anywhere there can be the head or the foot, and the man at once accepts the new position, without demur; but given the ordinary table, nothing will move him, argue as we will and demonstrate as we may how infinitely better, in every possible manner, another seat would be for him. Of course, if the house be accepted as it is, nothing can ever make it nice, be sure of that. If it be wind and water-tight, and that is a rare experience, the so-called decorations will either be terrible, or else will ‘swear’ continually at the belongings we bring to put amidst them. Lucky is the woman who finds dirty paint and torn and smudged papers and who does not come across an obstinate landlord and a ‘newly-decorated house.’ If she does and she possesses an ordinary husband who thinks anything does so long as it is clean and tidy, she should flatly refuse to enter it, for if she has artistic taste her life henceforward will be nothing but misery; for, absurd as it may seem, real pain and discomfort are given by ugly or incongruous belongings; and I venture to state boldly that people would be much happier did they own and realise this fact, and give over priding themselves on ‘rising above their surroundings,’ a thing no one possessed of the smallest eye for colour or form was ever really able to do. Superior folk always tell us we can, just as they say we ought not to be influenced by the weather, yet ‘ought’ doesn’t come into the matter at all. Maybe we ought not, but then we ought not to be ill or grow old, or be irritable, or anything but severely virtuous and good in every _rôle_ we have to play during life, but all these things _are_ or _are_ not. What they and we _ought_ to be or to do is quite another matter, as anyone with a grain of sense will, I think, admit. [Illustration: DINING-ROOM AT WAYSIDE.]