books are the most agreeable adornment of a room."

"Then, Marianne," said Bob, "we have something to start with, at all events. There are my English Classics and English Poets, and my uniform editions of Scott and Thackeray and Macaulay and Prescott and Irving and Longfellow and Lowell and Hawthorne and Holmes and a host more. We really have something pretty there."

"You are a lucky girl," I said, "to have so much secured. A girl brought up in a house full of books, always able to turn to this or that author and look for any passage or poem when she thinks of it, does n't know what a blank a house without books might be."

"Well," said Marianne, "mamma and I were counting over my treasures the other day. Do you know, I have one really fine old engraving, that Bob says is quite a genuine thing; and then there is that pencil-sketch that poor Schöne made for me the month before he died, it is truly artistic."

one of the loveliest of domestic superstitions; only do not make it a bar to hospitality, and shrink from having a friend to tea with you, unless you feel equal to getting up to the high shelf where you keep it, getting it down, washing, and putting it up again.

"But in serving a table, I say, as I said of a house, beauty is a necessity, and beauty is cheap. Because you cannot afford beauty in one form, it does not follow that you cannot have it in another. Because one cannot afford to keep up a perennial supply of delicate china and crystal, subject to the accidents of raw, untrained servants, it does not follow that the every-day table need present a sordid assortment of articles chosen simply for cheapness, while the whole capacity of the purse is given to the set forever locked away for state-occasions.

"A table-service, all of simple white, of graceful forms, even though not of china, if arranged with care, with snowy, wellkept table-linen, clear glasses, and bright American plate in place of solid silver,

of Landseer's," said Bob.

"There's no danger that your rooms will not be pretty," said I, "now you are fairly on the right track."

"But, papa," said Marianne, "I am troubled about one thing. My love of beauty runs into everything. I want pretty things for my table, and yet, as you say, servants are so careless, one cannot use such things freely without great waste."

"For my part," said my wife, "I believe in best china, to be kept carefully on an upper-shelf, and taken down for high-days and holidays; it may be a superstition, but I believe in it. It must never be taken out except when the mistress herself can see that it is safely cared for. My mother always washed her china herself; and it was a very pretty social ceremony, after tea was over, while she sat among us washing her pretty cups, and wiping them on a fine damask towel." "With all my heart," said I; "have your best china, and venerate it,

it is

glass of flowers every day, and your table may look pretty;- and it is far more important that it should look pretty for the family every day than for company once in two weeks."

"I tell my girls," said my wife, "as the result of my experience, you may have your pretty china and your lovely fanciful articles for the table only so long as you can take all the care of them yourselves. As soon as you get tired of doing this, and put them into the hands of the trustiest servants, some good, wellmeaning creature is sure to break her heart and your own and your very pet. darling china pitcher all in one and the same minute; and then her frantic despair leaves you not even the relief of scolding."

"I have become perfectly sure," said I, "that there are spiteful little brownies, intent on seducing good women to sin, who mount guard over the special idols of the china-closet. If you hear a crash, and a loud Irish wail from the inner depths, you

never think of its being a yellow pieplate, or that dreadful one-handled tureen that you have been wishing were broken these five years; no, indeed, — it is sure to be the lovely painted china bowl, wreathed with morning-glories and sweet-peas, or the engraved glass goblet, with quaint old-English initials. China sacrificed must be a great means of saintship to women. Pope, I think, puts it as the crowning grace of his perfect woman, that she is

'Mistress of herself, though china fall.'"

"I ought to be a saint by this time, then," said mamma; "for in the course of my days I have lost so many idols by breakage, and peculiar accidents that seemed by a special fatality to befall my prettiest and most irreplaceable things, that in fact it has come to be a superstitious feeling now with which I regard anything particularly pretty of a breakable nature."

66 Well," said Marianne, "unless one has a great deal of money, it seems to me that the investment in these pretty fragilities is rather a poor one."

"Yet," said I, "the principle of beauty is never so captivating as when it presides over the hour of daily meals. I would have the room where they are served one of the pleasantest and sunniest in the house. I would have its coloring cheerful, and there should be companionable pictures and engravings on the walls. Of all things, I dislike a room that seems to be kept like a restaurant, merely to eat in. I like to see in a dining-room something that betokens a pleasant sitting-room at other hours. I like there some books, a comfortable sofa or lounge, and all that should make it cozy and inviting. The custom in some families, of adopting for the daily meals one of the two parlors which a city-house furnishes, has often seemed to me a particularly happy one. You take your meals, then, in an agreeable place, surrounded by the little agreeable arrangements of your daily sittingroom; and after the meal, if the lady of

the house does the honors of her own pretty china herself, the office may be a pleasant and social one.

"But in regard to your table-service I have my advice at hand. Invest in pretty table-linen, in delicate napkins, have your vase of flowers, and be guided by the eye of taste in the choice and arrangement of even the every-day tablearticles, and have no ugly things when you can have pretty ones by taking a little thought. If you are sore tempted with lovely china and crystal, too fragile to last, too expensive to be renewed, turn away to a print-shop and comfort yourself by hanging around the walls of your dining-room beauty that will not break or fade, that will meet your eye from year to year, though plates, fumblers, and tea-sets successively vanish. There is my advice for you, Marianne."

