mical as
beauty; and I will make it good against all comers, not by figures of
rhetoric, but by figures of arithmetic. I am going to be very
matter-of-fact and commonplace in my details, and keep ever in view the
addition-table. I will instance a case which has occurred under my own
observation."

* * * * *

THE ECONOMY OF THE BEAUTIFUL.

Two of the houses lately built on the new land in Boston were bought by
two friends, Philip and John. Philip had plenty of money, and paid the
cash down for his house, without feeling the slightest vacancy in his
pocket. John, who was an active, rising young man, just entering on a
flourishing business, had expended all his moderate savings for years in
the purchase of his dwelling, and still had a mortgage remaining, which
he hoped to clear off by his future successes. Philip begins the work of
furnishing as people do with whom money is abundant, and who have simply
to go from shop to shop and order all that suits their fancy and is
considered 'the thing' in good society. John begins to furnish with very
little money. He has a wife and two little ones, and he wisely deems
that to insure to them a well-built house, in an open, airy situation,
with conveniences for warming, bathing, and healthy living, is a wise
beginning in life; but it leaves him little or nothing beyond.

Behold, then, Philip and his wife, well pleased, going the rounds of
shops and stores in fitting up their new dwelling, and let us follow
step by step. To begin with the wall-paper. Imagine a front and back
parlor, with folding-doors, with two south windows on the front, and two
looking on a back court, after the general manner of city houses. We
will suppose they require about thirty rolls of wall-paper. Philip buys
the heaviest French velvet, with gildings and traceries, at four dollars
a roll. This, by the time it has been put on, with gold mouldings,
according to the most established taste of the best paper-hangers, will
bring the wall-paper of the two rooms to a figure something like two
hundred dollars. Now they proceed to the carpet-stores, and there are
thrown at their feet by obsequious clerks velvets and Axminsters, with
flowery convolutions and medallion-centres, as if the flower-gardens of
the tropics were whirling in waltzes, with graceful lines of
arabesque,--roses, callas, lilies, knotted, wreathed, twined, with blue
and crimson and golden ribbons, dazzling marvels o