"How many people do we call on from year to year and know no more of their feelings, habits, tastes, family ideas and ways, than if they lived in Kamtschatka! And why? Because the room which they call a front-parlor is made expressly so that you never shall know. They sit in a back-room,--work, talk, read, perhaps. After the servant has let you in and opened a crack of the shutters, and while you sit waiting for them to change their dress and come in, you speculate as to what they may be doing. From some distant region, the laugh of a child, the song of a canary-bird, reaches you, and then a door claps hastily to. Do they love plants? Do they write letters, sew, embroider, crochet? Do they ever romp and frolic? What books do they read? Do they sketch or paint? Of all these possibilities the mute and muffled room says nothing. A sofa and six chairs, two ottomans fresh from the upholsterer's, a Brussels carpet, a centre-table with four gilt Books of Beauty on it, a mantel-clock from Paris, and two bronze vases,--all these tell you only in frigid tones, 'This is the best room,'--only that, and nothing more,--and soon _she_ trips in in her best clothes, and apologizes for keeping you waiting, asks how your mother is, and you remark that it is a pleasant day,--and thus the acquaintance progresses from year to year. One hour in the little back-room, where the plants and canary-bird and children are, might have made you fast friends for life; but as it is, you care no more for them than for the gilt clock on the mantel. "And now, girls," said I, pulling a paper out of my pocket, "you must know that your father is getting to be famous by means of these 'House and Home Papers.' Here is a letter I have just received:-- "'MOST EXCELLENT MR. CROWFIELD,--Your thoughts have lighted into our family-circle, and echoed from our fireside. We all feel the force of them, and are delighted with the felicity of your treatment of the topic you have chosen. You have taken hold of a subject that lies deep in our hearts, in a genial, temperate, and convincing spirit. All must acknowledge the power of your sentiments upon their imaginations;--if they could only trust to them in actual life! There is the rub.