dining-room.

Two of these were sea-pieces. One represented a fat-looking, smoky
fishing-boat, with three whiskerandoes in red caps, and their browsers
legs rolled up, hauling in a seine. There was high French-like land in
one corner, and a tumble-down gray lighthouse surmounting it. The waves
were toasted brown, and the whole picture looked mellow and old. I used
to think a piece of it might taste good.

The other represented three old-fashioned French men-of-war with high
castles, like pagodas, on the bow and stern, such as you see in
Froissart; and snug little turrets on top of the mast, full of little
men, with something undefinable in their hands. All three were sailing
through a bright-blue sea, blue as Sicily skies; and they were leaning
over on their sides at a fearful angle; and they must have been going
very fast, for the white spray was about the bows like a snow-storm.

Then, we had two large green French portfolios of colored prints, more
than I could lift at that age. Every Saturday my brothers and sisters
used to get them out of the corner where they were kept, and spreading
them on the floor, gaze at them with never-failing delight.

They were of all sorts. Some were pictures of Versailles, its
masquerades, its drawing-rooms, its fountains, and courts, and gardens,
with long lines of thick foliage cut into fantastic doors and windows,
and towers and pinnacles. Others were rural scenes, full of fine skies,
pensive cows standing up to the knees in water, and shepherd-boys and
cottages in the distance, half concealed in vineyards and vines.

And others were pictures of natural history, representing rhinoceroses