rne and Holmes and a host
more. We really have something pretty there."

"You are a lucky girl," I said, "to have so much secured. A girl
brought up in a house full of books, always able to turn to this or
that author and look for any passage or poem when she thinks of it,
doesn't know what a blank a house without books might be."

"Well," said Marianne, "mamma and I were counting over my treasures
the other day. Do you know, I have one really fine old engraving,
that Bob says is quite a genuine thing; and then there is that
pencil-sketch that poor Schoene made for me the month before he
died,--it is truly artistic."

"And I have a couple of capital things of Landseer's," said Bob.

"There's no danger that your rooms will not be pretty," said I, "now
you are fairly on the right track."

"But, papa," said Marianne, "I am troubled about one thing. My love of
beauty runs into everything. I want pretty things for my table; and
yet, as you say, servants are so careless, one cannot use such things
freely without great waste."

"For my part," said my wife, "I believe in best china, to be kept
carefully on an upper shelf, and taken down for high-days and
holidays; it may be a superstition, but I believe in it. It must never
be taken out except when the mistress herself can see that it is
safely cared for. My mother always washed her china herself; and it
was a very pretty social ceremony, after tea was over, while she sat
among us washing her pretty cups, and wiping them on a fine damask
towel."

"With all my heart," said I; "have your best china and venerate
it,--it is one of the loveliest of domestic superstitions; only do
not make it a bar to hospitality, and shrink from having a friend to
tea with you, unless you feel equal to getting up to the high shelf
where you keep it, getting it down, washing, and putting it up again.

"But in serving a table, I say, as I said of a house, beauty is a
necessity, and beauty is cheap. Because you cannot afford beauty in
one form, it does not follow that you cannot have it in another.
Because one cannot afford to keep up a perennial supply of delicate
china and crystal, subject to the accidents of raw, untrained
servants, it does not follow that the every-day table need present a
sordid assortment of articles chosen simply for cheapness, while the
whole capacity of the purse is given to the set forever locked away
for state occasions.

"A table-service all of simple white, of