ad a prevailing odor of teak and lacquer. In
the front hall was a vast china cane-holder; a turretted Calcutta hat
hung on the hat-tree; a heavy, varnished Chinese umbrella stood in a
corner; a long and handsome settee from Java stood against the wall.
In the parlors, on either hand, were Chinese tables shutting up like
telescopes, elaborate rattan chairs of different kinds, and numberless
other things of this sort, which had plainly been honestly come by, and
not bought.

Then, if you met the Captain's favor, he would show you with becoming
pride some family relics, and tell you about them. They came mostly
from his paternal grandfather, who was a shipmaster too, had commanded a
privateer in the Revolution, and made a fortune. There were a number
of pieces of handsome furniture,--these you could see for yourself What
would be shown you, with a half-diffident air, would be: a silver mug;
two Revere tablespoons; a few tiny teaspoons marked F.; a handsome sword
and scabbard; a yellow satin waistcoat and small-clothes; portraits,
not artistic, but effective, of his grandfather, in a velvet coat and
knee-breeches, with a long spyglass in his hand, and of his grandmother,
a strong, matter-of-fact looking woman, handsomely dressed.

But the thing which the Captain secretly treasured most, but brought out
last, was his grandmother's Dutch Bible. It is a curious old book; you
can see it still if you wish. It has an elaborate frontispiece. Sixteen
cuts of leading incidents in Scripture history conduct you by gentle
stages, from Eden, through the offering of Isaac, to the close of the
Evangelists, and surround Dr. Martin Luther, who, in a gown, holds back
the curtains of a pillared alcove, to show you, through two windows, an
Old and a New Testament landscape, and a lady sitting beneath a canopy,
with an open volume. The covers are of thick bevelled board covered with
leather. There was once a heavy clasp. The edges are richly gilded, and
figures are pricked in the gilding. It is very handsomely printed.
It was in the possession, in 1760, of a young New England girl, the
Captain's grandmother. There is a story about it,--a story too long to
tell here. Suffice it to say that the Captain's ancestor, who settled
early in New England, came from Leyden shortly after Mr. John Robinson.
A hundred years later and more, in the oddest way, an acquaintance
sprang up with certain Dutch connections, and in the course of it this
Bible, then n