University of Virginia Library

III.
A Meditation by Paul Potiphar, Esq.

Well, my new house is finished—and so am
I. I hope Mrs. Potiphar is satisfied. Every
body agrees that it is “palatial.” The daily
papers have had columns of description, and I
am, evidently, according to their authority, “munificent,”
“tasteful,” “enterprising,” and “patriotic.”

Amen! but what business have I with palatial
residences? What more can I possibly want,
than a spacious, comfortable house? Do I want
buhl escritories? Do I want or molu things? Do
I know any thing about pictures and statues? In
the name of heaven do I want rose-pink bed-curtains
to give my grizzly old phiz a delicate “auroral
hue,” as Cream Cheese says of Mrs. P.'s
complexion? Because I have made fifty thousand

this last year in Timbuctoo bonds, must I
convert it all into a house, so large that it will
not hold me comfortably,—so splendid that I
might as well live in a porcelain vase, for the
trouble of taking care of it,—so prodigiously
“palatial” that I have to skulk into my private
room, put on my slippers, close the door, shut
myself up with myself, and wonder why I married
Mrs. Potiphar?

This house is her doing. Before I married
her, I would have worn yellow silk breeches on
'Change if she had commanded me—for love.
Now I would build her two houses twice as
large as this, if she required it—for peace. It's
all over. When I came home from China I was
the desirable Mr. Potiphar, and every evening
was a field-day for me, in which I reviewed all
the matrimonial forces. It is astonishing, now I
come to think of it, how skilfully Brigadier-General
Mrs. Pettitoes deployed those daughters of
hers; how vigorously Mrs. Tabby led on her for
lorn hope; and how unweariedly, Murat-like, Mrs.
De Famille charged at the head of her cavalry.
They deserve to be made Marshals of France, all

of them. And I am sure, that if women ought
ever to receive honorary testimonials, it is for
having “married a daughter well.”

That's a pretty phrase! The mammas marry,
the misses are married.

And yet, I don't see why I say so. I fear I
am getting sour. For certainly, Polly's mother
didn't marry Polly to me. I fell in love with
her; the rest followed. Old Gnu says that it's
true Polly's mother didn't marry her, but she
did marry herself, to me.

“Do you really think, Paul Potiphar,” said he,
a few months ago, when I was troubled about
Polly's getting a livery, “that your wife was in
love with you, a dry old chip from China? Don't
you hear her say whenever any of her friends are
engaged, that they `have done very well!' and
made a `capital match!' and have you any doubt
of her meaning? Don't you know that this is
the only country in which the word `money'
must never be named in the young female ear;
and in whose best society—not universally nor
without exception, of course not; Paul, don't be
a fool—money makes marriages? When you

were engaged, `the world' said that it was a
`capital thing' for Polly. Did that mean that
you were a good, generous, intelligent, friendly,
and patient man, who would be the companion
for life she ought to have? You know, as well
as I do, and as all the people who said it know,
that it meant you were worth a few hundred
thousands, that you could build a splendid house,
keep horses and chariots, and live in style. You
and I are sensible men, Paul, and we take the
world as we find it; and know that if a man
wants a good dinner he must pay for it. We
don't quarrel with this state of things. How
can it be helped? But we need not virtuously
pretend it's something else. When my wife, being
then a gay girl, first smiled at me, and looked
at me, and smelt at the flowers I sent her in an
unutterable manner, and proved to me that she
didn't love me by the efforts she made to show
that she did, why, I was foolishly smitten with
her, and married her. I knew that she did not
marry me, but sundry shares in the Patagonia
and Nova Zembla Consolidation, and a few hundred
house lots upon the island. What then?

[ILLUSTRATION] [Description: 534EAF. Illustration page. Image shows a man leaning against a fireplace mantle with his head propped up by his arm, and his other hand resting on his hip. The man is wearing a waistcoat and jacket.]

I wanted her, she was willing to take me,—being
sensible enough to know that the stock and the
lots had an incumbrance. Voilà tout, as young
Boosey says. Your wife wants you to build a
house. You'd better build it. It's the easiest
way. Make up your mind to Mrs. Potiphar,
my dear Paul, and thank heaven you've no
daughters to be married off by that estimable
woman.”

