hich 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 armchair, 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 Jenny, 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 one of them declaring to her mother; "and this old rag of a
carpet!"

My feelings were hurt, not the less so that I knew that the large
cloth which covered the middle of the floor, and which the women call
a bocking, had been bought and nailed down there, after a solemn
family council, as the best means of concealing the too evident darns
which years of good cheer had made needful in our stanch old
household friend, the three-ply carpet, made in those days when to be
a three-ply was a pledge of continuance and service.

Well, it was a joyous and bustling day when, after one of those
domestic whirlwinds which the women are fond of denominating
house-cleaning, the new Brussels carpet was at length brought in and
nailed down, and its beauty praised from mouth to mouth. Our old
friends called in and admired, and all seemed to be well, except that
I had that light and delicate presa