r" may be better
furnished--and so it should be--than any other room in the house. Its
carpet should be not too good to tread, or stand upon, or for the
children to roll and tumble upon, provided their shoes and clothes be
clean. Let the happy little fellows roll and tumble on it, to their
heart's content, when their mother or elder sisters are with them--for
it may be, perhaps, the most joyous, and most innocent pleasure of their
lives, poor things! The hearth-rug should be in keeping with the carpet,
also, and no floor-cloth should be necessary to cover it, for fear of
soiling; but everything free and easy, with a comfortable, inviting,
hospitable look about it.

Go into the houses of our great men--such as live in the country--whom
God made great, not money--and see how _they_ live. We speak not of
statesmen and politicians alone, but great merchants, great scholars,
great divines, great mechanics, and all men who, in mind and
attainments, are head and shoulder above their class in any of the walks
of life, and you find no starch, or flummery about them. We once went
out to the country house--he lived there all the time, for that
matter--of a distinguished banker of one of our great cities, to dine,
and spend the day with him. He had a small farm attached to his
dwelling, where he kept his horses and cows, his pigs, and his poultry.
He had a large, plain two-story cottage house, with a piazza running on
three sides of it, from which a beautiful view of the neighboring city,
and water, and land, was seen in nearly all directions. He was an
educated man. His father had been a statesman of distinguished ability
and station at home, and a diplomatist abroad, and himself educated in
the highest circles of business, and of society. His wife, too, was the
daughter of a distinguished city merchant, quite his equal in all the
accomplishments of life. His own wealth was competent; he was the
manager of millions of the wealth of others; and his station in society
was of the highest. Yet, with all this claim to pretension, his house
did not cost him eight thousand dollars--and he built it by "days-work,"
too, so as to have it faithfully done; and the furniture in it, aside
from library, paintings, and statuary, never cost him three thousand.
Every room in it was a plain one, not more highly finished than many a
farmer's house can afford. The furniture of every kind was plain,
saving, perhaps, the old family plate, and such as he