and crochet for coverings, those with drawn threads being the most distinctively national. But with all this industry piled up, I have never seen in the country our well-known, if homely, patchwork quilt.
Pillows are more numerous than with us. I have counted thirteen on one bed, made of either wool or cotton (feathers are limited to the few), very thin and narrow, graded and piled up, pyramid like, and all trimmed uniformly with lace.
Lace curtains are prime essentials of a well-arranged home and adorn every opening, but I have seen none of our gay chintzes or cretonnes used in this way. Mirrors are indispensable, and with the careful forethought of the housewife, one invariably occupies a place over the sofa, while another hangs on the opposite wall, directly before you.
On entering the sala, the most noticeable feature is the sofa, with its invariable accompaniment of four chairs—two large and two smaller ones—placed at either end of the sofa, parallel to each other and vis-a-vis. The unusual number of chairs in most of the houses is surprising, and suggests occasions of reunion as their raison d'être; and regardless of wealth or station, the method of arrangement is the same, extending around the room in unbroken lines, except when met by the sofa or the triangular tables that fill the corners. The parlor furniture of the wealthy is extremely handsome: upholstered in damask, either pure white, or in shades of blue, pink, or crimson, supported by stately frames of gold or silver; with carpet corresponding in style. But the furniture in more general use has wooden frames covered with bright reps; the cushion of each, with its dainty, home-wrought lace cover, tables with the same, all fitting to a nicety make a unique and harmonious effect. Plainer houses have the same unbroken lines of home-made chairs (the sofacita before described), with the same tables and arrangement. Here one will see as pretty home-made laces and drawn-thread work as in the grand houses.
Surrounded by so many evidences of a refined and luxurious taste, the absence of books and pictures is conspicuous. Private collections are few, but in every large city there is a public biblioteca (library), of
