The little
horn case with flint and steel he retained.
The ante-room to what had been my uncle's bed-room and was now mine, had
on its walls trophies of hunting-spears and other weapons of the chase.
Agathemer selected two knives for killing wounded stags, dependable
implements, blade and shank one piece of fine steel, the handles of stag-
horn, fastened on with copper rivets.
With the bag of food, the two knives and the two tinder boxes we went up
my uncle's private stair to his library and reading room.
My uncle had had his own ideas as to nearly everything, usually much at
variance with other people's ideas. As to building his ideas, perhaps,
were less aberrant than his opinions on other subjects, but, certainly he
was as tenacious of them as of his other notions.
He held, in the first place, that sleeping-rooms on the ground-floor of
any house were unhealthy and a relic of primitive barbarism. He was
equally positive that, in the country, where there was ample room for a
building to spread out, it was folly to construct a dwelling of three or
more stories: such villas he railed at as exhibitions of silly
extravagance and of a desire to appear different from one's neighbors. His
villa, therefore, was of two stories only.
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