“Now, Miss Jennie, please remember my subject and thesis,” I replied,—­“that in house-furnishing there is nothing so economical as beauty; and I will make it good against all comers, not by figures of rhetoric, but by figures of arithmetic.  I am going to be very matter-of-fact and commonplace in my details, and keep ever in view the addition-table.  I will instance a case which has occurred under my own observation.”

* * * * *

THE ECONOMY OF THE BEAUTIFUL.

Two of the houses lately built on the new land in Boston were bought by two friends, Philip and John.  Philip had plenty of money, and paid the cash down for his house, without feeling the slightest vacancy in his pocket.  John, who was an active, rising young man, just entering on a flourishing business, had expended all his moderate savings for years in the purchase of his dwelling, and still had a mortgage remaining, which he hoped to clear off by his future successes.  Philip begins the work of furnishing as people do with whom money is abundant, and who have simply to go from shop to shop and order all that suits their fancy and is considered ‘the thing’ in good society.  John begins to furnish with very little money.  He has a wife and two little ones, and he wisely deems that to insure to them a well-built house, in an open, airy situation, with conveniences for warming, bathing, and healthy living, is a wise beginning in life; but it leaves him little or nothing beyond.

Behold, then, Philip and his wife, well pleased, going the rounds of shops and stores in fitting up their new dwelling, and let us follow step by step.  To begin with the wall-paper.  Imagine a front and back parlor, with folding-doors, with two south windows on the front, and two looking on a back court, after the general manner of city houses.  We will suppose they require about thirty rolls of wall-paper.  Philip buys the heaviest French velvet, with gildings and traceries, at four dollars a roll.  This, by the time it has been put on, with gold mouldings, according to the most established taste of the best paper-hangers, will bring the wall-paper of the two rooms to a figure something like two hundred dollars.  Now they proceed to the carpet-stores, and there are thrown at their feet by obsequious clerks velvets and Axminsters, with flowery convolutions and medallion-centres, as if the flower-gardens of the tropics were whirling in waltzes, with graceful lines of arabesque,—­roses, callas, lilies, knotted, wreathed, twined, with blue and crimson and golden ribbons, dazzling marvels of color and tracery.  There, is no restraint in price,—­four or six dollars a yard, it is all the same to them,—­and soon a magic flower-garden blooms on the floors, at a cost of five hundred dollars.  A pair of elegant rugs, at fifty dollars apiece, complete the inventory, and bring our rooms to the mark of eight hundred dollars for papering and carpeting alone.  Now come the great mantel-mirrors