a gilded inkstand, or an upholstered window? Starting with the idea that
the intellect is all and the body naught but an adjunct or appendage, he
will show that the former can live and thrive without any approval of the
latter. He will give the intellect all costly stimulus, and send the body
supperless to bed. Thomas Carlyle taken as a premise, this shabby room is
the inevitable conclusion. Behold the principle.

We have a poetic friend. The backs of his books are scrolled and
transfigured. A vase of japonicas, even in mid-winter, adorns his writing
desk. The hot-house is as important to him as the air. There are soft
engravings on the wall. This study-chair was made out of the twisted roots
of a banyan. A dog, sleek-skinned, lies on the mat, and gets up as you come
in. There stand in vermilion all the poets from Homer to Tennyson. Here and
there are chamois heads and pressed seaweed. He writes on gilt-edged paper
with a gold pen and handle twisted with a serpent. His inkstand is a
mystery of beauty which unskilled hands dare not touch, lest the ink
spring at him from some of the open mouths, or sprinkle on him from the
bronze wings, or with some unexpected squirt dash into his eyes the
blackness of darkness.

We have a very precise friend. Everything is in severe order. Finding his
door-knob in the dark, you could reason out the position of stove, and
chair, and table; and placing an arrow at the back of the book on one end
of the shelf, it would fly to the other end, equally grazing all the
bindings. It is ten years since John Milton, or Robert Southey, or Sir
William Hamilton have been out of their places, and that was when an
ignoramus broke into the study. The volumes of the encyclopedias never
change places. Manuscripts unblotted, and free from interlineation, and
labeled. The spittoon knows its place in the corner, as if treated by
tobacco chewers with oft indignity. You could go into that study with your
eyes shut, turn around, and without feeling for the chair throw yourself
back with perfect confidence that the furniture would catch you. No better
does a hat fit his head, or shoe his foot, or the glove his hand, than the
study fits his whole nature.

We have a facetious friend. You pick off the corner of his writing table
"Noctes Ambrosianae" or the London "Punch." His chair is wide, so that he
can easily roll off on the floor when he wants a good time at laughing. His
inkstand is a monkey, with the variatio