incarnate. He took a violent affection for my grandfather; so they sat
drinking, and smoking, and telling stories, and singing Dutch and Irish
songs, without understanding a word each other said, until the little
Hollander was fairly swampt with his own gin and water, and carried off
to bed, whooping and hiccuping, and trolling the burthen of a Low Dutch
love song.

Well, gentlemen, my grandfather was shown to his quarters, up a huge
Staircase composed of loads of hewn timber; and through long rigmarole
passages, hung with blackened paintings of fruit, and fish, and game,
and country frollics, and huge kitchens, and portly burgomasters, such
as you see about old-fashioned Flemish inns, till at length he arrived
at his room.

An old-times chamber it was, sure enough, and crowded with all kinds of
trumpery. It looked like an infirmary for decayed and superannuated
furniture; where everything diseased and disabled was sent to nurse, or
to be forgotten. Or rather, it might have been taken for a general
congress of old legitimate moveables, where every kind and country had
a representative. No two chairs were alike: such high backs and low
backs, and leather bottoms and worsted bottoms, and straw bottoms, and
no bottoms; and cracked marble tables with curiously carved legs,
holding balls in their claws, as though they were going to play at
ninepins.

My grandfather made a bow to the motley assemblage as he entered, and
having undressed himself, placed his light in the fire-place, asking
pardon of the tongs, which seemed to be making love to the shovel in
the chimney corner, and whispering soft nonsense in its ear.