ss,
also, that it is well to have a switch in the kitchen to throw light in
the basement, on the chance that the wood-box may get empty before the
evening has spent itself. There is comfort, too, in not being forced to go
darkling to bed, like Childe Roland to the tower, but to put out the light
from the floor above. But we are carrying this business too far in mental
concerns. Here is properly a place for a rare twilight. It is not well
that a man should always flare himself like a lighted ballroom.

Much of our best mental stuff--if you exclude the harsher grindings of our
business hours--fades in too coarse a light. 'Tis a brocade that for best
preservation must not be hung always in the sun. There must be regions in
you unguessed at--cornered and shadowed places--recesses to be shown at
peep of finger width, yielding only to the knock of fancy, dim
sequesterings tucked obscurely from the noises of the world, where one
must be taken by the hand and led--dusky closets beyond the common use. It
is in such places--your finger on your lips and your feet a-tiptoe on the
stairs--that you will hide away from baser uses the stowage of moonlight
stuff and such other gaseous and delightful foolery as may lie in your
inheritance.

[Illustration]

HOOPSKIRTS & OTHER LIVELY MATTER

[Illustration]

HOOPSKIRTS & OTHER LIVELY MATTER

Several months ago I had occasion to go through a deserted "mansion." It
was a gaunt building with long windows and it sat in a great yard. Over
the windows were painted scrolls, like eyebrows lifted in astonishment.
Whatever was the cause of this, it has long since departed, for it is
thirty years since the building was tenanted. It would seem as if it fell
asleep--for so the blinds and the drawn curtains attest--before the lines
of this first astonishment were off its face. I am told that the faces of
men dead in battle show in similar fashion the marks of conflict. But
there is a shocked expression on the face of this house as if a scandal
were on the street. It is crying, as it were, "Fie, shame!" upon its
neighbors.

Inside there are old carpets and curtains which spit dust at you if you
touch them. (Is there not some fabulous animal which does the same,
thereby to escape in the mirk it has itself created?) Most of the
furniture has been removed, but here and there bulky pieces remain, an
antique sideboard, maybe too large to be taken away; like Robinson
Crusoe's boat, too he