graceful forms, even
though not of china, if arranged with care, with snowy, well-kept
table-linen, clear glasses, and bright American plate in place of
solid silver, may be made to look inviting; add a glass of flowers
every day, and your table may look pretty: and it is far more
important that it should look pretty for the family every day than
for company once in two weeks."

"I tell my girls," said my wife, "as the result of my experience, you
may have your pretty china and your lovely fanciful articles for the
table only so long as you can take all the care of them yourselves. As
soon as you get tired of doing this, and put them into the hands of
the trustiest servants, some good, well-meaning creature is sure to
break her heart and your own and your very pet darling china pitcher
all in one and the same minute, and then her frantic despair leaves
you not even the relief of scolding."

"I have become perfectly sure," said I "that there are spiteful little
brownies, intent on seducing good women to sin, who mount guard over
the special idols of the china closet. If you hear a crash, and a loud
Irish wail from the inner depths, you never think of its being a
yellow pie-plate, or that dreadful one-handled tureen that you have
been wishing were broken these five years; no, indeed,--it is sure to
be the lovely painted china bowl, wreathed with morning-glories and
sweet-peas, or the engraved glass goblet, with quaint Old English
initials. China sacrificed must be a great means of saintship to
women. Pope, I think, puts it as the crowning grace of his perfect
woman that she is

"'Mistress of herself though china fall.'"

"I ought to be a saint by this time, then," said mamma; "for in the
course of my days I have lost so many idols by breakage, and peculiar
accidents that seemed by a special fatality to befall my prettiest and
most irreplaceable things, that in fact it has come to be a
superstitious feeling now with which I regard anything particularly
pretty of a breakable nature."

"Well," said Marianne, "unless one has a great deal of money, it seems
to me that the investment in these pretty fragilities is rather a poor
one."

"Yet," said I, "the principle of beauty is never so captivating as
when it presides over the hour of daily meals. I would have the room
where they are served one of the pleasantest and sunniest in the
house. I would have its coloring cheerful, and there should be
companionable pictures