mistook, like most of his guild, ostentation for hospitality. Every
dish at the banquets for which he became famous was a show piece. He
swelled with honest pride in the perusal of a popular personal
paragraph estimating the value of his silver and cut glass at $50,000.

The superintendent, part owner, and the slave of all this magnificence
was his wife. She was her own housekeeper, and employed, besides the
coachman, whose business was in the stables and upon his box, five
servants. There were twenty-five rooms in the palatial house, giving
to each servant five to be kept in the spick-and-span array demanded
by the master's position and taste. As a matter of course something
was neglected in every department, the instinct of self-preservation
being innate and cultivated in Abigail, Phyllis and Gretchen, "Jeems"
and "Chawls." Even more as a matter of course, the nominal mistress
supplemented the deficiencies of her aids.

The house was as present and forceful a consciousness with her as his
Dulcinea with David Copperfield at the period when the "sun shone
Dora, and the birds sang Dora, and the south wind blew Dora, and the
wild flowers were all Doras to a bud." No snail ever carried her abode
upon her back more constantly than our poor rich woman the
satin-lined, hot-aired and plate-windowed stone pile, with her. The
lines that criss-crossed her forehead, and channeled her cheeks, and
ran downward from the corners of her mouth, were hieroglyphics
standing in the eyes of the initiated for the baleful legend--

"HOUSE AND HOUSEKEEPING."

When she drove abroad in her luxurious chariot, behind high-stepping
bays, jingling with plated harness, or repaired in the season to