o matches, no looking-glass--except a metal
one, about as powerful as a pail of water. And not a chromo.
I had been used to chromos for years, and I saw now that without
my suspecting it a passion for art had got worked into the fabric
of my being, and was become a part of me. It made me homesick
to look around over this proud and gaudy but heartless barrenness
and remember that in our house in East Hartford, all unpretending
as it was, you couldn't go into a room but you would find an
insurance-chromo, or at least a three-color God-Bless-Our-Home
over the door; and in the parlor we had nine. But here, even in
my grand room of state, there wasn't anything in the nature of
a picture except a thing the size of a bedquilt, which was either
woven or knitted (it had darned places in it), and nothing in it
was the right color or the right shape; and as for proportions,
even Raphael himself couldn't have botched them more formidably,
after all his practice on those nightmares they call his "celebrated
Hampton Court cartoons." Raphael was a bird. We had several
of his chromos; one was his "Miraculous Draught of Fishes," where
he puts in a miracle of his own--puts three men into a canoe which
wouldn't have held a dog without upsetting. I always admired
to study R.'s art, it was so fresh and unconventional.

There wasn't even a bell or a speaking-tube in the castle. I had
a great many servants, and those that were on duty lolled in the
anteroom; and when I wanted one of them I had to go and call for him.
There was no gas, there were no candles; a bronze dish half full
of boarding-house butter with a blazing rag floating in it was
the thing that produced what was regarded as light. A lot of
these hung along the walls and modified the dark, just toned it
down enough to make it dismal. If you went out at night, your
servants carried torches. There were no books, pens, paper or
ink, and no glass in the openings they believed to be windows.
It is a little thing--glass is--until it is absent, then it becomes
a big thing. But perhaps the worst of all was, that there wasn't
any sugar, coffee, tea, or tobacco. I saw that I was just another
Robinson Crusoe cast away on an uninhabited island, with no society
but some more or less tame animals, and if I wanted to make life
bearable I must do as he did--invent, contrive, create, reorganize
things; set brain and hand to work, and keep them busy. Well,
that was in my line.

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