for four hundred more, and our rooms progress.  Then comes the upholsterer, and measures our four windows, that he may skilfully barricade them from air and sunshine.  The fortifications against heaven, thus prepared, cost, in the shape of damask, cord, tassels, shades, laces, and cornices, about two hundred dollars per window.  To be sure, they make the rooms close and sombre as the grave; but they are of the most splendid stuffs; and if the sun would only reflect, he would see, himself, how foolish it was for him to try to force himself into a window guarded by his betters.  If there is anything cheap and plebeian, it is sunshine and fresh air!  Behold us, then, with our two rooms papered, carpeted, and curtained for two thousand dollars; and now are to be put in them sofas, lounges, etageres, centre-tables, screens, chairs of every pattern and device, for which it is but moderate to allow a thousand more.  We have now two parlors furnished at an outlay of three thousand dollars, without a single picture, a single article of statuary, a single object of Art of any kind, and without any light to see them by, if they were there.  We must say for our Boston upholsterers and furniture-makers that such good taste generally reigns in their establishments that rooms furnished at hap-hazard from them cannot fail of a certain air of good taste, so far as the individual things are concerned.  But the different articles we have supposed, having been ordered without reference to one another or the rooms, have, when brought together, no unity of effect, and the general result is scattering and confused.  If asked how Philip’s parlors look, your reply is,—­“Oh, the usual way of such parlors,—­everything that such people usually get,—­medallion-carpets, carved furniture, great mirrors, bronze mantel-ornaments, and so on.”  The only impression a stranger receives, while waiting in the dim twilight of these rooms, is that their owner is rich, and able to get good, handsome things, such as all other rich people get.

Now our friend John, as often happens in America, is moving in the same social circle with Philip, visiting the same people,—­his house is the twin of the one Philip has been furnishing, and how shall he, with a few hundred dollars, make his rooms even presentable beside those which Philip has fitted up elegantly and three thousand?

Now for the economy of beauty.  Our friend must make his prayer to the Graces,—­for, if they cannot save him, nobody can.  One thing John has to begin with, that rare gift to man, a wife with the magic cestus of Venus,—­not around her waist, but, if such a thing could be, in her finger-ends.  All that she touches falls at once into harmony and proportion.  Her eye for color and form is intuitive:  let her arrange a garret, with nothing but boxes, barrels, and cast-off furniture in it, and ten to one she makes it seem the most attractive place in the house.  It is a veritable “gift of good faerie,” this tact of beautifying and arranging, that some women have,—­and, on the present occasion, it has a real material value, that can be estimated in dollars and cents.  Come with us and you can see the pair taking their survey of the yet unfurnished parlors, as busy and happy as a couple of blue-birds picking up the first sticks and straws for their nest.