propped against walls, thence obtaining a security which their own
strength would not give them. At the further end of the room there was
an ancient piece of furniture, which was always called 'papa's
secretary', at which Mr Crawley customarily sat and wrote his sermons,
and did all work that was done by him within the house. The man who had
made it, some time in the last century, had intended it to be a locked
guardian for domestic documents, and the receptacle for all that was
most private in the house of some paterfamilias. But beneath the hands
of Mr Crawley it always stood open; and with the exception of the small
space at which he wrote, was covered with dog's-eared books, from
nearly all of which the covers had disappeared.

There were there two odd volumes of Euripides, a Greek Testament, an
Odyssey, a duodecimo Pindar, and a miniature Anacreon. There was half a
Horace--the two first books of the Odes at the beginning and the De Arte
Poetica at the end having disappeared. There was a little bit of a
volume of Cicero, and there were Caesar's 'Commentaries' in two volumes,
so stoutly bound that they had defied the combined ill-usage of time and
the Crawley family. All these were piled upon the secretary, with many
others--odd volumes of sermons and the like; but the Greek and Latin lay
at the top, and showed signs of frequent use. There was one arm-chair in
the room--a Windsor chair, as such used to be called, made soft by an
old cushion in the back, in which Mr Crawley sat when both he and his
wife were in the room, and Mrs Crawley when he was absent. And there was
an old horsehair sofa--now almost denuded of its horsehair--but that,
like the tables required the assistance of a friendly wall. Then there
was a half a dozen of other chairs--all of different sorts--and they
completed the furniture of the room. It was not such a room as one would
wish to see inhabited by an beneficed clergyman of the Church of
England; but they who know what money will do and what it will not, will