One side of this space was occupied by the square front of the Province House , three stories high and surmounted by a cupola , on the top of which a gilded Indian was discernible , with his bow bent and his arrow on the string , as if aiming at the weathercock on the spire of the Old South . The figure has kept this attitude for seventy years or more , ever since good Deacon Drowne , a cunning carver of wood , first stationed him on his long sentinel 's watch over the city . The Province House is constructed of brick , which seems recently to have been overlaid with a coat of light-colored paint . A flight of red freestone steps fenced in by a balustrade of curiously wrought iron ascends from the court-yard to the spacious porch , over which is a balcony with an iron balustrade of similar pattern and workmanship to that beneath . These letters and figures -- `` 16 P.S. 79 '' -- are wrought into the ironwork of the balcony , and probably express the date of the edifice , with the initials of its founder 's name . A wide door with double leaves admitted me into the hall or entry , on the right of which is the entrance to the bar-room . It was in this apartment , I presume , that the ancient governors held their levees with vice-regal pomp , surrounded by the military men , the counsellors , the judges , and other officers of the Crown , while all the loyalty of the province thronged to do them honor . But the room in its present condition can not boast even of faded magnificence . The panelled wainscot is covered with dingy paint and acquires a duskier hue from the deep shadow into which the Province House is thrown by the brick block that shuts it in from Washington street . A ray of sunshine never visits this apartment any more than the glare of the festal torches which have been extinguished from the era of the Revolution . The most venerable and ornamental object is a chimney-piece set round with Dutch tiles of blue-figured china , representing scenes from Scripture , and , for aught I know , the lady of Pownall or Bernard may have sat beside this fireplace and told her children the story of each blue tile . A bar in modern style , well replenished with decanters , bottles , cigar-boxes and network bags of lemons , and provided with a beer-pump and a soda-fount , extends along one side of the room . At my entrance an elderly person was smacking his lips with a zest which satisfied me that the cellars of the Province House still hold good liquor , though doubtless of other vintages than were quaffed by the old governors . After sipping a glass of port-sangaree prepared by the skilful hands of Mr. Thomas Waite , I besought that worthy successor and representative of so many historic personages to conduct me over their time-honored mansion . He readily complied , but , to confess the truth , I was forced to draw strenuously upon my imagination in order to find aught that was interesting in a house which , without its historic associations , would have seemed merely such a tavern as is usually favored by the custom of decent city boarders and old-fashioned country gentlemen . The chambers , which were probably spacious in former times , are now cut up by partitions and subdivided into little nooks , each affording scanty room for the narrow bed and chair and dressing-table of a single lodger : The great staircase , however , may be termed , without much hyperbole , a feature of grandeur and magnificence . It winds through the midst of the house by flights of broad steps , each flight terminating in a square landing-place , whence the ascent is continued toward the cupola . A carved balustrade , freshly painted in the lower stories , but growing dingier as we ascend , borders the staircase with its quaintly twisted and intertwined pillars , from top to bottom . Up these stairs the military boots , or perchance the gouty shoes , of many a governor have trodden as the wearers mounted to the cupola which afforded them so wide a view over their metropolis and the surrounding country . The cupola is an octagon with several windows , and a door opening upon the roof .
From this station , as I pleased myself with imagining , Gage may have beheld his disastrous victory XXXXX Bunker Hill -LRB- unless one of the tri-mountains intervened -RRB- , and Howe have marked the approaches of Washington 's besieging army , although the buildings since erected in the vicinity have shut out almost every object save the steeple of the Old South , which seems almost within arm 's length .
Up for from in into of on than that while