ourth-rate in quality, and dear at any
price. A ten dollar bill was required to pay the damage they had
already sustained, even under our careful hands.

A more striking evidence of our folly in buying cheap furniture was,
however, yet to come. An intimate friend came in one evening to sit
a few hours with us. After conversing for a time, both he and my
husband took up books, and commenced reading, while I availed myself
of the opportunity to write a brief letter. Our visitor, who was a
pretty stout man, had the bad fault of leaning back in his chair,
and balancing himself on its hind legs; an experiment most trying to
the best mahogany chairs that were ever made.

We were all sitting around the centre table, upon which burned a
tall astral lamp, and I was getting absorbed in my letter, when
suddenly there was a loud crash, followed by the breaking of the
table from its centre, and the pitching over of the astral lamp,
which, in falling, just grazed my side, and went down, oil and all,
upon our new carpet! An instant more, and we were in total darkness.
But, ere the light went out, a glance had revealed a scene that I
shall never forget. Our visitor, whose weight, as he tried his usual
balancing experiment, had caused the slender legs of his chair to
snap off short, had fallen backwards. In trying to save himself, he
had caught at the table, and wrenched that from its centre
fastening. Startled by this sudden catastrophe, my husband had
sprung to his feet, grasping his chair with the intent of drawing it
away, when the top of the back came off in his hand. I saw all this
at a single glance--and then we were shrouded in darkness.

Of the scene that followed, I will not speak. My lady readers can,
without any effort of the mind, imagine something of its
unpleasant reality. As for our visitor, when lights were brought in,
he was no where to be seen. I have a faint recollection of having
heard the street door shut amid the confusion that succeeded the
incident just described.

About a week afterwards, the whole of our cheap furniture was sent
to auction, where it brought less than half its first cost. It was
then replaced with good articles, by good workmen, at a fair price;
not one of which has cost us, to this day, a single cent for
repairs.

A housekeeping friend of mine, committed, not, long since, a similar
error. Her husband could spare her a couple of hundred dollars for
re-furnishing purposes; but, as his bus