Windsor Magazine/Volume 31/Saccharissa and the Candlesticks

Saccharissa and the Candlesticks
By E. NESBIT.
SACCHARISSA collects candlesticks. Most of us collect something or other—postage stamps, or butterflies, or botanical specimens, or hearts, or memories. Even in our village there are collectors. Captain Smeeth collects old maps; Miss Eversleigh old music. Saccharissa collects candlesticks. I believe she has eighty-seven, and she makes it a point of honour never to spend more than five shillings on a pair. The number of candlesticks added to her collection is strictly regulated by her income, and that, in turn, is regulated by the number of the fortunes made in trade. Her own trade is literature, or, as she calls it, "writing"; her special branch, the department dealing with deportment, with what is and is not done, with the inner mysteries of that rigid rule of conduct prevailing in ducal circles. When trade is good, there is a brisk market for "dainty manuals" of manners, from which the nouveaux riches can study the fluctuating status of fish-knives, the correct weapon with which to attack hors d'œuvres; can learn that you must say London and not town, luncheon and not lunch, as well as how to address a letter to an archbishop and wha

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