Why does a man build a house? To live in,
I suppose—to have a home. But is a fine house
a home? I mean, is a “palatial residence,” with
Mrs. Potiphar at the head of it, the “home” of
which we all dream more or less, and for which
we ardently long as we grow older? A house,
I take it, is a retreat to which a man hurries from
business, and in which he is compensated by the
tenderness and thoughtful regard of a woman, and
the play of his children, for the rough rubs with
men. I know it is a silly view of the case, but
I'm getting old and can't help it. Mrs. Potiphar
is perfectly right when she says:

“You men are intolerable. After attending to
your own affairs all day, and being free from the

fuss of housekeeping, you expect to come home
and shuffle into your slippers, and snooze over the
evening paper—if it were possible to snooze over
the exciting and respectable evening journal you
take—while we are to sew, and talk with you if
you are talkative, and darn the stockings, and
make tea. You come home tired, and likely
enough, surly, and gloom about like a thundercloud
if dinner isn't ready for you the instant
you are ready for it, and then sit mum and eat
it; and snap at the children, and show yourselves
the selfish, ugly things you are. Am I to have
no fun, never go to the opera, never go to a ball,
never have a party at home? Men are tyrants,
Mr. Potiphar. They are ogres who entice us
poor girls into their castles, and then eat up
our happiness, and scold us while they eat.”

Well, I suppose it is so. I suppose I am an
ogre and enticed Polly into my castle. But she
didn't find it large enough, and teased me to
build another. I suppose she does sit with me
in the evening, and sew, and make tea, and wait
upon me. I suppose she does, but I've not a
clear idea of it. I know it is unkind of me,

when I have been hard at work all day, trying
to make and secure the money that gives her and
her family every thing they want, and which
wearies me body and soul, to expect her to let
me stay at home, and be quiet. I know I ought
to dress and go into Gnu's house, and smirk at
his wife, and stand up in a black suit before him
attired in the same way, and talk about the same
stocks that we discussed down town in the morning
in colored trowsers. That's a social duty, I
suppose. And I ought to see various slight
young gentlemen whirl my wife around the room,
and hear them tell her when they stop, that it's
very warm. That's another social duty, I suppose.
And I must smile when the same young
gentlemen put their elbows into my stomach,
and hop on my feet in order to extend the circle
of the dance. I'm sure Mrs. P. is right. She
does very right to ask, “Have we no social duties,
I should like to know?”

And when we have performed these social
duties in Gnu's house, how mean it is, how “it
looks,” not to build a larger house for him and
Mrs. Gnu to come and perform their social duties

in. I give it up. There's no doubt of
it.

One day Polly said to me:

“Mr. Potiphar, we're getting down town.”

“What do you mean, my dear?”

“Why, every body is building above us, and
there are actually shops in the next street.
Singe, the pastry-cook, has hired Mrs. Croesus's
old house.”

“I know it. Old Croesus told me so some
time ago; and he said how sorry he was to go.
`Why, Potiphar,' said he, `I really hoped when
I built there, that I should stay, and not go out
of the house, finally, until I went into no other.
I have lived there long enough to love the
place, and have some associations with it; and
my family have grown up in it, and love the
old house too. It was our home. When any
of us said `home,' we meant not the family
only, but the house in which the family lived,
where the children were all born, and where
two have died, and my old mother, too. I'm
in a new house now, and have lost my reckoning
entirely. I don't know the house; I've no

associations with it. The house is new, the
furniture is new, and my feelings are new. It's
a farce for me to begin again, in this way.
But my wife says it's all right, that every
body does it, and wants to know how it can be
helped; and, as I don't want to argue the
matter, I look amen.' That's the way Mr.
Croesus submits to his new house. Mrs. Potiphar.”

She doesn't understand it. Poor child! how
should she? She, and Mrs. Croesus, and Mrs.
Gnu, and even Mrs. Settum Downe, are all as nomadic
as Bedouin Arabs. The Rev. Cream Cheese
says, that he sees in this constant migration from
one house to another, a striking resemblance to
the “tents of a night,” spoken of in Scripture.
He imparts this religious consolation to me
when I grumble. He says, that it prevents
a too-closely clinging affection to temporary
abodes. One day, at dinner, that audacious wag,
Boosey, asked him if the “many manthuns”
mentioned in the Bible, were not as true of
mortal as of immortal life. Mrs. Potiphar grew
purple, and Mr. Cheese looked at Boosey in the

most serious manner over the top of his champagne-glass.
I am glad to say that Polly has
properly rebuked Gauche Boosey for his irreligion,
by not asking him to her Saturday evening
matinées dansantes.

