the thing with a couple of exceptionally inviting
cushions, and employ it to inculcate modesty and diffidence. I defy any
human being to get out of that chair, feeling as important as when
he got into it. What the dear boy has done has been to construct an
automatic exponent of the transitory nature of human greatness. As a
moral agency that chair should prove a blessing in disguise."

My hostess smiled feebly; more, I fear, from politeness than genuine
enjoyment.

"I think you are too severe," she said. "When you remember that the boy
has never tried his hand at anything of the kind before, that he has no
knowledge and no experience, it really is not so bad."

Considering the matter from that point of view I was bound to concur.
I did not like to suggest to her that before entering upon a difficult
task it would be better for young men to ACQUIRE knowledge and
experience: that is so unpopular a theory.

But the thing that The Amateur put in the front and foremost of its
propaganda was the manufacture of household furniture out of egg-boxes.
Why egg-boxes I have never been able to understand, but egg-boxes,
according to the prescription of The Amateur, formed the foundation of
household existence. With a sufficient supply of egg-boxes, and what The
Amateur termed a "natural deftness," no young couple need hesitate to
face the furnishing problem. Three egg-boxes made a writing-table; on
another egg-box you sat to write; your books were ranged in egg-boxes
around you--and there was your study, complete.

For the dining-room two egg-boxes made an overmantel; four egg-boxes
and a piece of looking-glass a sideboard; while six egg-boxes, with
some wadding and a yard or so of cretonne, constituted a so-called "cosy
corner." About the "corner" there could be no possible doubt. You sat on
a corner, you leant against a corner; whichever way you moved you struck
a fresh corner. The "cosiness," however, I deny. Egg-boxes I admit
can be made useful; I am even prepared to imagine them ornamental; but
"cosy," no. I have sampled egg-boxes in many shapes. I speak of years
ago, when the world and we were younger, when our fortune was the
Future; secure in which, we hesitated not to set up house upon incomes
folks with lesser expectations might have deemed insufficient. Under
such circumstances, the sole alternative to the egg-box, or similar
school of furniture, would have been the strictly classical, consisting
of a doorway joined