It was soon impossible to see one's hand before one's eyes;
and the carriage lamps served only to reveal a chaotic fury of
snow-flakes, crossing each other's path at all angles, in the eddies of
the wind amongst the houses. The coachman had to keep encouraging his
horses to get them to face it at all. The ground was very slippery; and
so fast fell the snow, that it had actually begun to ball in the horses'
feet before we reached our destination. When we were all safe in Mrs.
Armstrong's drawing-room, we sat for a while listening to the wind
roaring in the chimney, before any of us spoke. And then I did not join
in the conversation, but pleased myself with looking at the room; for
next to human faces, I delight in human abodes, which will always, more
or less, according to the amount of choice vouchsafed in the occupancy,
be like the creatures who dwell in them. Even the soldier-crab must have
some likeness to the snail of whose house he takes possession, else he
could not live in it at all.
The first thing to be done by one who would read a room is, to clear it
as soon as possible of the air of the marvellous, the air of the
storybook, which pervades every place at the first sight of it. But I am
not now going to write a treatise upon this art, for which I have not
time to invent a name; but only to give as much of a description of this
room as will enable my readers to feel quite at home with us in it,
during our evening there.
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