portraits, its great chimneypiece flanked by tall cupboards, and its
massive overshadowing stairway.

[Illustration: THE OLD "GREAT HALL."]

The chief architectural feature of the room is this stairway. Starting
in one corner, it rises along the panelled wall until half way to the
ceiling, then turns sharply out into the room for the remainder of its
ascent to the second floor, thus exposing overhead a handsome soffit.
The effect, in connection with the great panelled well of the
staircase, is one of rich and goodly ancientness.

Indeed, though you may enter Shirley feeling that the house, like some
long-lingering colonial belle, is perhaps not quite frank with you
about its age, you will not find the hall taking part in any such
misrepresentation. Despite some modern marks and even the fact that the
fireplace has been closed, this room says in every line that it is very
old.

It stands true to the memory of its seventeenth-century builder who had
known and loved the "great halls" of "Merrie England." It tells of the
time when the life of a household centred in the spacious hall; when
there the great fire burned and the family gathered round--of the time
when halls were the hearts, not the mere portals, of homes.

And so in this room, as in few others in our country, does the visitor
find the setting and the atmosphere of manor-house life in early
colonial days. He can well fancy this "great hall" of Shirley in the
ruddy light of flaming logs that burned in the wide fireplace two
centuries and a half ago. Dusky in far corners or sharply drawn near
the firelight, stood, in those days, chests and tables and forms and
doubtless a bed too with its valance and curtains. In a medley typical
of the times in even the great homes, were saddles, bridles, and
embroidery frames, swords, guns, flute, and hand-lyre.

Here, in a picturesque and almost mediaeval confusion, the family
mostly gathered, while favourite hounds stretched and blinked in the
chimney-place beside the black boy who drowsily tended the fire.

Here, the long, narrow "tabull-bord" was spread with its snowy cloth,
taken from the heavy chest of linen in the corner, of which my lady of
the manor was prodigiously proud. Upon the cloth were placed
soft-lustred pewter and, probably almost from the first, some pieces of
silver too. The salt was "sett in the myddys of the tabull," likely in
a fine silver dish worthy its important function in determining the
seat