rved in
what style suits us. Our hours of going and coming are to be as we
please. Our favorite haunts are to be here or there, our pictures and
books so disposed as seems to us good, and our whole arrangements the
expression, so far as our means can compass it, of our own personal
ideas of what is pleasant and desirable in life. This element of
liberty, if we think of it, is the chief charm of home. "Here I can do
as I please," is the thought with which the tempest-tossed earth-pilgrim
blesses himself or herself, turning inward from the crowded ways of the
world. This thought blesses the man of business, as he turns from his
day's care, and crosses the sacred threshold. It is as restful to him as
the slippers and gown and easy-chair by the fireside. Everybody
understands him here. Everybody is well content that he should take his
ease in his own way. Such is the case in the _ideal_ home. That such is
not always the case in the real home comes often from the mistakes in
the house-furnishing. Much house-furnishing is _too fine_ for liberty.

In America there is no such thing as rank and station which impose a
sort of prescriptive style on people of certain income. The consequence
is that all sorts of furniture and belongings, which in the Old World
have a recognized relation to certain possibilities of income, and which
require certain other accessories to make them in good keeping, are
thrown in the way of all sorts of people.

Young people who cannot expect by any reasonable possibility to keep
more than two or three servants, if they happen to have the means in the
outset, furnish a house with just such articles as in England would suit
an establishment of sixteen. We have seen houses in England having two
or three housemaids, and tables served by a butler and two waiters,
where the furniture, carpets, china, crystal, and silver were in one and
the same style with some establishments in America where the family was
hard pressed to keep three Irish servants.

This want of servants is the one thing that must modify everything in
American life; it is, and will long continue to be, a leading feature in
the life of a country so rich in openings for man and woman that
domestic service can be only the stepping-stone to something higher.
Nevertheless, we Americans are great travellers; we are sensitive,
appreciative, fond of novelty, apt to receive and incorporate into our
own life what seems fair and graceful in that of ot