and dining-room. [Illustration: Copyright, 1910, by C. O. Emmerton.] [Illustration: Copyright, 1910, by C. O. Emmerton. PLATE VII.--Dining Room, House of the Seven Gables; Parlor, House of the Seven Gables.] With the determination to note this evolution in household furnishing, the visitor continues on his tour of the house. He leaves the kitchen by a dark, narrow passage. A door at its end admits him to a large, sunny, low-ceiled room, which has always been used as a combination dining and sitting-room. The Turners called this room "the hall," a term the early settlers brought with them from England. The Ingersolls called it "the keeping room." To the settlement residents to-day, it is simply the dining-room. It is certainly most attractive with its rare, old, white painted panelling and old-fashioned furniture. The sideboard, dining-table, and secretary are fine old pieces of mahogany. The chairs are of the Windsor pattern. On the wall are pictures of clipper ships and foreign ports and one portrait of a rather grim old gentleman. Under the portrait is the dinner-wagon and a red lacquer tray, once the property of Miss Ingersoll.