There was no escape from the house, however.
It must be built. It was not only Mrs. Potiphar
that persisted, but the spirit of the age and of the
country. One can't live among shops. When
Pearl street comes to Park Place, Park Place
must run for its life up to Thirtieth street. I
know it can't be helped, but I protested, and I
will protest. If I've got to go, I'll have my
grumble. My wife says:

“I'm ashamed of you, Potiphar. Do you pretend
to be an American, and not give way willingly
to the march of improvement? You had
better talk with Mr. Cream Cheese upon the
`genius of the country.' You are really unpatriotic,
you show nothing of the enterprising
spirit of your time.” “Yes,” I answer. “That's
pretty from you; you are patriotic, are n't you,
with your liveries and illimitable expenses, and
your low bows to money, and your immense intimacy

with all lords and ladies that honor the city
by visiting it. You are prodigiously patriotic with
your inane imitations of a splendor impossible to
you in the nature of things. You are the ideal
American woman, aren't you, Mrs. Potiphar.”

Then I run, for I'm afraid of myself, as much
as of her. I am sick of this universal plea of
patriotism. It is used to excuse all the follies that
outrage it. I am not patriotic if I don't do this
and that, which, if done, is a ludicrous caricature
of something foreign. I am not up to the time if
I persist in having my own comfort in my own
way. I try to resist the irresistible march of improvement,
if I decline to build a great house,
which, when it is built, is a puny copy of a bad
model. I am very unpatriotic if I am not trying
to outspend goreign noblemen, and if I don't
affect, without education, or taste, or habit, what
is only beautiful, when it is the result of the three.

However, this is merely my grumble. I knew,
the first morning Mrs. Potiphar spoke of a new
house, that I must built it. What she said was
perfectly true; we were getting down town, there
was no doubt of the growing inconvenience of

our situation. It was becoming a dusty, noisy
region. The congregation of the Rev. Far Niente
had sold their church and moved up town. Now
doesn't it really seem as if we were a cross between
the Arabs who dwell in tents and those who live
in cities, for we are migratory in the city? A directory
is a more imperative annual necessity here
than in any other civilized region. My wife says
it is a constant pleasure to her to go round and see
the new houses and the new furniture of her new
friends, every year. I saw that I must submit.
But I determined to make little occasional stands
against it. So one day I said:

“Polly, do you know that the wives of all the
noblemen who will be your very dear and intimate
friends and models when you go abroad,
always live in the same houses in London, and
Paris, and Rome, and Vienna? Do you know
that Northumberland House is so called because
it is the hereditary town mansion of the Duke,
and that the son and daughter-in-law of Lord
Londonderry will live after him in the house
where his father and mother lived before him?
Did that ever occur to you, my dear?”

“Mr. Potiphar,” she replied, “do you mean
to go by the example of foreign noblemen? I
thought you always laughed at me for what you
call `aping.' ”

“So I do, and so I will continue to do, Mrs.
Potiphar; only I thought that, perhaps, you would
like to know the fact, because it might make you
more lenient to me when I regretted leaving our
old house here. It has an aristocratic precedent.”

Poor, dear little Mrs. P.! It didn't take as
I meant it should, and I said no more. Yet it
does seem to me a pity that we lose all the interest
and advantage of a homestead. The house
and its furniture become endeared by long residence,
and by their mute share in all the chances
of our life. The chair in which some dear old
friend so often sat—father and mother, perhaps—
and in which they shall sit no more; the old-fashioned
table with the cuts and scratches that
generations of children have made upon it; the
old book-cases; the heavy sideboard; the glass,
from which such bumpers sparkled for those who
are hopelessly scattered now, or for ever gone;
the doors they opened; the walls that echoed their

long-hushed laughter,—are we wise when we part
with them all, or, when compelled to do so, to
leave them eagerly?

I remember my brother James used to say:

“What is our envy for our country friends,
but that their homes are permanent and characteristic?
Their children's children may play in
the same garden. Each annual festival may
summon them to the old hearth. In the meeting-house
they sit in the wooden pews where
long ago they sat and dreamed of Jerusalem,
and now as they sit there, that long ago is
fairer than the holy city. Through the open
window they see the grass waving softly in the
summer air, over old graves dearer to them
than many new houses. By a thousand tangible
and visible associations they are still, with a peculiar
sense of actuality, near to all they love.”

