Twice-Told Tales (1-2)
Paperback
Currently unavailable to order
ISBN10: 1151297852
ISBN13: 9781151297853
Publisher: General Books
Pages: 276
Weight: 0.90
Height: 0.62 Width: 9.01 Depth: 5.98
Language: English
ISBN13: 9781151297853
Publisher: General Books
Pages: 276
Weight: 0.90
Height: 0.62 Width: 9.01 Depth: 5.98
Language: English
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1882 edition. Excerpt: ... its historic associations, would have seemed merely such a tavern as is usually favored by the custom of decent city boarders, and old-fashioned country gentlemen. The chambers, which were probably spacious in former times, are now cut up by partitions, and subdivided into little nooks, each affording scanty room for the narrow bed and chair and dressing-table of a single lodger. The great staircase, however, may be termed, without much hyperbole, a feature of grandeur aud magnificence. It winds through the midst of the house by flights of broad steps, each flight terminating iu a square landing-place, whence the ascent is continued towards the cupola. A carved balustrade, freshly painted in the lower stories, but growing dingier as we ascend, borders the staircase with its quaintly twisted and intertwined pillars, from top to bottom. Up these stairs the military boots, or perchance the gouty shoes, of many a governor have trodden, as the wearers mounted to the cupola, which afforded them so wide a view over their metropolis and the surrounding country. The cupola is an octagon, with several windows, and a dooi opening upon the roof. From this station, as I pleased myself with imagining, Gage may have heheld his disastrous victory on Bunker Hill (unless one of the trimountains intervened), and Howe have marked the approaches of Washington's besieging army; although the buildings since erected in the vicinity have shut out almost every object, save the steeple of the Old South, which seems almost within arm's length. Descending from the cupola, I paused in the garret to observe the ponderous white-oak framework, so much more massive than the frames of modern houses, and thereby resembling an antique skeleton. The brick walls, the materials of...