acious and embowered in beautiful trees and shrubbery. There was a
noble driveway that led up from the country road, and everything
betokened great prosperity. Once inside the house, I took a survey
of the fittings and could see at once that the farmer had lavished
money upon the home to make it distinctive in the neighborhood as a
suitable background for his wife and daughters. The piano alone must
have cost a small fortune, and it was but one of the many instruments
to be seen. There were carpets, rugs, and curtains in great
profusion, and a bewildering array of all sorts of bric-a-brac. In
time the father asked one of the daughters to play, and she responded
with rather unbecoming alacrity. What she played I shall never know,
but it seemed to me to be a five-finger exercise. Whatever it was,
it was not music. I lost interest at once and so had time to make a
more critical inspection of the decorations. What I saw was a battle
royal. There was the utmost lack of harmony. The rugs fought the
carpets, and both were at the throats of the curtains. Then the
wall-paper joined in the fray, and the din and confusion was torture
to the spirit. Even the furniture caught the spirit of discord and
made fierce attacks upon everything else in the room. The reds, and
yellows, and blues, and greens whirled and swirled about in such a
dizzy and belligerent fashion that I wondered how the people ever
managed to escape nervous prostration. But the daughter went right
on with the five-finger exercise as if nothing else were happening.
I shall certainly cite this case when the man comes in to explain
what he means by complete living.

This all reminds me of the man of wealth who thought it incumbent
upon him to give his neighbors some benefit of his money in the way
of pleasure. So he went to Europe and bought a great quantity of
marble statuary and had the pieces placed in the spacious grounds
about his home. When the opening day came there ensued much
suppressed tittering and, now and then, an uncontrollable guffaw.
Diana, Venus, Vulcan, Apollo, Jove, and Mercury had evidently
stumbled into a convention of nymphs, satyrs, fairies, sprites,
furies, harpies, gargoyles, giants, pygmies, muses, and fates. The
result was bedlam. Parenthetically, I have often wondered how much
money it cost that man to make the discovery that he was not a
connoisseur of art, and also what process of education might have
fitted him for a