honest and tasteful of the framemakers would admit as much themselves.

"Yes, it is ugly when you look at it," said one to me, as we stood
surveying it from the centre of the room. "But what one feels about it
is that one has done it oneself."

Which reflection, I have noticed, reconciles us to many other things
beside cork frames.

Another young gentleman friend of mine--for I am bound to admit it was
youth that profited most by the advice and counsel of The Amateur: I
suppose as one grows older one grows less daring, less industrious--made
a rocking-chair, according to the instructions of this book, out of a
couple of beer barrels. From every practical point of view it was a bad
rocking-chair. It rocked too much, and it rocked in too many directions
at one and the same time. I take it, a man sitting on a rocking-chair
does not want to be continually rocking. There comes a time when he says
to himself--"Now I have rocked sufficiently for the present; now I will
sit still for a while, lest a worse thing befall me." But this was one
of those headstrong rocking-chairs that are a danger to humanity, and
a nuisance to themselves. Its notion was that it was made to rock, and
that when it was not rocking, it was wasting its time. Once started
nothing could stop it--nothing ever did stop it, until it found itself
topsy turvy on its own occupant. That was the only thing that ever
sobered it.

I had called, and had been shown into the empty drawing-room. The
rocking-chair nodded invitingly at me. I never guessed it was an amateur
rocking-chair. I was young in those days, with faith in human nature,
and I imagined that, whatever else a man might attempt without knowledge
or experience, no one would be fool enough to experiment upon a
rocking-chair.

I threw myself into it lightly and carelessly. I immediately noticed
the ceiling. I made an instinctive movement forward. The window and
a momentary glimpse of the wooded hills beyond shot upwards and
disappeared. The carpet flashed across my eyes, and I caught sight of my
own boots vanishing beneath me at the rate of about two hundred miles an
hour. I made a convulsive effort to recover them. I suppose I over-did
it. I saw the whole of the room at once, the four walls, the ceiling,
and the floor at the same moment. It was a sort of vision. I saw the
cottage piano upside down, and I again saw my own boots flash past me,
this time over my head, soles uppermost. Never before had I