Figure to yourselves, then, my countless readers and admirers, first the Hall itself, with its lofty ceiling and its spacious, well-waxed floor of heart-pine so nicely joined that it was a sound-board in itself. At one end of the room stood a piano; at the other was a vast open fireplace, in which, supported by tall and glistening andirons, there glowed a noble fire of hickory logs five feet long. The furniture in the room was peculiar, consisting of a square table of exceeding lightness, and chairs that you might toss in the air with your little finger,—all with a view to the least possible weight upon the floor,—though I must say that they were often the means of bringing heavy weights in contact with it. Add to these a lounge of slenderest proportions, upon which my grandfather loved to recline, pipe in mouth, whenever any music was going forward; and you have all the furniture that the room possessed. Of other objects there were absolutely none upon the floor, except four cases containing the instruments needful to a string quartet; and these stood each in its own corner, as though on ill terms. The old gentleman had banished from the Hall even his collection of music, great piles of which were stowed away in the adjoining room; for he insisted that its weight would mar the resonance of the Hall. It remains but to add that upon the walls no painting or engraving was allowed. Their smooth finish showed no crack,—so that the Herr used to say that the hall, if strung, would have been a very goot feedle for Bolyphemoos, or some oder of dem chiant singers to blay on. So much for the Hall, around which, on the Christmas Eve in question, were grouped nearly all my grandfather’s slaves old enough to be out on so cold a night, reinforced by many of Charley’s. And I am not so sure that the outsiders were not having a merrier time than the insiders. For every now and then, throughout the evening, my grandfather might have been seen passing glasses of toddy or eggnog to one or another of the favorite old servants, as he observed them in the throng; and Charley and I saw that the rest had no cause to feel slighted. All had their share,—if not of toddy, at least of that without which all toddy is a delusion and a shadow. Then the sound of Jones’s fiddle could not be kept within-doors, and such of them as despaired of forcing their way through the masses around the windows and doors had formed rings, where, by the light of the wintry moon, the champion dancers of the two farms exhibited to admiring throngs what they knew about the double-shuffle and the break-down; and the solid earth resounded beneath the rhythm of their brogans. To me, I remember, they seemed happy, at the time; which goes to show how little I knew about happiness,—and I believe that they too were under the same delusion; but their early educations had been neglected.