was then. On
the walls were eight or ten water-colour sketches framed in rustic
wood; a worn wicker _chaise-longue_ with patchwork cushions, struck a
curiously exotic note; two spinning-wheels, a large and a small,
flanked the fire and bore every evidence of use, not aestheticism; a
silver bowl of unmistakable Queen Anne date, beautifully chased,
filled with fiery nasturtiums, stood in strange neighbourliness to a
cheap American alarum clock; a lovely, tarnished oval mirror reflected
a hideous floral calendar, the advertisement of some seedsman. The
room turned in a small ell, and this, which was evidently the kitchen
corner of it, could be completely hidden from the rest by a quaint
screen, very broad and high, of home manufacture, the body of which
was composed of several calfskins beautifully marked and adroitly
fitted together. This last gave a touch of quaint antiquity, a hint of
the bold and primitive that was deliciously satisfying. I thought it
then and still think it a room in ten thousand. It had no other door
nor any window opening on the beach, and this produced a softened
dimness, a richness, so to speak, of lighting and gloom, a sinking
into shadow of the hearth and spinning-wheels, a lightness of the
dresser and the polished settle near it that struck the eye with the
same contented shock one gets from a mellow Dutch interior--the same
impression of previous acquaintance, of a once familiar, only half
forgotten home.

I have since tried to analyse the charm of that room, its inevitable
hold upon every one privileged to enter it (and I suppose few rooms in
America have held a greater number of really select souls), and I have
decided that its spell consisted in its deeply impersonal character;
its utter lack of the characteristics, the idiosyncrasies, the
imbecilities, even the fascinations of other, no matter how attractive
dwelling places. It had the restful aloofness of a studio, with none
of its professional limitations; the domesticity of a home, with none
of its fatiguing clutter; the freedom of an inn, with none of its
stale sense of over-use. And above and through all this ran the note
of almost ascetic cleanliness, a purity fairly conventual. Like most
men, I have a concealed passion for perfect cleanliness--concealed,
because to the sex so ironically intrusted with the duty of domestic
lustration cleanliness appears to mean frightful and devastating
upheavals resulting in a nauseating odour of