Thanks, Kay, and to everyone else who offered advice. To those few

Seriously, if you can id the plant, we can give you a much better idea of
how to care for it properly. There are a whole lot of things with "lily"
in the common name, most of which are not true lilies, or even in the
lily family. Worse than that, they grow best under all sorts of different
conditions.

Here are some basic sorts of diagnostic questions to ask when dealing
with sick houseplants:

-- do I see bugs, tiny cobwebs, bumps or other oddities that didn't
used to be there? (id the critter or disease and cure or dispose of the
plant)

-- did any environmental condition change from when it used to look good
to when it started looking bad? (if so, try to change it back... amount of
light, distance from the window, room temperature, drafts, relative
humidity...)

-- are the tips of the leaves browning? (if so, check for white or brownish
crusts on the soil as the soil dries out -- too much fertilizer or too hard
water. repot in clean soil).

-- stick your finger in the soil. Is it moist at least an inch down?
Is it soggy? Does the soil smell bad? Is there a white or brownish crust
on the soil? (Houseplants are typically grown drought-and-drown fashion...
underwatered for awhile till someone notices they're drooping, and then
overwatered and left to sit in standing water. Not wonderful for most
plants. What happens in the drown phase is that the water fills up the
air spaces in the soil. Roots need oxygen. (YOUR GRADE SCHOOL TEACHER
WAS WRONG! PLANTS NEED OXYGEN, TOO! Especially the non-green parts!)
Roots start to rot as they die, and the soil microbe population really
explodes, producing a lot of acid because there's not enough oxygen for
them to do aerobic respiration either. Prevent by watering well, dump
standing water after an hour.)

-- has it been over a year since it was repotted in fresh soil? (might as
well go ahead and do it... soil organic matter disappears, the soil
structure collapses and the fertilizer (or lack of it) tends to get way
out of whack. Repotting is fast and easy.)

Anyhow, if you can give us some idea of what the plant is, we can be more
specific. Otherwise, try Ye Olde wash the soil off the roots and repot.
Works quite a bit of the time.

Kay