A Maryland record of 1653 tells of a bargain between T. Wilford and Paul Sympson, by which, in consideration of twenty thousand pounds of tobacco received from Sympson, Wilford agrees to support him for the rest of his life "like a gentleman." This gentleman-like provision consisted of a house fifteen feet square, with a Welsh chimney, and lined with riven boards; a handsome joined bedstead, bedding and curtains; one small table, six stools, and three wainscot chairs; a servant to wait on him; meat, apparel, and washing; and every year an anker (ten gallons) of drams, one tierce of sack, and a case of English spirits for his own use. It is hard to imagine what more of luxury, an annuity could furnish to a gentleman of the nineteenth century, if indeed Heaven had blessed him with a stomach capable of consuming such an "intolerable deal of sack." The next fifty years still further increased the elegance of living; and style as well as comfort began to be considered. In an inventory of household goods belonging to a Virginian in 1698, I find included, "a feather-bed, one sett Kitterminster curtains, and Vallens bedstead, one pair white linen sheets with two do. pillow biers, 2 Rusha-leather chaires, 5 Rush-bottom chaires, a burning glass, a flesk fork, and 6 Alchemy spoones" (alchemy being a mixed metal, originally supposed to be gold made by magic). In addition to these articles, the list includes a brass skimer and 2 pairs of pot-hooks, and, as its crowning glory, "1 old silver Dram-cup." No doubt the possessor had sat with his boon companions on many a cold night, by the great chimney, plunging the hot poker into the fire.-- "And nursed the loggerhead, whose hissing dip, Timed by nice instinct, creamed the mug of flip." The house of a planter in Virginia at the end of the seventeenth century, was substantial and comfortable. The inventory of such a planter mentions, as belonging to the homestead, a "parlor chamber, chamber over sd. chamber, chamber over the parlor, nursery, old nursery, room over the Ladyes chamber, Ladyes chamber, entry, store, home house quarter, home house, quarter over the creek, Smiths shopp, Barne, kitchen, Dary, chamber over the old Dary, flemings quarter, Robinsons quarter, Whitakers quarter, Black Wallnut Quarter." By this time, the house of the rich in the towns boasted a parlor, but its furnishing was of the simplest. A white floor sprinkled with clean white sand, large tables, and heavy high-backed chairs of solid, dark oak decorated a parlor enough for anybody, says the chronicler of Baltimore. William Fitzhugh directs Mistress Sarah Bland in London (1682) to procure him a suit of tapestry hangings for a room twenty feet long, sixteen feet wide, and nine feet high; "and half a dozen chairs suitable."