ink" and "jubilee magenta." Every blessed thing in that
room is being coated with enamel paint, from the sofa to the fire-irons,
from the sideboard to the eight-day clock. If there is any paint left
over, it will be used up for the family Bible and the canary.

It is claimed for this invention that a little child can make as much
mess with it as can a grown-up person, and so all the children of
the family are represented in the picture as hard at work, enameling
whatever few articles of furniture and household use the grasping
selfishness of their elders has spared to them. One is painting the
toasting fork in a "skim-milk blue," while another is giving aesthetical
value to the Dutch oven by means of a new shade of art green. The
bootjack is being renovated in "old gold," and the baby is sitting on
the floor, smothering its own cradle with "flush-upon-a-maiden's cheek
peach color."

One feels that the thing is being overdone. That family, before another
month is gone, will be among the strongest opponents of enamel paint
that the century has produced. Enamel paint will be the ruin of that
once happy home. Enamel paint has a cold, glassy, cynical appearance.
Its presence everywhere about the place will begin to irritate the old
man in the course of a week or so. He will call it, "This damn'd sticky
stuff!" and will tell the wife that he wonders she didn't paint herself
and the children with it while she was about it. She will reply, in an
exasperatingly quiet tone of voice, that she does like that. Perhaps he
will say next, that she did not warn him against it, and tell him what
an idiot he was making of himself, spoiling the whole house with his
foolish fads. Each one will persist that it was the other one who first
suggested the absurdity, and they will sit up in bed and quarrel about
it every night for a month.

The children having acquired a taste for smudging the concoction about,
and there being nothing else left untouched in the house, will try to
enamel the cat; and then there will be bloodshed, and broken windows,
and spoiled infants, and sorrows and yells. The smell of the paint will
make everybody ill; and the servants will give notice. Tradesmen's
boys will lean up against places that are not dry and get their clothes
enameled and claim compensation. And the baby will suck the paint off
its cradle and have fits.

But the person that will suffer most will, of course, be the eldest
daughter's young man. The