ck of monte-cards, a back-gammon-board, and
a sickening pile of "yallow-kivered" literature,--with several
uncomfortable-looking benches, complete the furniture of this most
important portion of such a place as "The Empire." The remainder of the
room does duty as a shop, where velveteen and leather, flannel shirts
and calico ditto,--the latter starched to an appalling state of
stiffness,--lie cheek by jowl with hams, preserved meats, oysters, and
other groceries, in hopeless confusion. From the barroom you ascend by
four steps into the parlor, the floor of which is covered by a straw
carpet. This room contains quite a decent looking-glass, a sofa
fourteen feet long and a foot and a half wide, painfully suggestive of
an aching back,--of course covered with red calico (the sofa, _not_ the
back),--a round table with a green cloth, six cane-bottom chars,
red-calico curtains, a cooking-stove, a rocking-chair, _and_ a woman
and a baby, (of whom more anon,) the latter wearing a scarlet frock, to
match the sofa and curtains. A flight of four steps leads from the
parlor to the upper story, where, on each side of a narrow entry, are
four eight-feet-by-ten bedrooms, the floors of which are covered by
straw matting. Here your eyes are again refreshed with a glittering
vision of red-calico curtains gracefully festooned above wooden windows
picturesquely lattice-like. These tiny chambers are furnished with
little tables covered with oilcloth, and bedsteads so heavy that
nothing short of a giant's strength could move them. Indeed, I am
convinced that they were built, piece by piece, on the spot where they
now stand. The entire building is lined with purple calico, alternating
with a delicate blue, and the effect is really quite pretty. The floors
are so very uneven that you are always ascending a hill or descending
into a valley. The doors consist of a slight frame covered with
dark-blue drilling, and are hung on hinges of leather. As to the
kitchen and dining-room, I leave to your vivid imagination to picture
their primitiveness, merely observing that nothing was ever more
awkward and unworkmanlike than the whole tenement. It is just such a
piece of carpentering as a child two years old, gifted with the
strength of a man, would produce, if it wanted to play at making
grown-up houses. And yet this impertinent apology for a house cost its
original owners more than eight thousand dollars. This will not be
quite so surprising when I infor