you have played the little game of parlor magic? There are homes in
which that game is always played, and they are the happiest of all. In
them the real value of neatness and order, of thrift and taste and
temperance, is understood, and the Beauty who once lay lapped in lofty
towers knows that the romance which enshrined her amid those
battlements and tufted trees is preserved and forever refreshed by the
art of the neat-handed Phillis. And, madame, upon _his_ side _he_ does
not reverse the order of the story and of nature, and sink from the
Prince into the Beast.




THOREAU AND MY LADY CAVALIERE.


The last time that the Easy Chair saw that remarkable man, Henry
Thoreau, he came quietly into Mr. Emerson's study to get a volume of
Pliny's letters. Expecting to see no one, and accustomed to attend
without distraction to the business in hand, he was as quietly going
out, when the host spoke to him, and without surprise, and with
unsmiling courtesy, Thoreau greeted his friends. He seated himself,
maintaining the same habitual erect posture, which made it seem
impossible that he could ever lounge or slouch, and that made
Hawthorne speak of him as "cast-iron," and immediately he began to
talk in the strain so familiar to his friends. It was a staccato style
of speech, every word coming separately and distinctly, as if
preserving the same cool isolation in the sentence that the speaker
did in society; but the words were singularly apt and choice, and
Thoreau had always something to say. His knowledge was original. He