"I Desire the favour of you to procure for me & Send with my Spring Goods, a Handsome Chiming Clock of the newest fashion,--the work neat & Good, with a Good black Walnutt Tree Case, Veneer'd work, with Dark, lively branches,--on the Top insteed of Balls let be three handsome Carv'd figures, Gilt with burnished Gold. I'd have the Case without the figures to be 10 foot Long, the price 15 not to Exceed 20 Guineas, and as it's for my own use I beg your particular Care in buying of it at the Cheapest Rate. I'm advised to apply to one Mr. Marmaduke Storr at the foot of Lond'n Bridge, but as you are best Judge I leave it to you to purchase it where you think proper,--wh. being the needfull, Concludes "Sir Your &c. T. H." On the right of the hall, as you enter, is the fine old drawing-room, seventeen by twenty-five feet, also elaborately finished in moulded panels from floor to ceiling. In this room the founder of the Hancock name, as a man of note, and a merchant of established consequence, must often have received the Shirleys, the Olivers, the Pownalls, and the Hutchinsons of King George's colonial court; and here, too, some years later, his stately nephew John dispensed his elegant hospitalities to that serene Virginian, Mr. Washington, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Revolution, and to the ardent young French Marquis who accompanied him. The room itself, hung with portraits from the honest, if not flattering hand of Smibert, and the more courtly and elegant pencil of Copley, still seems to bear witness in its very walls to the reality of such bygone scenes. We enter the close front-gate from the sunny and bustling promenade of Beacon Street, pass up the worn and gray terrace of the steps, and in a moment more closes behind us the door that seems to shut us out from the whirl and turmoil and strife of the present, and, almost mysteriously, to transport us to the grave shadows and the dignified silence of the past of American history.