Moreover, it was, unhappily, built to last forever. Backs might break on the hard chairs, but the chairs never! Beds, however, were piled high with feathers, bolster, and pillows, and bed-curtains were _de rigueur_. Dickens complained, among the horrors of his early days in America, that he actually had no bed-curtains. Poor indeed must be the house that could not afford "fallens," _i.e._ _valence_, around the "tester" and the bottom of the bedstead. This ancient appanage of a man of quality, as early as in Chaucer's time, was sometimes richly embroidered with pearls. "Now is Albano's marriage-bed new hung With fresh rich curtaines! Now are my Valence up Imbost with orient pearles." Losing her bed and valence, Mary Washington would have lost everything! Her dining-table and chairs were of the plainest. There were no sideboards in her day anywhere--no mahogany until 1747. As to her best room, her parlor, she probably was content with a harpsichord, a table, and chairs. Great fires glorified every room in winter, and in summer the gaping, black fireplace was filled with cedar boughs and plumy asparagus. The colonial Virginian lived much out of doors. Driven in by a storm he would find shelter in his "porch" and remain there until the storm was over. His house was a good enough place to eat and sleep in, but beauty in house-furnishing never inspired ambition. _That_ was fully gratified if he could welcome a guest to a good dinner, and interest him afterwards in a fine horse or two and a pack of foxhounds. That Augustine Washington's house should burn down was perfectly consistent and natural. Everything in colonial Virginia was burned sooner or later,--dwelling-houses, court-houses with their records, tobacco-houses with their treasures of Orinoko or Sweet-scented. Nearer than the spring at the foot of the hill was no water, and, except the pail borne on the head of the negro, no extinguishing appliance whatever. Churches did not burn down for the very good reason that they were never lighted or heated; thus insuring that mortification of the body so good for the health of the soul. In winter little stoves of perforated tin, containing coals or heated bricks, were borne up the aisles by footmen and placed beneath the feet of the colonial dames. Otherwise the slippered feet would surely have frozen!