d
turtle.

Once we hear this good mother saying, "I always had a passion for
intellect, and my desire was that my husband and my children might be
distinguished for intellect; but now I wish they had a little less
intellect, so as to allow for a little more commonsense."

This not only proves that this mother of four very extraordinary and
superior children had wit, but it also seems to show that even intellect
has to be bought with a price.

I have read about all that has been written concerning Rossetti and the
Preraphaelite Brotherhood by those with right and license to speak. And
among all those who have set themselves down and dipped pen in ink, no
one that I have found has emphasized the very patent truth that it was a
woman who evolved the "Preraphaelite Idea," and first exemplified it in
her life and housekeeping.

It was Frances Polidora Rossetti who supplied Emerson that fine phrase,
"Plain living and high thinking." Of course, it might have been original
also with Emerson, but probably it reached him via the Ruskin and
Carlyle route.

Emerson also said, "A few plain rules suffice," but Mrs. Rossetti ten
years before put it this way, "A few plain things suffice." She had a
horror of debt which her husband did not fully share. She preferred
cleanly poverty and honest sparsity to luxury on credit. In her
household she had her way. Possibly it was making a virtue of
necessity, but she did it so sincerely and gracefully that prenatally
her children accepted the simplicity of their Preraphaelite home as its
chief charm.

Without the Rossettis the Preraphaelite Brotherhood would never have
existed. It will be remembered that the first protest of the Brotherhood
was directed against "Wilton carpets, gaudy hangings, and ornate,
strange and peculiar furniture."

Christina Rossetti once told William Morris that when she was but seven
years old her mother and she congratulated themselves on the fact that
all the furniture they had was built on straight and simple lines, that
it might be easily cleaned with a damp cloth. They had no carpets, but
they possessed one fine rug in the "other room" which was daily brought
out to air and admire. The floors were finished in hard oil, and on the
walls were simply the few pictures that they themselves produced, and
the mother usually insisted on having only "one picture in a room at a
time, so as to have time to study it."

So here we get the very quintessence of the ent