But certain principles always prevail in my selections. For instance, as my particular friend, the Reverend George Herbert, remarked, as he looked about him on one of his visits to my castle: 'Sober handsomeness doth bear the bell.' I cannot admit anything gaudy, needlessly exotic, or impertinently obtruding the idea of dollars. Now a travelled lady, who had heard of my castle, once offered me for it a buhl cabinet, of angry and alarming redness and a huge idol of a gilded trough, standing on bandy legs, and gorged with artificial flowers. And I thanked her for her kind intentions, ordered a handcart, sent the lumber to auction, and applied the proceeds to the benefit of the insane. Tapestry, however, clever bronzes, sheathed daggers from Hassam's with beetles crawling on the hilts, and illuminated, brazen-clasped old tomes abound at my castle. They come to me one by one, each bringing with it its separate pleasure. I have no fancy for buying up, at one fell swoop, the whole establishment of some bankrupt banker or _confiscated_ Russian nobleman. Instead of slipping at once, like a dishonest hermit-crab, into the whole investment of somebody else, I rather choose to come by my own, as I suppose other more happily constituted shell-fish do, by gradual and individual accretion or secretion. My winter parlor looks down Beacon street. It is lofty, like all the rest of my apartments, but otherwise small and snug. The floor is of a dark wood, polished to the utmost. The great wood-fire loves to wink at its own glowing face mirrored in this floor; and, when alone, I often skate upon it. But as I do not wish to see my less sure-footed friends disposed about it in writhing attitudes expressive of agony and broken bones, I usually keep it covered, up to a yard's breadth from the dark-carved wainscot, with a velvety carpet, which was woven for me at Wilton, and represents the casting scene in the 'Song of the Bell.' The window curtains are of velvet, of just the shade of purple that nestles in the centre of the most splendid kind of fuchsia, and have an Etruscan border and heavy fringes of gold bullion. The walls are covered with a crimson velvet paper, of the hue of the outer petals of that same fuchsia, with little golden suns shining over it everywhere. One end of the room is further lighted up by a portrait of the terrestrial fury Etna, in a full suit of grape vines and an explosion of fiery wrath. Opposite is a spirited scene, by an artist who shall be nameless, suggested by a passage in an interesting sermon by Jonathan Edwards. The contemplation of the latter picture, especially, makes a chance sensation of chilliness a luxury rather than the contrary.