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194 merely a crowd, a litter, things flung into the room pell-mell by a house-mistress bent on securing for her parlour-maid a silly hour's dusting every day of objects—not of virtue—and for herself the recognition by her neighbours that she has money enough to throw away in making her living-room a silly imitation of a shop for bric-a-brac. Can you, even those of you who do not live in streets where you have to safeguard your privacy—can you look out of the window without being tickled in the face by lace curtains, blind-tassels, or potted palm-leaves? Can you sit down to the writing-table without entangling the legs of your chair in a woolly mat and your feet in the waste-paper basket, or get at the drawer of the cabinet without moving two or three arm-chairs, or play the piano without causing the crocks which stand upon it to jangle? Is the rest and recreation you get in that room anything else but a sense of self-complacency based upon pride of possession? I ask you to think what your furnishing of your rooms means, and remember that to every person who comes into those rooms—and more especially perhaps to the maids whom you set to dust them—you are helping to give either an Art-training or an anti-Art training, a training in true uses and values, or in misuses and mere waste and wantonness.

Of course I know that to some extent you are victims. You have dear friends who will give you presents, and you can't hurt their