They showed in those days, even more than now, the wide contrast between their homely exteriors and the often elegant apartments within.

However, in this house the front room was merely neat.

The furniture was of rude, heavy pattern, Creole-made, and the walls were unadorned; the day of cheap pictures had not come.

The lofty bedstead which filled one corner was spread and hung with a blue stuff showing through a web of white needlework.

The brazen feet of the chairs were brightly burnished, as were the brass mountings of the bedstead and the brass globes on the cold andirons.