“Well, Marianne, if you want a man’s advice in the case, mine is at your service.”

“That is just what I want, papa.”

“Well, then, my dear, choose your wall-papers and borderings, and, when they are up, choose an ingrain carpet to harmonize with them, and adapt your furniture to the same idea.  The sixty dollars that you save on your carpet spend on engravings, chromo-lithographs, or photographs of some really good works of Art, to adorn your walls.”

“Papa, I’ll do it,” said Marianne.

“My little dear,” said I, “your papa may seem to be a sleepy old book-worm, yet he has his eyes open.  Do you think I don’t know why my girls have the credit of being the best-dressed girls on the street?”

“Oh, papa!” cried out both girls in a breath.

“Fact, that!” said Bob, with energy, pulling at his moustache.  “Everybody talks about your dress, and wonders how you make it out.”

“Well,” said I, “I presume you do not go into a shop and buy a yard of ribbon because it is selling at half-price, and put it on without considering complexion, eyes, hair, and shade of the dress, do you?”

“Of course we don’t!” chimed in the duo, with energy.

“Of course you don’t.  Haven’t I seen you mincing down-stairs, with all your colors harmonized, even to your gloves and gaiters?  Now, a room must be dressed as carefully as a lady.”

“Well, I’m convinced,” said Jennie, “that papa knows how to make rooms prettier than Aunt Easygo; but then she said this was cheap, because it would outlast two common carpets.”

“But, as you pay double price,” said I, “I don’t see that.  Besides, I would rather, in the course of twenty years, have two nice, fresh ingrain carpets, of just the color and pattern that suited my rooms, than labor along with one ill-chosen velvet that harmonized with nothing.”

“I give it up,” said Jennie; “I give it up.”

“Now, understand me,” said I; “I am not traducing velvet or Brussels or Axminster.  I admit that more beautiful effects can be found in those goods than in the humbler fabrics of the carpet-rooms.  Nothing would delight me more than to put an unlimited credit to Marianne’s account, and let her work out the problems of harmonious color in velvet and damask.  All I have to say is, that certain unities of color, certain general arrangements, will secure very nearly as good general effects in either material.  A library with a neat, mossy green carpet on the floor, harmonizing with wall-paper and furniture, looks generally as well, whether the mossy green is made in Brussels or in ingrain.  In the carpet-stores, these two materials stand side by side in the very same pattern, and one is often as good for the purpose as the other.  A lady of my acquaintance, some years since, employed an artist to decorate her parlors.  The walls being frescoed and tinted to suit his ideal, he immediately issued his decree that her splendid velvet carpets must be sent to auction, and others bought of certain colors, harmonizing with the walls.  Unable to find exactly the color and pattern he wanted, he at last had the carpets woven in a neighboring factory, where, as yet, they had only the art of weaving ingrains.  Thus was the material sacrificed at once to the harmony.”