d little dark rooms
with air-tight stoves in them; she hated rusty bombazine gowns and last
year's bonnets; she hated gloves that were not as fresh as new-laid
eggs, and shoes that had grown bulgy and wrinkled in service; she hated
common crockeryware and teaspoons of slight constitution; she hated
second appearances on the dinner-table; she hated coarse napkins and
table-cloths; she hated to ride in the horsecars; she hated to walk
except for short distances, when she was tired of sitting in her
carriage. She loved with sincere and undisguised affection a spacious
city mansion and a charming country villa, with a seaside cottage for
a couple of months or so; she loved a perfectly appointed household, a
cook who was up to all kinds of salmis and vol-au-vents, a French maid,
and a stylish-looking coachman, and the rest of the people necessary to
help one live in a decent manner; she loved pictures that other people
said were first-rate, and which had at least cost first-rate prices;
she loved books with handsome backs, in showy cases; she loved heavy
and richly wought plate; fine linen and plenty of it; dresses from
Paris frequently, and as many as could be got in without troubling the
customhouse; Russia sables and Venetian point-lace; diamonds, and good
big ones; and, speaking generally, she loved dear things in distinction
from cheap ones, the real article and not the economical substitute.

For the life of me I cannot see anything Satanic in all this. Tell
me, Beloved, only between ourselves, if some of these things are not
desirable enough in their way, and if you and I could not make up our
minds to put up with some of the least objectionable of them without
any great inward struggle? Even in the matter of ornaments there is
something to be said. Why should we be told that the New Jerusalem is
paved with gold, and that its twelve gates are each of them a pearl, and
that its foundations are garnished with sapphires and emeralds and all
manner of precious stones, if these are not among the most desirable
of objects? And is there anything very strange in the fact that many a
daughter of earth finds it a sweet foretaste of heaven to wear about
her frail earthly tabernacle these glittering reminders of the celestial
city?

Mrs. Midas Goldenrod was not so entirely peculiar and anomalous in
her likes and dislikes; the only trouble was that she mixed up these
accidents of life too much with life itself, which is so often