ney 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 of color and tracery. There is no restraint in
price,--four or six dollars a yard, it is all the same to them,--and
soon a magic flower garden blooms on the floors, at a cost of five
hundred dollars. A pair of elegant rugs, at fifty dollars apiece,
complete the inventory, and bring our rooms to the mark of eight
hundred dollars for papering and carpeting alone. Now come the great
mantel-mirrors for four hundred more, and our rooms progress. Then
comes the upholsterer, and measures our four windows, that he may
skillfully barricade them from air and sunshine. The fortifications
against heaven, thus prepared, cost, in the shape of damask, cord,
tassels, shades, laces, and cornices, about two hundred dollars per
window. To be sure, they make the rooms close and sombre as the grave,
but they are of the most splendid stuffs; and if the sun would only
reflect, he would see, himself, how foolish it was for