these
words illuminated on vellum and framed, for I had always loved them:

"Sleep sweet, within this quiet room,
Oh thou, whoe'er thou art!
And let no mournful yesterday
Disturb thy peaceful heart,
Nor let to-morrow fret thy dreams
With thoughts of coming ill,
Thy Maker is thy changeless Friend,
His love surrounds thee still.
Sleep sweet!
Good night."

Afterward, when my first guest had come and gone, this momentary
reverie came back to me, and I looked up at this benediction with tears
in my eyes.

Of course we spent too much money on our house furnishings. We always
do, but after all--and here come my theories again. I would have fine
table and bed linen. The Angel did not believe I would stick to it,
but I did embroider it all myself. And as to hemming napkins and
table-cloths--I challenge any nun in any convent to make prettier
French hems than I put in! Would I be likely to waste all that labour
on flimsy napkins or cotton sheets and pillow-cases?

Not at all! I can find infinitely more pleasure in putting invisible
stitches into my own first linen than in going to pink teas, and people
don't get permanently angry if you invite them to dinner, and let them
eat off hemmed and embroidered damask. Believe me. You may send cards
to six receptions, and get out of six afternoons of misery and
indigestion by one judiciously arranged dinner--if you don't mix your
people. And thus we did.

So I got my linen. The Angel laughed at another of my theories, but
when I proved to him that I would really see the thing through, he was
convinced. It was on the question of beds. Our friends professed
themselves astonished that we contemplated the extravagance of a
guest-chamber, for here in New York, where rents are so abnormal,
people economize first of all upon their friends, and I am told that an
extra bedroom where a chance guest may be asked to remain overnight is
the exception with people of moderate means. Such monstrous
selfishness struck me as appalling. To provide _only_ for
ourselves--for our own comfort! To have no room in all your own luxury
to share with a friend! To be obliged to tell the woman whose
hospitality you have enjoyed in your girlhood: "Now that I am married,
I have prepared no place for you! Your kindness to me is all
forgotten!"

Well, we simply refused. What if it were a strain on us financially?
I would rather suffer that than crip