Page:Civilization and barbarism (1868).djvu/340

296 its carpet and its cushions, a divan as I said before, which came down to us from our Arabic ancestors, a privileged spot on which women alone were permitted to sit, and in whose spacious circumference, reclining upon ottomans, the visitors and hosts carried on their lively chit-chat, that indescribable medley of womanly talk.

"Why has the poetical dais been allowed to disappear from our houses, so convenient for sitting, so adequate for feminine repose, to substitute in its place, chairs, in which one by one or in rows, like soldiers in platoons, the eye reviews the company in our modern saloons? But that dais expressed that man might not publicly approach the young ladies, talk freely, and mix, freely with them, as our modern customs permit, and it was therefore repudiated by themselves, as easily as it had been formerly accepted as a privilege. The dais then yielded its place in the house to the more modern fashion of chairs, notwithstanding the feeble resistance of my mother, who enjoyed sitting upon one extreme of it in the morning to take her cup of mate, with her brazier and boiler of water on the lower step before her, or to reel her cottons or to fill her quills over night for the web of the following day. Not being accustomed to work upon a high seat, she was obliged to adopt the use of a carpet to supply the loss of the dais, which she lamented many long years.

"My sisters' spirit of innovation at last attacked sacred objects. I protest that I did not take part in this sacrilege which the poor little things committed, in obedience to the spirit of the time. Those two saints, so grand, so ancient, Santo Domingo and San Vicente Ferrar, decidedly marred the walls. If my mother could but consent that they should be taken down, and put into a sleeping-room, the little house would take a new aspect of modern and