A MODERN SHRINE.

Southern Cross, Volume 7, Issue 42, 13 January 1900, Page 11

A MODERN SHRINE.

I once heard a gentleman speak of his wife’s drawing-room as “ the show room,” and, indeed, it was a very good description, for everything was arranged as if for sale. The chairs were set in a geometrical fashion —just so, and the ornaments looked as if they were glued to the spot. The shrine at which you pay your devotion is slightly different ; the stiffness has vanished from your drawing room, and it would not he safe for a stranger to venture within its precincts in the darkness. The furniture is scattered here and there in picturesque confusion, as if it had been dancing a jig, and forgotten to return to its place ; here a footstool is placed to trip the unwary; yonder a long-legged rocker is ready to graze his shins ; now he tumbles over a gipsy table laden with gimcracks, and to crown all, he tilts into a hanging pot, with some plant or another, which seems as much out of its element as the intruder feels. The snow-white Curtains, in which our mothers delighted, have given place to liberty or art muslin, and insurance premiums are involved by draperies of the same flimsy stuff at the fire-place, just waiting for the first opportunity to blaze up. An erection, misnamed a “ cosy corner,” occupies one portion of the room where you can pose as “ Patience on a Monument” daring an afternoon call, or sit when repenting your sins, for surely it must be penance to sit at such an angle. A group of toi grass and bulrushes rises gracefully from a receptacle enshrouded in everlasting muslin. If your visitor happens to be a man, he will take for granted that some Greek urn or Japanese vase forms the foundation of the pretty effect; but if your friend is a woman, then will she probe the mystery and expose a drainpipe, for such is feminine nature. A shaky affair, yclept a whatnot, holds a collection of “ bigotry and virtue ” ; tiny images of china, ugly relics of bronze shells from the seabeach, interspersed with flower vases, are all gathered together ready for an earthquake, if you are so imprudent as to sneeze when near them. Upon a wicker table stands the afternoon tea-set, which is the crowning glory of your life ; made of eggshell china, and decorated with such flowers as never grew on land or sea. Sorrow would be your portion if you thought any of your friends had china like yours. The days are past when a picture, pourtraying the tragic “ Sale of the pet lamb,” or “ The finding ot Moses,” was sufficient to cast an artistic

glamour over the room. Now you must have moonlight effects, floating angels, or studies from the antique, varied by symbolical groups, of which it is impossible to make head or tail, but it is fashionable to have them, so you are happy. It is quite within the range of possibility that you would scream were a real live spider or moth to come near your person, but yon have no compunction about ’ hanging long-legged insects upon your curtains, nor do you object to a uiouse or two so long as they are only artificial. Albums, like crochet antimacassars, are out of date, and you have fancy frames to hold the photos of those you love —and those you don’t. Ho more will your visitors sit like martyrs while you display your sisters and cousins and aunts, and they perjur themselves by seeing resemblances where none exist, heaving a sigh of relief when they hear the magic words “ that’s all.” E.E.S.