orm of
hisses. With savage grandeur he turned on them: "What! do you hiss
me--me, George Frederick Cooke? You contemptible money-getters, you
shall never again have the honor of hissing me. Farewell! I banish you!"
He paused, and then added, with contemptuous emphasis, "There is not a
brick in your dirty town but is cemented by the blood of a negro."
Edmund Kean treated one of his audiences with less vigor, but with equal
contempt. The spectators were noisy and insulting, but they called him
out at the end of the piece. "What do you want?" he asked.--"You! you!"
was the reply.--"Well, here I am!" continuing after a pause, with
characteristic insolence: "I have acted in every theatre in the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, I have acted in all the principal
theatres throughout the United States of America, but in my life I never
acted to such a set of ignorant, unmitigated brutes as I now see before
me."

J. B. M.

A NEW TOPIC OF CONVERSATION.

There can be no doubt but what the increase of interest in the
decorative arts has lightened the general tone of society in our cities.
"I buy everything new that I can find," a lady remarked the other day
when her bric-a-brac was praised: "not that I care anything in especial
for this sort of thing, but because it is such a blessing to have
something to talk about." One shudders now to remember the drawing-rooms
of a generation ago--a colorless, cold, negative background for social
life; rich sweeping curtains of damask satin and lace muffling the
windows; impossible sofas and impracticable chairs gilded and elaborated
into the most costly hideousness; an entire suite of rooms utterly
barren of interest; a place given over to the taste of the upholsterer;
nothing on any hand which contained a suggestion of life or emotion,
thought or effort; every sign of occupation banished--nothing tolerated
save the dullest uniformity, which depressed originality into inanity.

No wonder that this barrenness of household resource had its effect upon
women, and that every one complained of the meagre results of ordinary
social intercourse. Now-a-days, when tables are crowded with
bric-a-brac, cabinets laden with porcelain and faience, and richly-hung
walls brightened with plaques and good pictures, the female mind has
received a fresh impulse, almost an inspiration, which will show clear
results before many years have passed.

Enthusiasm for bric-a-brac and pottery, f