ttier. And now for
arrangement. Take this front room. I propose to fill those two
recesses each side of the fireplace with my books, in their plain
pine cases, just breast-high from the floor: they are stained a
good dark color, and nobody need stick a pin in them to find out
that they are not rosewood. The top of these shelves on either side to
be covered with the same stuff as the furniture, finished with a
crimson fringe. On top of the shelves on one side of the fireplace
I shall set our noble Venus di Milo, and I shall buy at Cicci's the
lovely Clytie, and put it the other side. Then I shall get of
Williams & Everett two of their chromo lithographs, which give you
all the style and charm of the best English watercolor school. I will
have the lovely Bay of Amalfi over my Venus, because she came from
those suns and skies of southern Italy, and I will hang Lake Como
over my Clytie. Then, in the middle, over the fireplace, shall be
'our picture.' Over each door shall hang one of the lithographed
angel heads of the San Sisto, to watch our going out and coming in;
and the glorious Mother and Child shall hang opposite the Venus di
Milo, to show how Greek and Christian unite in giving the noblest
type to womanhood. And then, when we have all our sketches and
lithographs framed and hung here and there, and your flowers
blooming as they always do, and your ivies wandering and rambling as
they used to, and hanging in the most graceful ways and places, and
all those little shells and ferns and vases, which you are always
conjuring with, tastefully arranged, I'll venture to say that our
rooms will be not only pleasant, but beautiful, and that people
will oftener say, 'How beautiful!' when they enter, than if we
spent three times the money on new furniture."

In the course of a year after this conversation, one and another of
my acquaintances were often heard speaking of John Morton's house.
"Such beautiful rooms,--so charmingly furnished,--you must go and see
them. What does make them so much pleasanter than those rooms in the
other house, which have everything in them that money can buy?" So
said the folk; for nine people out of ten only feel the effect of a
room, and never analyze the causes from which it flows: they know that
certain rooms seem dull and heavy and confused, but they don't know
why; that certain others seem cheerful, airy, and beautiful, but they
know not why. The first exclamation, on entering John's parlors,