"Well," he replied, "it has been so long since you all had any coffee, and I made out very well on water, when I thought how black mammy missed her coffee, and how glad she would be to get it." CHAPTER VI. The antiquity of the furniture in our homes can scarcely be described--every article appearing to have been purchased during the reign of George III., since which period no new fixtures or household utensils seemed to have been bought. The books in our libraries had been brought from England almost two hundred years before. In our own library there were Hogarth's pictures, in old worm-eaten frames; and among the literary curiosities, one of the earliest editions of Shakespeare--1685--containing under the author's picture the lines by Ben Johnson: "This Figure which thou here seest put It was for gentle Shakespeare cut-- Wherein the Graver had a strife, With Nature to outdo the Life. O, could he but have drawn his Wit As well in Brass, as he has hit His Face; the Paint would then surpass All that was ever writ in Brass. But since he can not, Reader, look Not on his Picture, but his Book." This was a reprint of the first edition of Shakespeare's works collected by John Heminge and Henry Condell, two of his friends in the company of comedians. The perusal of the Arabian Nights, when a small child, possessed me with the idea that their dazzling pictures were to be realized when we emerged from plantation life into the outside world, and the disappointment at not finding Richmond paved with gems and gold like those cities in Eastern story, is remembered to the present time. Brought up amid antiquities, the Virginia girl disturbed herself not about modern fashions, appearing happy in her mother's old silks and satins made over; her grandmother's laces and brooch of untold dimensions, with a weeping willow and tombstone on it--a constant reminder of the past--which had descended from some remote ancestor. She slept in a high bedstead--the bed of her ancestors; washed her face on an old fashioned, spindle-legged washstand; mounted a high chair to arrange her hair before the old fashioned mirror on the high bureau; climbed to the top of a high mantle-piece to take down the old fashioned high candlesticks; climbed a pair of steps to get into the high-swung, old fashioned carriage; perched her feet upon the top of a high brass fender if she wanted to get them warm; and, in short, had to perform so many gymnastics that she felt convinced her ancestors must have been a race of giants, or they could not have required such tall and inaccessible furniture. An occasional visit to Richmond or Petersburg, sometimes animated her with a desire for some style of dress less antique than her own; although she had as much admiration and attention as if she had just received her wardrobe from Paris.