Polly would call it a sentimental whim—if
she could take Mrs. Crœsus's advice before she
spoke of it—but what then? When I was
fifteen, I fell desperately in love with Lucy
Lamb. “Pooh, pooh,” said my father, “you
are romantic, it's all a whim of yours.”

And he succeeded in breaking it up. I went
to China, and Lucy married old Firkin, and lived
in a splendid house, and now lies in a splendid
tomb of Carrara marble, exquisitely sculptured.

When I was forty, I came home from China,
and the old gentleman said, “I want you to
marry Arabella Bobbs, the heiress. It will be
a good match.”

I said to him.

“Pooh, pooh, my dear father, you are mercenary;
it's all a whim of yours.”

“My dear son, I know it,” said he, “the
whole thing is whim. You can live on a
hundred dollars a year, if you choose. But
you have the whim of a good dinner, of a
statue, of a book. Why not? Only be careful
in following your whims, that they really come
to something. Have as many whims as you
please, but don't follow them all.”

“Certainly not,” said I; and fell in love
with the present Mrs. Potiphar, and married
her, off-hand. So, if she calls this genuine influence
of association a mere whim—let it go
at that. She is a whim, too. My mistake

simply was in not following out the romantic
whim, and marrying Lucy Lamb. At least it
seems to me so, this morning. In fact, sitting
in my very new “palatial residence,” the whole
business of life seems to me rather whimsical.

For here I am, come into port at last. No
longer young,—but worth a good fortune,—master
of a great house,—respected down town,—husband
of Mrs. Potiphar,—and father of Master
Frederic ditto. Per contra; I shall never be in
love again,—in getting my fortune I have lost
my real life,—my house is dreary,—Mrs. Potiphar
is not Lucy Lamb,—and Master Frederic
—is a good boy.

The game is all up for me, and yet I trust I
have good feeling enough left to sympathize
with those who are still playing. I see girls
as lovely and dear as any of which poets have
sung—as fresh as dew-drops, and beautiful as
morning. I watch their glances, and understand
them better than they know—for they do not
dream that “old Potiphar” does any thing more
than pay Mrs. P.'s bills. I see the youths
nervous about neckcloths, and anxious that

their hair shall be parted straight behind. I
see them all wear the same tie, the same trowsers,
the same boots. I hear them all say the
same thing, and dance with the same partners
in the same way. I see them go to Europe and
return—I hear them talk slang to show that
they have exhausted human life in foreign parts,
and observe them demean themselves according
to their idea of the English nobleman. I watch
them go in strongly for being “manly,” and
“smashing the spoonies”—asserting intimacies
with certain uncertain women in Paris, and
proving it by their treatment of ladies at home.
I see them fuddle themselves on fine wines and
talk like cooks, play heavily and lose, and win,
and pay, and drink, and maintain a conservative
position in politics, denouncing “Uncle Tom's
Cabin,” as a false and fanatical tract; and declaring
that our peculiar institutions are our
own affair, and that John Bull had better keep
his eyes at home to look into his coal mines.
I see this vigorous fermentation subside, and
much clear character deposited—and, also, much
life and talent muddled for ever.

It is whimsical, because this absurd spectacle
is presented by manikins who are made of the
same clay as Plutarch's heroes—because, deliberately,
they prefer cabbages to roses. I am not
at all angry with them. On the contrary, when
they dance well I look on with pleasure. Man
ought to dance, but he ought to do something
else, too. All genial gentlemen in all ages
have danced. Who quarrels with dancing?
Ask Mrs. Potiphar if I ever objected to it.
But then, people must dance at their own risk.
If Lucy Lamb, by dancing with young Boosey
when he is tipsy, shows that she has no self-respect,
how can I, coolly talking with Mrs.
Lamb in the corner, and gravely looking on,
respect the young lady? Lucy tells me that
if she dances with James she must with John.
I cannot deny it, for I am not sufficiently familiar
with the regulations of the mystery.
Only this; if dancing with sober James makes
it necessary to dance with tipsy John—it seems
to me, upon a hasty glance at the subject, that
a self-respecting Lucy would refrain from the
dance with James. Why it should be so, I

