or embroidery and general
decorative art, is strongest among practical and unimaginative
people--people who know little or nothing of the world of thought opened
by books, and who have hitherto been somewhat disheartened by a
conviction of their own dulness. To them the present mania is an
undoubted lease of the finer uses of intellect, and their mental
horizons have widened until the prose of their lives is brightened into
poetry. Every one now-a-days feels the stirring of the artistic impulse,
and is able in some way to gratify it.

The American mind is always extravagant, and is certain to aim at too
much and leap too high, and in this renaissance of decorative art carry
its admiration of the beautiful and rare entirely too far in one
direction--in the matter of dress at least. The costly velvets and
satins and silks, which outweigh and surpass in beauty those of the
early centuries, are seen on every side cut up and tortured into
intricate and perplexing fashions of toilette. In the olden times these
fabrics were wisely considered too rich to be altered from one
generation to another, but were passed from mother to daughter as an
inheritance. So far as the ornamentation of her own person is concerned,
the American woman is too expensive and prodigal in her ideas, and
wastes on the fashion of the hour what ought to grace a lifetime.

But in turning her talent to the fitting-up of her house the American
woman is apt to be thrifty, ingenious and economical; and since she has
learned what decorative art really is, she works miracles of cleverness
and beauty. And, as we began by saying, it is a real blessing to have a
new topic of conversation. True, there can be nothing more fatiguing to
those who are free from the mania for pottery and porcelain than a
discussion between china-lovers and china-hunters concerning, for
instance, the difference between porcelain from Lowestoft and porcelain
from China. Then, again, in the society of a real enthusiast one is apt
to be bored by a recapitulation of his or her full accumulations of
knowledge. You are shown a bit of "crackle." You look at it admiringly
and express your pleasure. Is that enough? Can the subject be dismissed
so easily? Far from it. "This is _real_ crackle," the collector insists,
with more than a suspicion that you under-value the worth of his
specimen; and then and there you have the history of crackle and the
points of difference between the imitation and the