- end_line
- 8199
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T03:55:03.883Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 8153
- text
- JIMMY ROSE
A time ago, no matter how long precisely, I, an old man, removed from
the country to the city, having become unexpected heir to a great old
house in a narrow street of one of the lower wards once the haunt of
style and fashion, full of gay parlours and bridal chambers; but now,
for the most part, transformed into counting-rooms and ware-houses.
There bales and boxes usurp the place of sofas; day-books and ledgers
are spread where once the delicious breakfast toast was buttered. In
those old wards the glorious old soft-waffle days are over.
Nevertheless, in this old house of mine, so strangely spared, some
monument of departed days survived. Nor was this the only one. Amidst
the warehouse ranges some few other dwellings likewise stood. The
street’s transmutation was not yet complete. Like those old English
friars and nuns, long haunting the ruins of their retreats after they
had been despoiled, so some few strange old gentlemen and ladies still
lingered in the neighbourhood, and would not, could not, might not quit
it. And I thought that when, one spring, emerging from my
white-blossoming orchard, my own white hairs and white ivory-headed cane
were added to their loitering census, that those poor old souls insanely
fancied the ward was looking up--the tide of fashion setting back again.
For many years the old house had been unoccupied by an owner; those into
whose hands it from time to time had passed having let it out to various
shifting tenants; decayed old townspeople, mysterious recluses, or
transient, ambiguous-looking foreigners.
While from certain cheap furbishings to which the exterior had been
subjected, such as removing a fine old pulpit-like porch crowning the
summit of six lofty steps, and set off with a broad-brimmed
sounding-board over-shadowing the whole, as well as replacing the
original heavy window shutters (each pierced with a crescent in the
upper panel to admit an Oriental and moony light into the otherwise
shut-up rooms of a sultry morning in July) with frippery Venetian
blinds; while, I repeat, the front of the house hereby presented an
incongruous aspect, as if the graft of modernness had not taken in its
ancient stock; still, however it might fare without, within little or
nothing had been altered. The cellars were full of great grim, arched
bins of blackened brick, looking like the ancient tombs of Templars,
while overhead were shown the first floor timbers, huge, square, and
massive, all red oak, and through long eld, of a rich and Indian colour.
So large were those timbers, and so thickly ranked, that to walk in
those capacious cellars was much like walking along a line-of-battle
ship’s gun-deck.
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