Word: mats
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LAST Wednesday morning my old door-mat disappeared. The goody's one eye twinkled with malicious delight as she informed me of my loss. She added, by way of consolation, "Bad 'cess to it! 'T was always a thrippin' me up." And I have no doubt the majority of the entry would have indorsed her sentiments, if not her brogue; for the mat, although by no means a complete hole, was yet very perfect in its way, and had acquired many of the properties that are supposed to be peculiar to traps. One rent in particular seemed...
...this old mat had a peculiar value in my eyes, for it not only served the usual purpose of mats, but it was a transmittendum, and a very venerable one, too. Long years ago one of those New England boys of the bean-pole structure, who entered college at the age of thirteen, brought the mat with him from his farm-home on Narragansett Bay. It was new then, and had been woven in bright colors by an old Indian squaw, a veritable descendant of King Philip. For a year it lay before the front door of the old farm...
...five decades the mat was passed from one occupant of the room to the succeeding one, until the written record began to read like a chapter in the Old Testament, "And So-and-so bequeaths it unto What's-his-name,' and "What's-his-name bequeaths it unto Thing-a-my," and so they go on bequeathing, until the legacy comes to an end with me. At first this transmittendum had a price. In '32 a Divinity student, who had purchased the mat for a dollar and a half, parted with it, "at a great sacrifice, and because...
...have owned the old mat will lament its loss, not because of itself, - for, what with its rags and its dust, it had become something of an old fossil, - but because, like other old fossils, it called up memories of a past both near and remote. What trains of thought will be roused by the news of its disappearance! Old men will recall the days, far away, when they crossed it, and will wonder at its endurance. Recent graduates will remember its signs of undoubted antiquity, and will laugh when they think of the disasters that it has caused passers...
...knocks at Nos. 7 and 8 deafen me to the appeals of itinerant pedlers and orange-men. It is not always a wise course, however, to feign absence; for the other day, on my paying no attention to his rap, a poco of archaeological tastes carried off my door-mat, with the intention, probably, of representing his firm in the old clo' department at the Centennial. But, as a general thing, if one wishes to avoid trying on the new varieties of "Patent Braces," and other articles of wearing apparel, he will best secure his object by studying the peculiarities...