cannot understand. Why Lucy must dance with
every man who asks her, whether he is in his
senses, or knows how to dance, or is agreeable
to her or not, is a profound mystery to Paul
Potiphar. Here is a case of woman's wrongs,
decidedly. We men cull the choicest partners,
make the severest selections, and the innocent
Lucys gracefully submit. Lucy loves James,
and a waltz with him (as P. P. knows very well
from experience) is “a little heaven below” to
both. Now, dearest Lucy, why must you pay
the awful penance of immediately waltzing with
John, against whom your womanly instinct rebels?
And yet the laws of social life are so
stern, that Lucy must make the terrible decision,
whether it is better to waltz with James
or worse to waltz with John! “Whether,” to
put it strongly with Father Jerome, “heaven is
pleasanter than hell is painful.”

I say that I watch these graceful gamesters,
without bitter feeling. Sometimes it is sad to
see James woo Lucy, win her, marry her, and
then both discover that they have made a mistake.
I don't see how they could have helped

it; and when the world, that loves them both
so tenderly, holds up its pure hands of horror,
why, Paul Potiphar goes quietly home to Mrs.
P., who is dressing for Lucy's ball, and says
nothing. He prefers to retire into his private
room, and his slippers, and read the last number
of Bleak House, or a chapter in Vanity Fair. If
Mrs. Potiphar catches him at the latter, she is
sure to say:

“There it is again; always reading those exaggerated
sketches of society. Odious man that
he is. I am sure he never knew a truly womanly
woman.”

“Polly, when he comes back in September I'll
introduce him to you,” is the only answer I have
time to make, for it is already half past ten, and
Mrs. P. must be off to the ball.

I know that our set is not the world, nor the
country, nor the city. I know that the amiable
youths who are in league to crush spooneyism
are not many, and well I know, that in our set
(I mean Mrs. P.'s) there are hearts as noble and
characters as lofty as in any time and in any
land. And yet, as the father of a family (viz.

Frederic, our son), I am constrained to believe
that our social tendency is to the wildest extravagance.
Here, for instance, is my house. It cost
me eighty-five thousand dollars. It is superbly
furnished. Mrs. P. and I don't know much about
such things. She was only stringent for buhl,
and the last Parisian models, so we delivered our
house into the hands of certain eminent upholsterers
to be furnished, as we send Frederic to
the tailor's to be clothed. To be sure, I asked
what proof we had that the upholsterer was
possessed of taste. But Mrs. P. silenced me,
by saying that it was his business to have taste,
and that a man who sold furniture, naturally
knew what was handsome and proper for my
house.

The furnishing was certainly performed with
great splendor and expense. My drawing-rooms
strongly resemble the warehouse of an ideal
cabinet-maker. Every whim of table—every
caprice of chair and sofa, is satisfied in those
rooms. There are curtains like rainbows, and
carpets, as if the curtains had dripped all over
the floor. There are heavy cabinets of carved

walnut, such as belong in the heavy wainscotted
rooms of old palaces, set against my last French
pattern of wall paper. There are lofty chairs,
like the thrones of archbishops in Gothic cathedrals,
standing by the side of the elaborately
gilded frames of mirrors. Marble statues of Venus
and the Apollo support my mantels, upon
which or molu Louis Quatorze clocks ring the
hours. In all possible places there are statues,
statuettes, vases, plates, teacups, and liquor-cases.
The wood-work, when white, is elaborated in
Moresco carving—when oak and walnut, it is
heavily moulded. The contrasts are pretty, but
rather sudden. In truth, my house is a huge
curiosity-shop of valuable articles,—clustered
without taste, or feeling, or reason. They are
there, because my house was large and I was
able to buy them; and because, as Mrs. P. says,
one must have buhl and or molu, and new
forms of furniture, and do as well as one's
neighbors, and show that one is rich, if he is
so. They are there, in fact, because I couldn't
help it. I didn't want them, but then I don't
know what I did want. Somehow I don't feel
as if I had a home, merely because orders were
given to the best upholsterers and fancy-men in
town to send a sample of all their wares to my
house. To pay a morning call at Mrs. Potiphar's
is, in some ways, better than going shopping.
You see more new and costly things in
a shorter time. People say, “What a love of a
chair!” “What a darling table!” “What a
heavenly sofa!” and they all go and tease
their husbands to get things precisely like them.
When Kurz Pacha, the Sennaar minister, came
to a dinner at my house, he said:

“Bless my soul! Mr. Potiphar, your house
is just like your neighbor's.”

