"Yes, my son, I think I need not ask you to promise to lend them to
me when I wish to borrow them. I have a great affection for this
closet, Frank, and therefore I give it to you. If the walls could
speak, they could tell you a great deal of your mother's history."

"I wish they could; I shall sit there a great deal, and I should
like to hear all they have to say."

"As I have promised you to let you sit up till the new year comes
in, I will tell you something now of what they would say. You know
that this is the house in which I was born, so that this closet knew
me from a child. Many a time, when I was a little girl, has my
mother shut me up in it for refusing to obey her. It was gentle
treatment shutting me up in this closet; had it not been called a
punishment, I never should have thought it one. In summer time, the
whispering of the wind through the pine trees rebuked my bad temper,
and seemed to say, 'Hush, Alice! Peace! Be still.' I always came out
better than I went into it. When I was nine years old, my father
gave me this closet for my own use altogether. Many of the books
that are in it now were in it then, and the same desk and chair
stand there to this day. My father had just built on to his house
the addition which gave him the library which I now use; his law
books and papers, &c., required better accommodation; and, from that
time, the closet became mine. He gave it to me, as I do to you, for
a New Year's gift; and this is one reason why I love to give it to
you for the same purpose. It is a very dear and sacred spot to me,
Frank, this closet, and I think you will like to hear something of
its history."