Don't think for a minute, however, that this red arrangement discounts kitchen usefulness, either; it does n't, for underneath is a covering of harmonizing oilcloth, so that the table may be used for culinary purposes, or to sit at and sip a pleasant cup of tea. Spaced above the table are the shelves holding my cider-mugs, a generous cider-jug, and a capacious faience bean-pot brought from Scotland. All these I bought here and there at different places in northern New England, and in reckoning up their cost I find that I got the entire lot for something under three dollars.

Take my advice and collect cider-mugs. As yet they are easy to find, they cost very little, and they are jolly things to serve even ginger ale in - the height of praise. Two of mine are Mocha-ware, one matching the pitcher with a broad band of white clouded with blue, the other decorated with a wavering design somewhat like a brown-and-yellow shell. The third, of yellow pottery, has bands of white edged with black, and the fourth (and prettiest) is stoneware, a creamy gray with stripes of blue. As for the bean-pot, that is a lovely, fat, deep-buff thing, with fleckings of light brown and a ridged design at the bottom. Why, the Tailor of Gloucester might have used them all, and they make me think of the nursery rhyme that those rude little mice sang: -

And then I bought A pipkin and a popkin, A slipkin and a slopkin, All for one farthing.

As for my "wag-on-the-wall" clock, that's Calde-cott, too. His engaging" Bye-Baby-Bunting," "The Frog Who Would a-Wooing Go," and "Mary Blaize," all have illustrations of these talkative little companions that might be ticking away on my kitchen walls now. Mine came from the Black Forest; O-----brought it from Europe twenty years ago; for it is a peasant type, which is common on the Continent and in the British Isles, lasting much later than its first date, which was toward the close of the sixteenth century. Then they were called "lantern" or "birdcage" clocks, so named from the shape, much older, of course, than "grandfather" clocks. As Hayden says," Long-clock cases came into being when the long or 'royal' pendulum required protection by having a wooden case." Mine is painted blue, a bright, full blue, with scarlet flower-sprays in each spandrel, and above, on the lunette, the picture of a little peasant girl whose costume definitely dates her about a hundred years ago.

The braided rug that lies just beyond has all my colors in it: the blue of the clock, the green of the geranium leaves, the yellow of the walls, and a faint and faded red. This was more expensive than my first, for I paid five dollars for it in one of those little needlecraft shops that are springing up all over the countryside; an excellent movement, since it means that many of the old domestic arts are, in consequence, being revived. But I more than atoned for this extravagance when I bought the scarlet-and-ecru rug that you catch a glimpse of through the pantry door, for that I got with four other rugs, at an auction, for a quarter. Since this was rather the best of the lot, perhaps it could be valued at all of fifteen cents.

The pantry has other attractions, too: if your tastes are modern you may admire my porcelain sink, my kitchen cabinet angled discreetly away; ii you incline to the antique, - there's really no reason why you can't enjoy both; I do, - just glance at my ample Shaker milk-pans of brown pottery, my darker brown faience jars, my graceful sirup-jug of blended shades, with a charming little cluster of grapes at the base of the handle. Then there are my little yellow custard-cups, very like the ones at the Aldrich House at Portsmouth. The "Bad Boy's" mother used to bake cup-cakes in them, and I know how she got that deep, lovely surface color, almost mahogany, and so smooth and inviting to bite into. She rinsed out the cups with milk before each baking! Some day let's try this old recipe. Best of all, there are my Bennington crocks and jugs; I need never use one of those modern, ugly-shaped, underglazed products of commerce, and not beauty, again; for I have jugs for cider and vinegar and molasses and maple sirup, and crocks for cookies and doughnuts and fruit cake. And as my circumstances are very much those of the Little Boy who lived by himself, because the rats and the mice do lead me such a life, you can see how essential they are to my happiness. They are a good "antique" investment, too, for this old pottery, made at Bennington, Vermont, in the early nineteenth century, is being eagerly sought for by collectors ; and a well-decorated crock or jug bearing the authentic mark often brings as high as ten dollars. (Two of mine were given me, and I paid fifty cents apiece for the rest at country shops and auctions.) They are not as yet actually rare, but they are beautiful, some of them as lovely in shape as a Greek amphora; and nearly all of them have a fine, deep glaze that sets off their quaint blue designs of birds or flowers or scrolls on grounds of soft grays and ecrus.

You don't want to hear about my stove, do you? Because it's just a stove, with its good days and its bad days, rather temperamental and having to be humored, very much like your own, I fancy. Besides, I want to hurry on to my shelf of Tole-ware. Not that it is entirely of that antique tin, for the teapot is a plump and comely pottery lady, who brews tea delightfully and who wears for a gown a dark-brown glaze, brightened with white and red and blue enameled flowers and bands of gilt. This pretty thing was given me when I was a girl, by an old, old gentleman going on to ninety, and he told me that it had belonged to his mother. The snuffers and tray were presents, too, as was the little tin tea-caddy painted gay with green and red, and now used for a match-box. The candlesticks, however, I did buy: old tin ones, they are, redecorated with wreaths of rosy flowers and gold lines. They were a dollar and a quarter for the pair, and I paid a dollar and a half for that tall, graceful, black pitcher adorned with splashes of red and scrolls of yellow.

And now we are around to the wide door again, and to my fourth shelf, which is filled with cookbooks: old books, new books, American, English, French, Italian, Belgian, and even Chinese cookbooks; I think I have nineteen in all. They are my pride and joy, for cooking is the one domestic task that I am wildly enthusiastic about, and in my most ecstatic moments I compare myself to Balzac and Dumas, who could both cook and write, and in both were equally skillful. I am fond of sitting in my rocker and reading these pages of fascination. Would you like to know how to make Marigold Soup such as Miss Edgeworth's virtuous little Rosamund knew? I can tell you. Will you have Nuns' Puffs from South Carolina; or Regency Sauce made for Queen Victoria by M. Francatelli; or Gaufres de Brux-elles; or Currant Wine fit for Jenny Wren to sip; or Whigs? One book, "The Young Housekeeper's Friend," even takes my culinary conscience into its keeping. "How often," says this printed wisdom, "do we see the happiness of a husband abridged by the absence of skill, neatness, and economy in the wife? . . . However improbable it may seem, the health of many a professional man is undermined and his usefulness curtailed, if not sacrificed, because he habitually eats bad bread." Which quite justifies my interest, you see.

I have been so happy doing over my kitchen, giving that important part of my life the setting that I felt it ought to have, inside and out! In the summer my green window-boxes are full of spicy kitchen herbs - marjoram, basil and thyme, with an edging of frilled parsley; and I look on an old-fashioned flower-garden, fragrance and color all blended together - mignonette, larkspur, sweet alyssum, balsam, and stock, the quaint favorites that our ancestors loved and brought with them from the old country. "If the sun is beautiful on bricks and pewter"; ah, but it is, lovely! That's what I mean you must know; that's what I mean you must feel: beauty in everything, even a kitchen.