say of them. And she had, I remember, an intense aversion to plated
goods and bronze halfpence. The halfpence of her youth had been vast and
corpulent red-brown discs, which it was folly to speak of as small
change. They were fine handsome coins, and almost as inconvenient as
crown-pieces. I remember she corrected me once when I was very young.
"Don't call a penny a copper, dear," she said; "copper is a metal. The
pennies they have nowadays are bronze." It is odd how our childish
impressions cling to us. I still regard bronze as a kind of upstart
intruder, a mere trashy pretender among metals.

All my Aunt Charlotte's furniture was thoroughly good, and most of it
extremely uncomfortable; there was not a thing for a little boy to break
and escape damnation in the household. Her china was the only thing with
a touch of beauty in it--at least I remember nothing else--and each of
her blessed plates was worth the happiness of a mortal for days
together. And they dressed me in a Nessus suit of valuable garments. I
learned the value of thoroughly good things only too early. I knew the
equivalent of a teacup to the very last scowl, and I have hated good,
handsome property ever since. For my part I love cheap things, trashy
things, things made of the commonest rubbish that money can possibly
buy; things as vulgar as primroses, and as transitory as a morning's
frost.

Think of all the advantages of a cheap possession--cheap and nasty, if
you will--compared with some valuable substitute. Suppose you need this
or that. "Get a good one," advises Aunt Charlotte; "one that will last."
You do--and it does last. It lasts like a family curse. These great
plain valuable things, as plain as good women, as complacently assured
of their intrinsic worth--who does not know them? My Aunt Charlotte
scarcely had a new thing in her life. Her mahogany was avuncular; her