l-known one--in Washington at least--of Benjamin
Franklin at the Court of France; interesting no doubt in a general
way, but scarcely calculated to hold the eye at so critical an
instant. Neither did the shelf below call for more than momentary
attention, for it was absolutely bare. So was the time-worn, if not
blood-stained hearth, save for the impenetrable shadow cast over it
by the huge bulk of the great settle standing at its edge.

I have already described the impression made on me at my first
entrance by this ancient and characteristic article of furniture.

It was intensified now as my eye ran over the clumsy carving which
added to the discomfort of its high straight back and as I smelt the
smell of its moldy and possibly mouse-haunted cushions. A crawling
sense of dread took the place of my first instinctive repugnance;
not because superstition had as yet laid its grip upon me, although
the place, the hour and the near and veritable presence of death
were enough to rouse the imagination past the bounds of the actual,
but because of a discovery I had made--a discovery which emphasized
the tradition that all who had been found dead under the mantel had
fallen as if from the end of this monstrous and patriarchal bench.
Do you ask what this discovery was? It can be told in a word. This
one end and only this end had been made comfortable for the sitter.
For a space scarcely wide enough for one, the seat and back at this
special point had been upholstered with leather, fastened to the
wood with heavy wrought nails. The remaining portion stretched out
bare, hard and inexpressibly forbidding to one who sought ease there,
or even a moment of casual rest. The natural inference was that the
owner of this quaint piece of furniture had been a very selfish man
who thought only of his own comfort. But might he not have had some
other reason for his apparent niggardliness? As I asked myself this
question and noted how the long and embracing arm which guarded this
cushioned retreat was flattened on top for the convenient holding of
decanter and glass, feelings to which I can give no name and which I
had fondly believed myself proof against, began to take the place of
judgment and reason. Before I realized the nature of my own impulse
or to what it was driving me, I found myself moving slowly and
steadily toward this formidable seat, under an irresistible desire
to fling myself down upon these old cushions and--

But