gained another room about ten feet square. This
made my library, by which I mean not a room in which I ever sat, but a
room entirely devoted to the housing of my books. I had the walls
entirely lined with books, making and staining the bookshelves with my
own hands. Across the widened doorway from which the door had been
removed hung a warm curtain, so that it was to all intents and purposes
a part of my living-room. I took infinite and almost childish delight
in the arrangement of this living-room. I had brought not a single
article of domestic furniture with me from London. Such furniture as I
had--chairs, tables, couch, sideboard, and so forth--would have looked
out of place in the country, and moreover it was better economy to sell
them. I sold them very well in a London auction-room, getting almost
as much as they cost me. With the money thus received in my pocket I
went to a neighbouring market town where there happened to be a shop
that dealt in old furniture. For less than ten pounds I bought an
excellent oaken gate-table, half a dozen serviceable oak chairs, a
couple of fine carved chests, and a corner cupboard. My oak dresser
and settle, each good specimens of serviceable cottage furniture, cost
me thirty-seven shillings at a country auction. I found that even at
these modest prices I had paid too much. Oaken furniture was common in
these parts, and had little value. When a church was restored, or an
old house re-constructed, large quantities of old oak were literally
thrown away. Thus, at a merely nominal expense I acquired enough
carved oak to fit together into a handsome fireplace, and later on the
pews of a church came in for oak panelling.

Let me now picture my living-room as it was about four months after I
took possession. It was entirely oak panelled to a height of nine
feet, above which about a foot of white-washed wall showed, forming a
plain frieze. The fireplace at one end of the room was built in with
carved oak; what had been the corresponding fireplace at the other end
of the room was turned into a cupboard, with plain oak doors. The room
had three old-fashioned leaded windows opening outward. Two were
original, one had been added--the centre window taking the place of the
gap left by the destroyed partition wall. My oak chests, dresser and
cupboard, constituted the furniture of the room. The library,
curtained off with a plain curtain of crimson plush, adjoined; the
kitch