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