I know it. I am perfectly aware that there
is no more difference between my house and
Crœsus's, than there is in two ten-dollar bills
of the same bank. He might live in my house
and I in his, without any confusion. He has
the same curtains, carpets, chairs, tables, Venuses,
Apollos, busts, vases, &c. And he goes
into his room, and thinks it's all a devilish
bore, just as I do. We have each got to refurnish
every few years, and therefore have no

possible opportunity for attaching ourselves to
the objects about us. Unfortunately Kurz Pacha
particularly detested precisely what Mrs. P. most
liked, because it is the fashion to like them. I
mean the Louis Quatorze and the Louis Quinze
things.

“Taste, dear Mrs. Potiphar,” said the Pacha,
“was a thing not known in the days of those
kings. Grace was entirely supplanted by grotesqueness,
and now, instead of pure and beautiful
Greek forms, we must collect these hideous
things. If you are going backward to find
models, why not go as far as the good ones?
My dear madam, an or molu Louis Quatorze
clock would have given Pericles a fit. Your
drawing-rooms would have thrown Aspasia into
hysterics. Things are not beautiful because
they cost money; nor is any grouping handsome
without harmony. Your house is like a woman
dressed in Ninon de l'Enclos's bodice, with
Queen Anne's hooped skirt, who limps in Chinese
shoes, and wears an Elizabethan ruff round
her neck, and a Druse's horn on her head. My
dear madam, this is the kind of thing we go to

see in museums. It is the old stock joke of
the world.”

By Jove! how mad Mrs. Potiphar was! She
rose from table, to the great dismay of Kurz
Pacha, and I could only restrain her by reminding
her that the Sennaar Minister had but an
imperfect idea of our language, and that in
Sennaar people probably said what they thought
when they conversed.

“You'd better go to Sennaar, then, yourself,
Mr. Potiphar,” said my wife, as she smoothed
her rumpled feathers.

“'Pon my word, madam, it's my own
opinion,” replied I.

Kurz Pacha, who is a philosopher (of the
Sennaar school), asks me if people have no
ideas of their own in building houses. I
answer, none, that I know of, except that of
getting the house built. The fact is, it is as
much as Paul Potiphar can do, to make the
money to erect his palatial residence, and then
to keep it going. There are a great many fine
statues in my house, but I know nothing about
them; I don't see why we should have such

heathen images in reputable houses. But Mrs.
P. says:

“Pooh! have you no love for the fine arts?”

There it is! It doesn't do not to love the
fine arts; so Polly is continually cluttering up
the halls and staircases with marble, and sending
me heavy bills for the same.

When the house was ready, and my wife had
purchased the furniture, she came and said to me:

“Now, my dear P., there is one thing we
haven't thought of.”

“What's that?”

“Pictures, you know, dear.”

“What do you want pictures for?” growled
I, and rather surlily, I am afraid.

“Why to furnish the walls; what do you
suppose we want pictures for?”

“I tell you, Polly,” said I, “that pictures are
the most extravagant kind of furniture. Pshaw!
a man rubs and dabbles a little upon a canvas
two feet square, and then coolly asks three hundred
dollars for it.”

“Dear me, Pot,” she answered, “I don't want
home-made pictures. What an idea! Do you

think I'd have pictures on my walls that were
painted in this country?—No, my dear husband,
let us have some choice specimens of the old
masters. A landscape by Rayfel, for instance;
or one of Angel's fruit pieces, or a cattle scene
by Verynees, or a Madonna of Giddo's, or a boar-hunt
of Hannibal Crackkey's.”

What was the use of fighting against this sort
of thing? I told her to have it her own way.
Mrs. P. consulted Singe the pastry cook, who
told her his cousin had just come out from Italy
with a lot of the very finest pictures in the world,
which he had bribed one of the Pope's guard
to steal from the Vatican, and which he would
sell at a bargain.

They hang on my walls now. They represent
nothing in particular; but in certain lights, if you
look very closely, you can easily recognize something
in them that looks like a lump of something
brown. There is one very ugly woman with a
convulsive child in her arms, to which Mrs. P.
directly takes all her visitors, and asks them to
admire the beautiful Shay douver of Giddo's.
When I go out to dinner with people that talk

pictures and books, and that kind of thing, I
don't like to seem behind, so I say, in a critical
way, that Giddo was a good painter. None of
them contradict me, and one day when somebody
asked, “Which of his pictures do you prefer?”
I answered straight, “His Shay douver,” and no
more questions were asked.

