The secretary in Illustration [103] is an extraordinarily fine piece. It is of mahogany, and tradition says that it was brought from Holland, but it is distinctly a Chippendale piece, from the fine carving upon the feet and above the doors, and from the reeded pilasters with exquisitely carved capitals. There are five of these pilasters,—three in front and one upon each side, at the back. The doors hold looking-glasses, the shape of which, straight at the bottom and in curves at the top, is that of the early looking-glasses. The two semicircular, concave spaces in the interior above the cabinet are lacquered in black and gold.
The middle compartment in the desk, between the pigeonholes, has a door, behind which is a large drawer. When this drawer is pulled entirely out, at its back may be seen small drawers, and upon taking out one of these and pressing a spring, secret compartments are disclosed.
Dr. Holmes, in “The Professor at the Breakfast Table,” has written of this secretary thus:—
“At the house of a friend where I once passed a night, was one of those stately, upright cabinet desks and cases of drawers which were not rare in prosperous families during the past century [i.e. the eighteenth]. It had held the clothes and the books and papers of generation after generation. The hands that opened its drawers had grown withered, shrivelled, and at last had been folded in death. The children that played with the lower handles had got tall enough to open the desk,—to reach the upper shelves behind the folding doors,—grown bent after a while,—and followed those who had gone before, and left the old cabinet to be ransacked by a new generation.
“A boy of twelve was looking at it a few years ago, and, being a quick-witted fellow, saw that all the space was not accounted for by the smaller drawers in the part beneath the lid of the desk. Prying about with busy eyes and fingers, he at length came upon a spring, on pressing which, a secret drawer flew from its hiding-place. It had never been opened but by the maker. The mahogany shavings and dust were lying in it, as when the artisan closed it, and when I saw it, it was as fresh as if that day finished.
“Is there not one little drawer in your soul, my sweet reader, which no hand but yours has ever opened, and which none that have known you seemed to have suspected? What does it hold? A sin? I hope not.”
The “quick-witted boy, with busy eyes and fingers,” was the present owner of the secretary, the Rev. William R. Huntington, D.D., of Grace Church, New York, and since Dr. Holmes wrote of the secretary, new generations have grown up to reach the handles of the drawers and to ransack the old cabinet.