ys possible at the tea hour, to have a
table placed before whoever is to "pour" and a tray on which are cups,
tea, cream, sugar, lemon, toast, cake or what you will, brought in
from the pantry or kitchen. There was a time when in America, one
shuddered at the possibility of dusty cups and those countless faults
of a seldom-rehearsed tea-table!

Avoid serving a lunch in an artificially lighted room. This, like a
permanent tea-table, is an almost extinct fashion. Neither was
sensible, because inappropriate, and therefore bad form. The only
possible reason for shutting out God's sunlight and using artificial
lights, is when the function is to begin by daylight and continue
until after nightfall.

If in doubt as to what is _good_, go often to museums and compare what
you own, or have seen and think of owning, with objects in museum
collections.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

FADS IN COLLECTING

In a New York home one room is devoted to a so-called _panier fleuri_
collection which in this case means that each article shows the design
of a basket holding flowers or fruit. The collection is to-day so
unique and therefore so valuable, that it has been willed to a museum,
but its creation as a collection, was entirely a chance occurrence.
The design of a basket trimmed with flowers happened to appeal to the
owner, and if we are not mistaken, the now large collection had its
beginning in the casual purchase of a little old pendant found in a
forgotten corner of Europe. The owner wore it, her friends saw it, and
gradually associated the _panier fleuri_ with her, which resulted in
many beautiful specimens of this design being sought out for her by
wanderers at home and abroad. To-day this collection includes old
silks, laces, jewellery, wax pictures, old prints, some pieces of
antique furniture, snuffboxes and ornaments in glass, china, silver,
etc.

Every museum is the result of fads in collecting, and when one
considers all that is meant by this heading, which sounds so trifling
and unimportant to the layman, it will not seem strange that we
strongly recommend it as a dissipation!

At first, quite naturally, the collector makes mistakes; but it is
through his mistakes that he learns, and absolutely nothing gives such
a zest to a stroll in the city, a tramp in the country, or an
unexpected delay in an out-of-the-way town, as to have this collecting
bee in your bonnet. How often when travelling we have rejoiced when
the loss