In consequence of its dark and gloomy aspect, and the feeling of awe with which the family and servants regard its mystical contents, I have its undisturbed enjoyment; nobody feels a wish to enter it even in the day time, and I verily believe they would not do so at the witching hour of night, lest the mystical signs should take summary vengeance on their unhallowed intrusion.

The neighbours imagine me to be an adept in the “black art,” an astrologer, or a fortune-teller, but I have no pretentions whatever to any such titles; this report has got abroad in consequence of a maid-servant having once had the temerity to peep through the key-hole, and observed on the wall opposite her “line of sight,” some triangular characters.  She had been in the habit of poring over a dream book, and the art of casting nativities; the Prophetic Almanac was her oracle, and its terrific title-page she informed her fellow servant “had just those queer triangle things as was hung on the walls of young master’s study.”  She was “sure that he could tell her fortune.”  This important intelligence, delivered with due confidence to her fellow servant, of course spread like wildfire among the other occupants of the “lower regions,” and from them amongst the handmaidens of sundry other dwellings.  Thus has my astrological character been established.

As all domestics are excluded my sanctum, of course I am obliged to “do for myself,” and this I prefer to being “done for,” or having my room “set to rights,” according to their notions of neatness; my feelings on this point are exactly those of Scott’s Antiquary; I therefore “do for myself,” and consequently, it follows I must light my own fire.  Than on the morning I have mentioned, the “grand agent” of the chemist was never more required.  The air bit shrewdly, and it was “bitter cold” upon entering the sanctum, although I had not quitted it many hours, having watched the “old year out and the new year in,” and then taken a short nap; yet Jack Frost had been active during my absence, and cooled down the air of the sanctum some degrees below the freezing point, at the same time coating the window panes with his beautiful crystalline figures.  The dark walls did look most awful, seen through the dun yellow light of the fog, which met my view upon drawing aside the cabalistically hung curtains.  I cast a look at the Rumford grate; its black cold bars “grinned most horrible and ghastly.”  A sympathy was instantly established between them and my nasal organ, for I found a drop of pure crystal pendant from its extremity.  Here, thought I, is an admirable question for “The Plain Why and Because.” Why does a drop of water hang from the nose on a frosty morning?  Because the natural heat of the body sends up vapour into the head, and that being exposed most to cold, the vapour condenses, and a drop of water runs from the nostril, as it would do from the head of a still.  Upon looking at anything very cold, sympathy excites the