nd having
doors all round, which opened into the sleeping or other apartments of
the dwelling. In the front wall of this room were the door which led
direct into the open air, and the two windows. There were no passages
in the house--it was all rooms and doors. One of these doors, towards
the back, opened into a species of scullery--but it was not exactly a
scullery, neither was it a kitchen, neither was it a pantry. The squaws
lived there--especially the cooking squaws--and a few favoured dogs. A
large number of pots and pans and kettles, besides a good deal of lumber
and provisions in daily use, also dwelt there. A door led from this
room out to the back of the house, and into a small offshoot, which was
the kitchen proper. Here a spirited French Canadian reigned supreme in
the midst of food, fire, and steam, smoke, smells, and fat.

But to return to the reception hall. There were no pictures on its
walls, no draperies about its windows, no carpets on its floors, no
cloths on its tables, and no ornaments on its mantelshelf. Indeed,
there was no mantelshelf to put ornaments upon. The floor, the walls,
the ceiling, the chairs, the tables; all were composed of the same
material--wood. The splendour of the apartment was entirely due to
paint. Everything was painted--and that with a view solely to startling
effect. Blue, red, and yellow, in their most brilliant purity, were
laid on in a variety of original devices, and with a boldness of
contrast that threw Moorish effort in that line quite into the shade.
The Alhambra was nothing to it! The floor was yellow ochre; the ceiling
was sky-blue; the cornices were scarlet, with flutings of blue and
yellow, and, underneath, a broad belt of fruit and foliage, executed in
an extremely arabesque style. The walls were light green, with narrow
bands of red down the sides of each plank. The table was yellow, the
chairs blue, and their bottoms red, by way of harmonious variety. But
the grand point--the great masterpiece in the ornamentation of this
apartment--was the centre-piece in the ceiling, in the execution of
which there was an extraordinary display of what can be accomplished by
the daring flight of an original genius revelling in the conscious
possession of illimitable power, without the paralysing influence of
conventional education.

The device itself was indescribable. It was a sun or a star, or rather
a union and commingling of suns and stars in violent co