They hang all about the house now. The
Giddo is in the dining-room. I asked the Sennaar
Minister if it wasn't odd to have a religious picture
in the dining-room. He smiled, and said that
it was perfectly proper if I liked it, and if the
picture of such an ugly woman didn't take away
my appetite.

`What difference does it make,” said he, in the
Sennaar manner, “it would be equally out of
keeping with every other room in your house.
My dear Potiphar, it is a perfectly unprincipled
house, this of yours. If your mind were in the
condition of your house, so ill-assorted, so confused,
so overloaded with things that don't belong
together, you would never make another cent.
You have order, propriety, harmony, in your
dealings with the Symmes's Hole Bore Co., and

they are the secrets of your success. Why not
have the same elements in your house? Why
pitch every century, country, and fashion, higgledy-piggledy
into your parlors and dining-room?
Have every thing you can get, in
heaven's name, but have every thing in its place.
If you are a plodding tradesman, knowing and
caring nothing about pictures, or books, or statuary,
or objets de vertu; don't have them. Suppose
your neighbor chooses to put them in his
house. If he has them merely because he had
the money to pay for them, he is the butt of
every picture and book he owns.

“When I meet Mr. Cræsus in Wall street, I
respect him as I do a king in his palace, or a
scholar in his study. He is master of the occasion.
He commands like Nelson at the Nile.
I, who am merely a diplomatist, skulk and hurry
along, and if Mr. Cræsus smiles, I inwardly thank
him for his charity. Wall street is Cræsus's
sphere, and all his powers play there perfectly.
But when I meet him in his house, surrounded
by objects of art, by the triumphs of a skill
which he does not understand, and for which he

cares nothing,—of which, in fact, he seems afraid,
because he knows any chance question about
them would trip him up,—my feeling is very
much changed. If I should ask him what or molu
is, I don't believe he could answer, though his
splendid or molu clock rang, indignant, from the
mantel. But if I should say, `Invest me this
thousand dollars,' he would secure me eight per
cent. It certainly isn't necessary to know what
or molu is, nor to have any other objet de vertu but
your wife. Then why should you barricade yourself
behind all these things that you really cannot
enjoy, because you don't understand? If you
could not read Italian, you would be a fool to buy
Dante, merely because you knew he was a great
poet. And, in the same way, if you know nothing
about matters of art, it is equally foolish for you
to buy statues and pictures, although you hear on
all sides, that, as Mrs. P. says, one must love art.

“As for learning from your own pictures, you
know, perfectly well, that until you have some
taste in the matter, you will be paying money for
your pictures, blindly, so that the only persons
upon whom your display of art would make any

impression, will be the very ones to see that you
know nothing about it.

“In Sennaar, a man is literally `the master of
the house.' He isn't surrounded by what he does
not understand; he is not obliged to talk book,
and picture, when he knows nothing about these
matters. He is not afraid of his parlor, and you
feel instantly upon entering the house, the character
of the master. Please, my dear Mr. Potiphar,
survey your mansion and tell me what kind of a
man it indicates. If it does not proclaim (in your
case) the President of the Patagonia Junction,
a man shrewd, and hard, and solid, without taste
or liberal cultivation, it is a painted deceiver. If
it tries to insinuate by this chaotic profusion of
rich and rare objects, that you are a cultivated,
accomplished, tasteful, and generous man, it is a
bad lie, because a transparent one. Why, my
dear old Pot., the moment your servant opens the
front door, a man of sense perceives the whole
thing. You and Mrs. Potiphar are bullied by all
the brilliancy you have conjured up. It is the
old story of the fisherman and the genii. And
your guests all see it. They are too well-bred

to speak of it; but I come from Sennaar, where
we do not lay so much stress upon that kind
of good-breeding. Mr. Paul Potiphar, it is one
thing to have plenty of money, and quite another,
to know how to spend it.”

Now, as I told him, this kind of talk may
do very well in Sennaar, but it is absurd in a
country like ours. How are people to know
that I'm rich, unless I show it? I'm sorry for
it, but how shall I help it, having Mrs. P. at
hand?

“How about the library?” said she one day.

