staircase leads from the hall to the second story, which is arranged
much like the first. Over this is the garret. I needn't tell a
New England boy what--a museum of curiosities is the garret of a
well-regulated New England house of fifty or sixty years' standing.
Here meet together, as if by some preconcerted arrangement, all the
broken-down chairs of the household, all the spavined tables, all
the seedy hats, all the intoxicated-looking boots, all the split
walking-sticks that have retired from business, "weary with the march of
life." The pots, the pans, the trunks, the bottles--who may hope to
make an inventory of the numberless odds and ends collected in this
bewildering lumber-room? But what a place it is to sit of an afternoon
with the rain pattering on the roof! What a place in which to read
Gulliver's Travels, or the famous adventures of Rinaldo Rinaldini!

My grandfather's house stood a little back from the main street, in
the shadow of two handsome elms, whose overgrown boughs would dash
themselves against the gables whenever the wind blew hard. In the rear
was a pleasant garden, covering perhaps a quarter of an acre, full of
plum-trees and gooseberry bushes. These trees were old settlers, and are
all dead now, excepting one, which bears a purple plum as big as an egg.
This tree, as I remark, is still standing, and a more beautiful tree
to tumble out of never grew anywhere. In the northwestern corner of the
garden were the stables and carriage-house opening upon a narrow lane.
You may imagine that I made an early visit to that locality to inspect
Gypsy. Indeed, I paid her a visit every half-hour during the first day
of my arrival. At the twenty-fourth visit she trod on my foot rather
heavily, as a reminder, probably, that I was wearing out my welcome. She
was a knowing little pony, that Gypsy, and I shall have much to say of
her in the course of these pages.