to fill the bill to
the satisfaction of all. Anthony Comstock and the Boston Purity League
had not taken charge of our art as yet, and nobody seemed to find any
fault because the Greek lady looked as though she'd slipped on the top
step and come down just as she was, wearing nothing to speak of except a
pair of handcuffs. Nobody did speak of it either--not in a mixed company
anyhow.

Furniture was preferred when it was new--the newer the better. We went
in for golden oak and for bird's eye maple, depending on whether we
liked our furniture to look tanned or freckled; and when the careful
housekeeper threw open her parlor for a social occasion, such as a
funeral, the furniture gave off a splendid new sticky smell, similar to
a paint and varnish store on a hot day. The vogue for antiques hadn't
got started yet; that was to descend upon us later on. We rather liked
the dining-room table to have all its legs still, and the bureau to have
drawers that could be opened without blasting. In short, that was the
period of our national life when only the very poor had to put up with
decrepit second-hand furniture, as opposed to these times when only the
very rich can afford to own it. If you have any doubts regarding this
last assertion of mine I should advise you to drop into any reliable
antique shop and inquire the price of a mahogany sideboard suffering
from tetter and other skin diseases, or a black walnut cupboard with
doors that froze up solid about the time of the last Seminole War. I
suppose these things go in cycles--in fact, I'm sure they do. Some day
the bare sight of the kind of furniture which most people favor nowadays
will cause a person of artistic sensibilities to burst into tears, just
as the memory of the things that everybody liked twenty-five or thirty
years ago gives such poignant pain to so many at present.

Even up to the time of the World's Fair quite a lot of people still
favored the simpler and more understandable forms of art expression. We
went to Chicago and religiously visited the Art Building, and in our
nice new creaky shoes we walked past miles and miles of brought-on
paintings by foreign artists, whose names we could not pronounce, in
order to find some sentimental domestic subject. After we had found it
we would stand in front of it for hours on a stretch with the tears
rolling down our cheeks. Some of us wept because the spirit of the
picture moved us, and some because our poor tired feet hur