So I had my shelves built, and my old friends Matthews and Rider furnished me with complete sets of handsome gilt covers to all the books that no gentleman’s library should be without, which I arranged carefully, upon the shelves, and had the best looking library in town. I locked ‘em in, and the key is always lost when anybody wants to take down a book. However, it was a good investment in leather, for it brings me in the reputation of a reading man and a patron of literature.
Mrs. P. is a religious woman—the Rev. Cream Cheese takes care of that—but only yesterday she proposed something to me that smells very strongly of candlesticks.
“Pot., I want a prie-dieu.”
“Pray-do what?” answered I. — “Stop, you wicked man. I say I want a kneeling-chair.”
“A kneeling-chair?” I gasped, utterly confused.
“A prie-dieu—a prie-dieu—to pray in, you know.”
My Sennaar friend, who was at table, choked. When he recovered, and we were sipping the “Blue seal,” he told me that he thought Mrs. Potiphar in a prie-dieu was rather a more amusing idea than Giddo’s Madonna in the dining-room.
“She will insist upon its being carved handsomely in walnut. She will not pray upon pine. It is a romantic, not a religious, whim. She’ll want a missal next; vellum or no prayers. This is piety of the ‘Lady Alice’ school. It belongs to a fine lady aid a fine house precisely as your library does, and it will be precisely as genuine. Mrs. Potiphar in a prie-dieu is like that blue morocco Comus in your library. It is charming to look at, but there’s nothing in it. Let her have the prie-dieu by all means, and then begin to build a chapel. No gentleman’s house should be without a chapel. You’ll have to come to it, Potiphar. You’ll have to hear Cream Cheese read morning prayers in a purple chasuble,—que sais-je? You’ll see religion made a part of the newest fashion in houses, as you already see literature and art, and with just as much reality and reason.”
Privately, I am glad the Sennaar minister has gone out of town. It’s bad enough to be uncomfortable in your own house without knowing why; but to have a philosopher of the Sennaar school show you why you are so, is cutting it rather too fat. I am gradually getting resigned to my house. I’ve got one more struggle to go through next week in Mrs. Potiphar’s musical party. The morning soirees are over for the season, and Mrs. P. begins to talk of the watering places. I am getting gradually resigned; but only gradually.
“Oh! dear me, I wonder if this is the “home, sweet home” business the girls used to sing about! Music does certainly alter cases. I can’t quite get used to it. Last week I was one morning in the basement breakfast-room, and I heard an extra cried. I ran out of the area door—dear me!—before I thought what I was bout, I emerged bareheaded from under the steps, and ran a little way after the boy. I know it wasn’t proper. I am sorry, very sorry. I am afraid Mrs. Croesus saw me; I know Mrs. Gnu told it all about that morning: and Mrs. Settum Downe called directly upon Mrs. Potiphar, to know if it were really true that I had lost my wits, as everybody was saying. I don’t know what Mrs. P. answered. I am sorry to have compromised her so. I went immediately and ordered a pray-do of the blackest walnut. My resignation is very gradual. Kurz Pacha says they put on gravestones in Sennaar three Latin words—do you know Latin? if you don’t come and borrow some of my books. The words are: ora pro me!”