They were
seated round a great burnished stove, that might have been
mistaken for an altar at which they were worshipping. It was
covered with various kitchen vessels of resplendent brightness,
among which steamed and hissed a huge copper tea-kettle. A large
lamp threw a strong mass of light upon the group, bringing out
many odd features in strong relief. Its yellow rays partially
illumined the spacious kitchen, dying duskily away into remote
corners, except where they settled in mellow radiance on the
broad side of a flitch of bacon or were reflected back from
well-scoured utensils that gleamed from the midst of obscurity. A
strapping Flemish lass, with long golden pendants in her ears and
a necklace with a golden heart suspended to it, was the presiding
priestess of the temple.
Many of the company were furnished with pipes, and most of them
with some kind of evening potation. I found their mirth was
occasioned by anecdotes which a little swarthy Frenchman, with a
dry weazen face and large whiskers, was giving of his
love-adventures; at the end of each of which there was one of
those bursts of honest unceremonious laughter in which a man
indulges in that temple of true liberty, an inn.
As I had no better mode of getting through a tedious blustering
evening, I took my seat near the stove, and listened to a variety
of travellers' tales, some very extravagant and most ver dull.
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