A Christmas Greeting - A Series of Stories

" In the street, up there, was an old, a very old house, -it was almost three hundred years old, for that might be known by reading the great beam on which the date of the year was carved : together with tulips and hop-binds there were whole verses spelled as in former times, and over every window was a distorted face cut out in the beam. The one story stood forward a great way over the other ; and directly under the eaves was a leaden spout with a dragon's head ; the rain-water should have run out of the mouth, but it ran out of the belly, for there was a hole in the spout.
All the other houses in the street were so new and so neat, with large window-panes and smooth walls, one could easily see that they would have nothing to do with the old house : they certainly thought, "How long is that old decayed thing to stand here as a spectacle in the street ? And then the protecting windows stand so far out, that no one can see from our windows what happens in that direction ! The steps are as broad as those of a palace, and as high as to a church tower.
The iron railings look just like the door to an old family vault, and then they have brass tops, that's so stupid ! ""