receive
young gentlemen; all the courting and flirting that were to be done had
for their arena the ample variety of surface presented by our parlor,
which, with sofas and screens and lounges and recesses and writing-and
work-tables disposed here and there, and the genuine _laisser aller_ of
the whole _menage_, seemed, on the whole, to have offered ample
advantages enough; for, at the time I write of, two daughters were
already established in marriage, and a third engaged, while my youngest
was busy, as yet, in performing that little domestic ballet of the cat
with the mouse, in the case of a most submissive youth of the
neighborhood.

All this time our parlor-furniture, though of that granitic formation I
have indicated, began to show marks of that decay to which things
sublunary are liable. I cannot say that I dislike this look in a room.
Take a fine, ample, hospitable apartment, where all things, freely and
generously used, softly and indefinably grow old together, there is a
sort of mellow tone and keeping which pleases my eye. What if the seams
of the great inviting arm-chair, where so many friends have sat and
lounged, do grow white? What, in fact, if some easy couch has an
undeniable hole worn in its friendly cover? I regard with tenderness
even these mortal weaknesses of these servants and witnesses of our good
times and social fellowship. No vulgar touch wore them; they may be
called, rather, the marks and indentations which the glittering in and
out of the tide of social happiness has worn in the rocks of our strand.
I would no more disturb the gradual toning-down and aging of a well-used
set of furniture by smart improvements than I would have a modern dauber
paint in emendations in a fine old picture.

So we men reason; but women do not always think as we do. There is a
virulent demon of housekeeping, not wholly cast out in the best of them,
and which often breaks out in unguarded moments. In fact, Miss Marianne,
being on the lookout for furniture wherewith to begin a new
establishment, and Jane, who had accompanied her in her peregrinations,
had more than once thrown out little disparaging remarks on the
time-worn appearance of our establishment, suggesting comparison with
those of more modern-furnished rooms.

"It is positively scandalous, the way our furniture looks," I one day
heard her declaring to her mother; "and this old rag of a carpet!"

My feelings were hurt, not the less so that I knew that