, and let her work out the problems of harmonious color in
velvet and damask. All I have to say is, that certain unities of
color, certain general arrangements, will secure very nearly as good
general effects in either material. A library with a neat, mossy green
carpet on the floor, harmonizing with wall-paper and furniture, looks
generally as well, whether the mossy green is made in Brussels or in
ingrain. In the carpet stores, these two materials stand side by side
in the very same pattern, and one is often as good for the purpose as
the other. A lady of my acquaintance, some years since, employed an
artist to decorate her parlors. The walls being frescoed and tinted to
suit his ideal, he immediately issued his decree that her splendid
velvet carpets must be sent to auction, and others bought of certain
colors harmonizing with the walls. Unable to find exactly the color
and pattern he wanted, he at last had the carpets woven in a
neighboring factory, where, as yet, they had only the art of weaving
ingrains. Thus was the material sacrificed at once to the harmony."

I remarked, in passing, that this was before Bigelow's mechanical
genius had unlocked for America the higher secrets of carpet-weaving,
and made it possible to have one's desires accomplished in Brussels or
velvet. In those days, English carpet-weavers did not send to America
for their looms, as they now do.

"But now to return to my analysis of John's rooms.

"Another thing which goes a great way towards giving them their
agreeable air is the books in them. Some people are fond of treating
books as others do children. One room in the house is selected, and
every book driven into it and kept there. Yet nothing makes a room so
home-like, so companionable, and gives it such an air of refinement,
as the presence of books. They change the aspect of a parlor from that
of a mere reception-room, where visitors perch for a transient call,
and give it the air of a room where one feels like taking off one's
things to stay. It gives the appearance of permanence and repose and
quiet fellowship; and, next to pictures on the walls, the many-colored
bindings and gildings of books are the most agreeable adornment of a
room."

"Then, Marianne," said Bob, "we have something to start with, at all
events. There are my English Classics and English Poets, and my
uniform editions of Scott and Thackeray and Macaulay and Prescott and
Irving and Longfellow and Lowell and Hawtho