right." It was a masterpiece of correct
furnishing, but it gave one a curious sense of limitation. One could
not escape the scheme. The inelasticity of it hampered sociability--and
there grew on one, too, a sense of unfitness. His clothes were an
anachronism! They were the only thing which did not belong!

There is an old-fashioned adjective which describes better than any
other this preoccupation with things, which so often prevents a
woman's coming to an understanding of the heart of her Business. It is
_old maidish_. It has often been the pathetic fate of single women to
live alone. To minister to themselves becomes their occupation. The
force of their natures turns to their belongings. If in straitened
circumstances they give their souls to spotless floors; if rich, to
flawless mahogany and china, to perfect household machinery. Wherever
you find in woman this perversion--old maidish is perhaps the most
accurate word for her--it is a sacrifice of the human to the material.
A house without sweet human litter, without the trace of many varying
tastes and occupations, without the trail of friends who perhaps have
no sense of beauty but who love to give, without the scars of use,
and the dust of running feet--what is it but a meatless shell!

This devotion to "things" may easily become a ghoulish passion. It is
such that Ibsen hints at in the _Master Builder_, when he makes Aline
Solness attribute her perpetual black, her somber eyes and smileless
lips, not to the death of her two little boys which has come about
through the burning of her home, _that_ was a "dispensation of
Providence" to which she "bows in submission," but to the destruction
of the _things_ which were "mine"--"All the old portraits were burnt
upon the walls, and all the old silk dresses were burnt that had
belonged to the family for generations and generations. And all
mother's and grandmother's lace--that was burnt, too, and only think,
the jewels too."

One of the most disastrous effects of this preocccupation with the
things and the labors of the household is the killing of conversation.
There is perhaps no more general weakness in the average American
family than glumness! The silent newspaper-reading father, the worried
watchful mother, the surly boy, the fretful girl, these are characters
typical in both town and country. In one of Mrs. Daskam Bacon's lively
tales, "Ardelia in Arcadia," the little heroine is transplanted from a
lively, chatte