What would the free-born American mistress do then? With the free-born revolter still obdurate, and the foreign emigrant ceasing to emigrate or recalcitrant, she would be in an unpleasant fix in her elaborate establishment conducted on effete principles. In this practical dilemma, rather than in an awakened moral sense, seems to lie our best hope of regeneration, for it cannot be denied that the free-born American mistress is doing all she can at present to perpetuate the foreign idea of domestic service, and it seems probable that so long as the foreign emigrant is willing to be bribed the true principles of democracy will be violated. Already the difficulty of obtaining servants is inducing home-loving families to seek the apartment-house. A more distinct dearth would speedily change the relations between mistress and servant into that of contractor and contractee, as in other employments in this country. It may be that the descendants of the emigrant will be unable to resist the lure offered them, and that the free-born mistress will triumph. If so, we shall become no better and possibly no worse than the effete civilizations we promised to make blush by the worth of our institutions. _House-Furnishing_ and the _Commissariat_. I. After a man and his wife have made up their minds whether to live in a town house or suburban villa, they are obliged to consider next what they will have in the way of furniture, and presently what they will have for dinner. The consciousness that a house has nothing in it but the barest fixtures--the gasometer, the water-tanks, and the electric wires--and that it is for you and your wife to decide exactly what shall go into it in the way of wall-papers, carpets, upholstery, and objects of virtu, is inspiring, even though your purse be not plethoric and your knowledge of æsthetics limited. The thought at once presents itself that here is the chance of your lifetime to demonstrate how beautiful and cosy a home may be, and you set eagerly to work to surpass your predecessors of equal means. It is a worthy ambition to endeavor to make the matrimonial nest or the home of maturer years attractive, and if we were to peer back far enough into the past of even this country, to the time when our great great-grandmothers set up housekeeping with our great great-grandfathers, we should find that furnishing was considered a seriously delightful matter, though not perhaps the almost sacred trust we regard it to-day. I mean our great great-grandparents who used to live in those charming old colonial houses, and who owned the mahogany desks with brass handles and claw feet, the tall clocks, the ravishing andirons, and all the other old-fashioned furniture which is now so precious and difficult to find. Distance may lend such enchantment to a spinning-wheel, a warming-pan, or a spinnet, that one is liable to become hysterical in praise of them, and a calm, æsthetic mind, outside the limits of an