At the same time, let me say, in parenthesis, that my wife, whose weakness is china, informed me that night, when we were by ourselves, that she was ordering secretly a tea-set as a bridal gift for Marianne, every cup of which was to be exquisitely painted with the wildflowers of America, from designs of her own, a thing, by-the-by, that can now be very nicely executed in our country. "It will last her all her life," she said, "and always be such a pleasure to look at, -and a pretty tea-table is such a pretty sight!" So spoke Mrs. Crowfield, " unweaned from china by a thousand falls." She spoke even with tears in her eyes. Verily, these women are harps of a thousand strings!

But to return to my subject.

"Finally and lastly," I said, "in my analysis and explication of the agreeableness of those same parlors, comes the crowning grace, their homeliness. By homeliness I mean not ugliness, as the word is apt to be used, but the air that is given to a room by being really at home in it. Not the most skilful arrangement can impart this charm.

"It is said that a king of France once remarked, 'My son, you must seem to love your people.'

"Father, how shall I seem to love them?'

"My son, you must love them.'

"So to make rooms seem home-like you must be at home in them. Human light and warmth are so wanting in some rooms, it is so evident that they are never used, that you can never be at ease there. In vain the house-maid is taught to wheel the sofa and turn chair towards chair; in vain it is attempted to imitate a negligent arrangement of the centretable.

"Books that have really been read and laid down, chairs that have really been moved here and there in the animation of social contact, have a sort of human vitality in them; and a room in which people really live and enjoy is as different from a shut-up apartment as a live woman from a wax image.

"Even rooms furnished without taste often become charming from this one grace, that they seem to let you into the home-life and home-current. You seem to understand in a moment that you are taken into the family, and are moving in its inner circles, and not revolving at a distance in some outer court of the gentiles.

"How many people do we call on from year to year and know no more of their feelings, habits, tastes, family ideas and ways, than if they lived in Kamtschatka! And why? Because the room which they call a front-parlor is made expressly so that you never shall know. They sit in a back-room, work, talk, read, perhaps. After the servant has let you in and opened a crack of the shutters, and while you sit waiting for them to change their dress and come in, you speculate as to what they may be doing. From some distant region, the laugh of a child, the song of a canary-bird, reaches you, and then a door claps hastily to. Do they love plants? Do they write letters, sew, embroider, crochet? Do they ever romp and frolic? What books do they read? Do they sketch or paint? Of all these possibilities the mute and muffled room says nothing. A sofa and six chairs,

and thus the acquaintance progresses from year to year. One hour in the little back-room, where the plants and canary-bird and children are, might have made you fast friends for life; but as it is, you care no more for them than for the gilt clock on the mantel.

"And now, girls," said I, pulling a paper out of my pocket, "you must know that your father is getting to be famous by means of these House and Home Papers.' Here is a letter I have just received: :

"MOST EXCELLENT MR. CROWFIELD,-Your thoughts have lighted into our family-circle, and echoed from our fireside. We all feel the force of them, and are delighted with the felicity of your treatment of the topic you have chosen. You have taken hold of a subject that lies deep in our hearts, in a genial, temperate, and convincing spirit. All must acknowledge the power of your sentiments upon their imaginations; - if they could only trust to them in actual life! There is the rub.

"Omitting further upon these points, there is a special feature of your articles upon which we wish to address you. You seem as yet (we do not know, of course, what you may hereafter do) to speak only of homes whose conduct depends upon the help of servants. Now your principles apply, as some of us well conceive, to nearly all classes of society; yet most people, to take an impressive hint, must have their portraits drawn out more exactly. We therefore hope that you will give a reasonable share of your attention to us who do not employ servants, so that you may ease us of some of

our burdens, which, in spite of common sense, we dare not throw off. For instance, we have company, -a friend from afar, (perhaps wealthy,) or a minister, or some other man of note. What do we do? Sit down and receive our visitor with all good-will and the freedom of a home? No; we (the lady of the house) flutter about to clear up things, apologizing about this, that, and the other condition of unpreparedness, and, having settled the visitor in the parlor, set about marshalling the elements of a grand dinner or supper, such as no person but a gourmand wants to sit down to, when at home and comfortable; and in getting up this meal, clearing away, and washing the dishes, we use up a good half of the time which our guest spends with us. We have spread ourselves, and shown him what we could do; but what a paltry, heart sickening achievement! Now, good Mr. Crowfield, thou friend of the robbed and despairing, wilt thou not descend into our purgatorial circle, and tell the world what thou hast seen there of doleful remembrance? Tell us how we, who must do and desire to do our own work, can show forth in our homes a homely, yet genial hospitality, and entertain our guests without making a fuss and hurly-burly, and seeming to be anx

ious for their sake about many things, and spending too much time getting meals, as if eating were the chief social pleasure. Won't you do this, Mr. Crowfield? "Yours beseechingly,

"R. H. A.""

"That's a good letter," said Jennie. "To be sure it is," said I. "And shall you answer it, papa?" "In the very next Atlantic,' you may be sure I shall. The class that do their own work are the strongest, the most numerous, and, taking one thing with another, quite as well cultivated a class as any other. They are the anomaly of our country,

the distinctive feature of the new society that we are building up here; and if we are to accomplish our national destiny, that class must increase rather than diminish. I shall certainly do my best to answer the very sensible and pregnant questions of that letter."

Here Marianne shivered and drew up a shawl, and Jennie gaped; my wife folded up the garment in which she had set the last stitch, and the clock struck twelve.

Bob gave a low whistle. it was so late?"

"Who knew

"We have talked the fire fairly out," said Jennie.