a room surrounded with
photographs and pictures and fine casts suggests a thousand
inquiries, stimulates the little eye and hand. The child is found
with its pencil, drawing, or he asks for a book on Venice, or wants
to hear the history of the Roman Forum.

But I have made my article too long. I will write another on the moral
and intellectual effects of house-furnishing.

"I have proved my point, Miss Jenny, have I not? _In house-furnishing
nothing is more economical than beauty._"

"Yes, papa," said Jenny; "I give it up."

V

RAKING UP THE FIRE

We have a custom at our house which we call _raking up the fire_. That
is to say, the last half hour before bedtime, we draw in, shoulder to
shoulder, around the last brands and embers of our hearth, which we
prick up and brighten, and dispose for a few farewell flickers and
glimmers. This is a grand time for discussion. Then we talk over
parties, if the young people have been out of an evening,--a book, if
we have been reading one; we discuss and analyze characters,--give our
views on all subjects, aesthetic, theological, and scientific, in a way
most wonderful to hear; and, in fact, we sometimes get so engaged in
our discussions that every spark of the fire burns out, and we begin
to feel ourselves shivering around the shoulders, before we can
remember that it is bedtime.

So, after the reading of my last article, we had a "raking-up
talk,"--to wit, Jenny, Marianne, and I, with Bob Stephens: my wife,
still busy at her work-basket, sat at the table a little behind us.
Jenny, of course, opened the ball in her usual incisive manner.

"But now, papa, after all you say in your piece there, I cannot help
feeling that, if I had the taste and the money too, it would be better
than the taste alone with no money. I like the nice arrangements and
the books and the drawings, but I think all these would appear better
still with really elegant furniture."

"Who doubts that?" said I. "Give me a large tub of gold coin to dip
into, and the furnishing and beautifying of a house is a simple
affair. The same taste that could make beauty out of cents and dimes
could make it more abundantly out of dollars and eagles. But I
have been speaking for those who have not and cannot get riches,
and who wish to have agreeable houses; and I begin in the outset by
saying that beauty is a thing to be respected, reverenced, and
devoutly cared for, and then I say that BEAUTY IS CHEAP,--nay