“What library?” inquired I.

“Why, our library, of course.”

“I haven't any.”

“Do you mean to have such a house as this
without a library?”

“Why,” said I plaintively, “I don't read
books—I never did, and I never shall; and I
don't care any thing about them. Why should
I have a library?”

“Why, because it's part of a house like this.”

“Mrs. P., are you fond of books?”

“No, not particularly. But one must have

[ILLUSTRATION] [Description: 534EAF. Illustration page. Image of two men seated at a table while smoking. Smoke is coming out of their mouths. The man on the left faces away from the reader, while the man on the right faces toward the reader.]

some regard to appearances. Suppose we are
Hottentots, you don't want us to look so, do
you?”

I thought that it was quite as barbarous to
imprison a lot of books that we should never
open, and that would stand in gilt upon the
shelves, silently laughing us to scorn, as not to
have them if we didn't want them. I proposed
a compromise.

“Is it the looks of the thing, Mrs. P.?”
said I.

“That's all,” she answered.

“Oh! well, I'll arrange it.”

So I had my shelves built, and my old friends
Matthews and Rider furnished me with complete
sets of handsome gilt covers to all the books that
no gentleman's library should be without, which
I arranged, carefully, upon the shelves, and had
the best-looking library in town. I locked 'em
in, and the key is always lost when any body
wants to take down a book. However, it was
a good investment in leather, for it brings me
in the reputation of a reading man and a patron
of literature.

Mrs. P. is a religious woman—the Rev. Cream
Cheese takes care of that—but only yesterday
she proposed something to me that smells very
strongly of candlesticks.

“Pot., I want a prie-dieu.”

“Pray-do what?” answered I.

“Stop, you wicked man. I say I want a
kneeling-chair.”

“A kneeling-chair?” I gasped, utterly confused.

“A prie-dieu—a prie-dieu—to pray in, you
know.”

My Sennaar friend, who was at table, choked.
When he recovered, and we were sipping the
“Blue seal,” he told me that he thought Mrs.
Potiphar in a prie-dieu was rather a more amusing
idea than Giddo's Madonna in the dining-room.

“She will insist upon its being carved handsomely
in walnut. She will not pray upon
pine. It is a romantic, not a religious, whim.
She'll want a missal next; vellum or no prayers.
This is piety of the `Lady Alice' school. It
belongs to a fine lady and a fine house precisely
as your library does, and it will be precisely

as genuine. Mrs. Potiphar in a prie-dieu
is like that blue morocco Comus in your library.
It is charming to look at, but there's nothing
in it. Let her have the prie-dieu by all means,
and then begin to build a chapel. No gentleman's
house should be without a chapel. You'll
have to come to it, Potiphar. You'll have to
hear Cream Cheese read morning prayers in a
purple chasuble,—que sais-je? You'll see religion
made a part of the newest fashion in houses,
as you already see literature and art, and with
just as much reality and reason.”

Privately, I am glad the Sennaar minister has
gone out of town. It's bad enough to be uncomfortable
in your own house without knowing why;
but to have a philosopher of the Sennaar school
show you why you are so, is cutting it rather too
fat. I am gradually getting resigned to my house.
I've got one more struggle to go through next
week in Mrs. Potiphar's musical party. The
morning soirées are over for the season, and
Mrs. P. begins to talk of the watering places.
I am getting gradually resigned; but only gradually.

Oh! dear me, I wonder if this is the “home,
sweet home” business the girls used to sing
about! Music does certainly alter cases. I
can't quite get used to it. Last week I was
one morning in the basement breakfast-room,
and I heard an extra cried. I ran out of the
area door—dear me!—before I thought what I
was about, I emerged bareheaded from under
the steps, and ran a little way after the boy.
I know it wasn't proper. I am sorry, very sorry.
I am afraid Mrs. Crœsus saw me; I know Mrs.
Gnu told it all about that morning: and Mrs.
Settum Downe called directly upon Mrs. Potiphar,
to know if it were really true that I had
lost my wits, as every body was saying. I don't
know what Mrs. P. answered. I am sorry to
have compromised her so. I went immediately
and ordered a pray-do of the blackest walnut.
My resignation is very gradual. Kurz Pacha
says they put on gravestones in Sennaar three
Latin words—do you know Latin? if you don't,
come and borrow some of my books. The words
are: ora pro me!