I would like to remind the reader that there are a few--many of them young men and young women too--who have money enough for all reasonable wants, and who do not care to waste time and life in getting _more_ money, for which they have no special uses; these persons find a perennial occupation in the study, the comparison, the purchasing, the collecting, of all that will illustrate their subject of study--their hobby. Around this subject of pottery and porcelain may be grouped, if one so pleases, all the habits, the wants, the inventions, the growths, of human society. Some have yet a notion that the study of the politics and the fightings of man is most important; others, how man came to be an Arminian or an Augustinian; others, whether the sun is or is not gradually cooling down, and must finally cease to be, or whether, on the contrary, its flames are fed by the self-sacrificing stars. Without detracting from their labors, I beg leave to say that my great hobby or central fact being the _home_, I hold that whatever makes that interesting, beautiful, or useful, is, or should be, interesting, beautiful, and useful, to all the world. I believe that what we call politics, or government, is only valuable in that it helps to create and to protect desirable homes; all the rest--all the speeches, and processions, and crownings, and court-balls, and receptions, and dinners--are "leather and prunella." Therefore I believe the "art of living" is first and foremost; to know how to make _this_ life comfortable and beautiful is all-important. Yet there is not a teacher of this great art in all the land, although "professors" are legion. We may well ask, when we go to a house: "What have they there to tell us--what to show us? What have they collected to interest, to please, to instruct?" If a person has only many bonds bearing coupons locked up in his safe--delightful as the fact may be to him--what pleasure or satisfaction is that to us? But if in that house are gathered all the interesting examples of any growth of Nature or of Art, what a pleasure to go there!--they may be beetles, or butterflies, or stones, or shells, or silvers, or porcelains. I thank God that here is a man who can and does collect--one who does care for something which I too care for. I wish, therefore, that every young man and young woman would get a _hobby_ early in life to which he or she can at any time devote some spare time and spare money. _Ennui_, the demon who afflicts the idle, is thus exorcised, and vice loses its charming power.