him to try to
force himself into a window guarded by his betters. If there is
anything cheap and plebeian, it is sunshine and fresh air! Behold us,
then, with our two rooms papered, carpeted, and curtained for two
thousand dollars; and now are to be put in them sofas, lounges,
etageres, centre-tables, screens, chairs of every pattern and device,
for which it is but moderate to allow a thousand more. We have now two
parlors furnished at an outlay of three thousand dollars, without a
single picture, a single article of statuary, a single object of art
of any kind, and without any light to see them by if they were there.
We must say for our Boston upholsterers and furniture-makers that such
good taste generally reigns in their establishments that rooms
furnished at haphazard from them cannot fail of a certain air of good
taste, so far as the individual things are concerned. But the
different articles we have supposed, having been ordered without
reference to one another or the rooms, have, when brought together, no
unity of effect, and the general result is scattering and confused. If
asked how Philip's parlors look, your reply is, "Oh, the usual way of
such parlors,--everything that such people usually get,--medallion
carpets, carved furniture, great mirrors, bronze mantel ornaments, and
so on." The only impression a stranger receives, while waiting in the
dim twilight of these rooms, is that their owner is rich, and able to
get good, handsome things, such as all other rich people get.

Now our friend John, as often happens in America, is moving in the
same social circle with Philip, visiting the same people,--his house
is the twin of the one Philip has been furnishing,--and how shall he,
with a few hundred dollars, make his rooms even presentable beside
those which Philip has fitted up elegantly at three thousand?

Now for the economy of beauty. Our friend must make his prayer to the
Graces,--for, if they cannot save him, nobody can. One thing John has
to begin with, that rare gift to man, a wife with the magic cestus of
Venus,--not around her waist, but, if such a thing could be, in her
finger-ends. All that she touches falls at once into harmony and
proportion. Her eye for color and form is intuitive: let her arrange a
garret, with nothing but boxes, barrels, and cast-off furniture in it,
and ten to one she makes it seem the most attractive place in the
house. It is a veritable "gift of good faerie," this tact of
bea