She soon became accustomed to getting green roses with crimson
leaves, and deep blue apple blossoms against a pure white sky, but
when she finished one complete set of table china in fifty pieces,
each cup and saucer with a flower on it, the result looked so
startlingly like something from a medical museum, that she never
dared give the set away. She lent it to the cook to eat her meals
on. The set went fast.

During this epoch Master Ulysses Budlong Jr. was studying at school a
physiology ornamented with a few pictures in color representing the
stomachs of alcohol specialists. They were intended, perhaps, to
frighten little school children from frequenting saloons during
recess, or to warn them not to put whisky on their porridge.

It was at this time that Mrs. Budlong spent two weeks' hard labor
painting Easter lilies on an umbrella jug. When it came home from
the furnace, her husband stared at it and mumbled:

"It's artistic, but what is it?"

Little Ulysses shrieked: "Oh, I know!" and darting away, returned
with his physiology opened at one of those gastric sunsets,
and--well, it was this that impelled Mrs. Budlong to a solemn pledge
never to paint china again--a pledge she has nobly kept.

From smeared china she went to that art in which a woman buys
something at a store, pulls out half of it, and calls the remnant
drawn work. A season of this was succeeded by a mania for sofa
cushions. It fairly snowed sofa cushions all over Carthage that
Christmas; and Yale, Harvard and Princeton pillows could be found in