st
monkey who wept to find his first-born without a tail and morally
accountable.

Certainly it is easier to say what to avoid than what to accept, for
there's more of it. Broad is the road of error, and the faults and
follies, vices and sins, that wrangle and riot therein, are thicker
than crickets on a sandy road in October,--thicker and blacker. You
may catch them all day and there'll be just as many left. But the
devoted followers of truth you may count on your fingers and carry
them home in your bosom. Besides, the right thing to do cannot be told
in detail for another, since every man must manifest his own
individuality as he must work out his own salvation. In the millennium
I expect we shall find no two houses built or furnished alike.

No; you are not to understand that lath and plaster are unfit for
first-class dwellings, but there is no sense in trimming a gingham
suit with point lace. A general uniformity of value in the material of
which your castle is built is as essential as uniformity of style.

Yes; there is an objection to cheap floors, carpets or not; and now
I've gone through your last lot of interrogation-points backward,
which brings me where I left off in the former letter.

You propose to carpet the floors and ask to have them made to fit the
carpets. Would you also like the walls to fit the paper-hangings, and
the windows the curtains? Do you know what kind of carpets you will
use in each room; just how long and how wide they will be to half an
inch; the width of the borders; how much they will stretch in putting
down; how much "take up" in the making (you see I can use
interrogation-points)? Do you really know anything about them with
certainty? I ask for information, as the same request is often made as
to building the house to fit the carpets, and any attempt to comply
with it seems to me a great waste of mathematics.

Concerning, the floors themselves,--leaving the yardstick out of the
question,--even if they are covered by carpets six inches thick, it
will not pay to lay poor ones. They should be double for solidity and
warmth, well nailed for stiffness, seasoned for economy, and of good
lumber for conscience' sake. Seasoned for economy, I say, since
nothing is more destructive to carpets, especially to oil-cloth, than
cracks in the floor underneath them. Yes,--one thing; the warped edges
of the boards, that sometimes raise themselves,--that are almost sure
to do so in spruce, which i