y. It gives the appearance of permanence and repose and quiet
fellowship; and next to pictures on the walls, the many-colored bindings
and gildings of books are the most agreeable adornment of a room."

"Then, Marianne," said Bob, "we have something to start with, at all
events. There are my English Classics and English Poets, and my uniform
editions of Scott and Thackeray and Macaulay and Prescott and Irving and
Longfellow and Lowell and Hawthorne and Holmes and a host more. We
really have something pretty there."

"You are a lucky girl," I said, "to have so much secured. A girl brought
up in a house full of books, always able to turn to this or that author
and look for any passage or poem when she thinks of it, doesn't know
what a blank a house without books might be."

"Well," said Marianne, "mamma and I were counting over my treasures the
other day. Do you know, I have one really fine old engraving, that Bob
says is quite a genuine thing; and then there is that pencil-sketch that
poor Schoene made for me the month before he died,--it is truly
artistic."

"And I have a couple of capital things of Landseer's," said Bob.

"There's no danger that your rooms will not be pretty," said I, "now you
are fairly on the right track."

"But, papa," said Marianne, "I am troubled about one thing. My love of
beauty runs into everything. I want pretty things for my table,--and
yet, as you say, servants are so careless, one cannot use such things
freely without great waste."

"For my part," said my wife, "I believe in best china, to be kept
carefully on an upper-shelf, and taken down for high-days and holidays;
it may be a superstition, but I believe in it. It must never be taken
out except when the mistress herself can see that it is safely cared
for. My mother always washed her china herself; and it was a very pretty
social ceremony, after tea was over, while she sat among us washing her
pretty cups, and wiping them on a fine damask towel."

"With all my heart," said I; "have your best china, and venerate it,--it
is one of the loveliest of domestic superstitions; only do not make it a
bar to hospitality, and shrink from having a friend to tea with you,
unless you feel equal to getting up to the high shelf where you keep it,
getting it down, washing, and putting it up again.

"But in serving a table, I say, as I said of a house, beauty is a
necessity, and beauty is cheap. Because you cannot afford beauty in one
form, it do