open the parlor blinds, and admitted the sunlight, with its fading
influence, on the best carpet, and then proceeded down the street
with the bearing of triumphant virtue. It was related that in a
number of instances the indignant housewife, on entering her best
parlor, found that the sun had been streaming in there all day,
right on the carpet.

Mrs. Jameson also waged fierce war on another custom dear to the
average village heart, and held sacred, as everything should be which
is innocently dear to one's kind, by all who did not exactly approve
of it.

In many of our village parlors, sometimes in the guest-chambers, when
there had been many deaths in the family, hung the framed
coffin-plates and faded funeral wreaths of departed dear ones. Now
and then there was a wreath of wool flowers, a triumph of domestic
art, which encircled the coffin-plate instead of the original funeral
garland. Mrs. Jameson set herself to work to abolish this grimly
pathetic New England custom with all her might. She did everything
but actually tear them from our walls. That, even in her fiery zeal
of improvement, she did not quite dare attempt. She made them a
constant theme of conversation at sewing circle and during her
neighborly calls. She spoke of the custom quite openly as grewsome
and barbarous, but I must say without much effect. Mrs. Jameson found
certain strongholds of long-established customs among us which were
impregnable to open rancor or ridicule--and that was one of them.
The coffin-plates and the funeral wreaths continued to hang in the
parlors and chambers.

Once Flora Clark told Mrs. Jameson to her face, in the sewing circle,