To his left rose the dingy form of a thin, upright clock in an oaken
case; beyond the clock, a spit and a musket were fastened in parallels to
the wall. Below those twin emblems of war and cookery were four shelves,
containing plates of pewter and delf, and terminating, centaur-like, in a
sort of dresser. At the other side of these domestic conveniences was a
picture of Mrs. Lobkins, in a scarlet body and a hat and plume. At the
back of the fair hostess stretched the blanket we have before mentioned.
As a relief to the monotonous surface of this simple screen, various
ballads and learned legends were pinned to the blanket. There might you
read in verses, pathetic and unadorned, how--

"Sally loved a sailor lad
As fought with famous Shovel!"

There might you learn, if of two facts so instructive you were before
unconscious, that

"Ben the toper loved his bottle,--
Charley only loved the lasses!"

When of these and various other poetical effusions you were somewhat
wearied, the literary fragments in bumbler prose afforded you equal
edification and delight. There might you fully enlighten yourself as to
the "Strange and Wonderful News from Kensington, being a most full and
true Relation how a Maid there is supposed to have been carried away by
an Evil Spirit on Wednesday, 15th of April last, about Midnight." There,
too, no less interesting and no less veracious, was that uncommon
anecdote touching the chief of many-throned powers entitled "The Divell
of Mascon; or, the true Relation of the Chief Things which an Unclean
Spirit did and said at Mascon, in Burgundy, in the house of one Mr.