ho has recently started out as an architect, designs them a
picturesque residence without a straight line on its exterior or a square
room inside. This house is done up in strict obedience to the teachings
of the new sect. The dining-room is made about as cheerful as the
entrance to a family vault. The rest of the house bears a close
resemblance to an ecclesiastical junk shop. The entrance hall is filled
with what appears to be a communion table in solid oak, and the massive
chairs and settees of the parlor suggest the withdrawing room of Rowena,
aesthetic shades of momie-cloth drape deep-set windows, where anaemic and
disjointed females in stained glass pluck conventional roses.

To each of these successive transitions the husband has remained
obediently and tranquilly indifferent. He has in his heart considered
them all equally unfitting and uncomfortable and sighed in regretful
memory of a deep, old-fashioned arm-chair that sheltered his after-dinner
naps in the early rosewood period. So far he has been as clay in the
hands of his beloved wife, but the anaemic ladies and the communion table
are the last drop that causes his cup to overflow. He revolts and begins
to take matters into his own hands with the result that the household
enters its fifth incarnation under his guidance, during which everything
is painted white and all the wall-papers are a vivid scarlet. The family
sit on bogus Chippendale and eat off blue and white china.

With the building of their grand new house near the park the couple rise
together into the sixth cycle of their development. Having travelled and
studied the epochs by this time, they can tell a Louis XIV. from a Louis
XV. room, and recognize that mahogany and brass sphinxes denote furniture
of the Empire. This newly acquired knowledge is, however, vague and
hazy. They have no confidence in themselves, so give over the fitting of
their principal floors to the New York branch of a great French house.
Little is talked of now but periods, plans, and elevations. Under the
guidance of the French firm, they acquire at vast expense, faked
reproductions as historic furniture.

The spacious rooms are sticky with new gilding, and the flowered brocades
of the hangings and furniture crackle to the touch. The rooms were not
designed by the architect to receive any special kind of "treatment."
Immense folding-doors unite the salons, and windows open anywhere. The
decorations of the walls