O, could he but have drawn his Wit
As well in Brass, as he has hit
His Face; the Print would then surpass
All that was ever writ in Brass.
But since he cannot, Reader, look
Not on his Picture, but his Book."
This was a reprint of the first edition of Shakespeare's works, collected by John Heminge and Henry Condell, two of his friends in the company of comedians.
When a small child, the perusal of the "Arabian Nights" possessed me with the idea that their dazzling pictures were to be realized when we emerged from plantation life into the outside world, and the disappointment at not finding Richmond paved with gems and gold like those cities in Eastern story is remembered to the present time.
Brought up amid antiquities, the Virginia girl disturbed herself not about modern fashions, appearing happy in her mother's old silks and satins made over. She rejoiced in her grandmother's laces and in her brooch of untold dimensions, with a weeping willow and tombstone on it,—a constant reminder of the past,—which had descended from some remote ancestor.
She slept in a high bedstead—the bed of her ancestors; washed her face on an old-fashioned, spindle-legged washstand; mounted a high chair to arrange her hair before the old-fashioned mirror on the high bureau; climbed to the top of a high mantelpiece to take down the old-fashioned high candlesticks; climbed a pair of steps to get into the high-swung, old-fashioned carriage; perched her feet upon the top of a high brass fender if she wanted to get them warm; and, in short, had to perform so many gymnastics that she felt convinced her ancestors must have been a race of giants, or they could not have required such tall and inaccessible furniture.