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Martin, Benj. N.

"Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader Being Selections from the Chief American Writers"

_= (Manual, p. 505.)
From "Recollections of the West."
=_120._= OLD ST. GENEVIEVE, IN MISSOURI.
The house of M. Beauvais was a long, low building, with a porch or shed
in front, and another in the rear; the chimney occupied the center,
dividing the house into two parts, with each a fireplace. One of these
served for dining-room, parlor, and principal bed-chamber; the other was
the kitchen; and each had a small room taken off at the end for private
chambers or cabinets. There was no loft or garret, a pair of stairs
being a rare thing in the village. The furniture, excepting the beds and
the looking-glass, was of the most common kind.... The yard was enclosed
with cedar pickets, eight or ten inches in diameter, and six feet high,
placed upright, sharpened at the top, in the manner of a stockade fort.
In front the yard was narrow, but in the rear quite spacious, and
containing the barn and stables, the negro quarters, and all the
necessary offices of a farm-yard. Beyond this, there was a spacious
garden enclosed with pickets....
The pursuits of the inhabitants were chiefly agricultural, although all
were more or less engaged in traffic for peltries with the Indians, or
in working the lead mines in the interior. Peltry and lead constituted
almost the only circulating medium.


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