s of happiness. Why else is it that people are
always so glad to see the sun after a long storm? why are bright days
matters of such congratulation? Sunshine fills a house with a thousand
beautiful and fanciful effects of light and shade,--with soft, luminous,
reflected radiances, that give picturesque effects to the pictures,
books, statuettes of an interior. John, happily, had no money to buy
brocatelle curtains,--and besides this, he loved sunshine too much to
buy them, if he could. He had been enough with artists to know that
heavy damask curtains darken precisely that part of the window where the
light proper for pictures and statuary should come in, namely, the upper
part. The fashionable system of curtains lights only the legs of the
chairs and the carpets, and leaves all the upper portion of the room in
shadow. John's windows have shades which can at pleasure be drawn down
from the top or up from the bottom, so that the best light to be had may
always be arranged for his little interior."

"Well, papa," said Marianne, "in your chemical analysis of John's rooms,
what is the next thing to the sunshine?"

"The next," said I, "is harmony of color. The wall-paper, the furniture,
the carpets, are of tints that harmonize with one another. This is a
grace in rooms always, and one often neglected. The French have an
expressive phrase with reference to articles which are out of
accord,--they say that they swear at each other. I have been in rooms
where I seemed to hear the wall-paper swearing at the carpet, and the
carpet swearing back at the wall-paper, and each article of furniture
swearing at the rest. These appointments may all of them be of the most
expensive kind, but with such disharmony no arrangement can ever produce
anything but a vulgar and disagreeable effect. On the other hand, I have
been in rooms where all the material was cheap, and the furniture poor,
but where, from some instinctive knowledge of the reciprocal effect of
Colors, everything was harmonious, and produced a sense of elegance.

"I recollect once travelling on a Western canal through a long stretch
of wilderness, and stopping to spend the night at an obscure settlement
of a dozen houses. We were directed to lodgings in a common frame-house
at a little distance, where, it seemed, the only hotel was kept. When we
entered the parlor, we were struck with utter amazement at its
prettiness, which affected us before we began to ask ourselves how it