l forms. Rush-and flag-bottomed chairs and chairs
with seats of twisted rawhide--the frames often gilded and painted--
sometimes took the place of wrought mahogany, except in the best rooms
of great houses. Many of these are of excellent shape and construction,
and specially interesting as an adaptation of natural products of the
country. Undoubtedly, with our ingenious modern appliances, we could
make as good furniture as was made in Chippendale and Sheraton's day,
with far less expenditure of effort; but the demon of competition in
trade will not allow it. We must use all material, perfect or imperfect;
we cannot afford to select. We must cover knots and imperfections with
composition and pass them on. We must use the cheapest glue, and save an
infinitesimal sum in the length of our dowels; we must varnish instead
of polishing, or "the other man" will get the better of us. If we did
not do these things our furniture would be better, but "the other man"
would sell more, because he could sell more cheaply.

Since the revived interest in the making of furniture, we find an
occasional and marked recurrence to primitive form--on each occasion the
apparently new style taking on the name of the man who produced it.

In our own day we have seen the "Eastlake furniture" appear and
disappear, succeeded by the "Morris furniture," which is undoubtedly
better adapted to our varied wants. At present, mortising and dowelling
have come to the front as proper processes, especially for
table-building; and this time the style appears under the name of
"Mission furniture." Much of this is extremely well suited for cottage
furnishing, but the occasional exaggeration of the style takes one back
not only to early, but the earliest, English art, when chairs were
immovable seats or blocks, and tables absolute fixtures on account of
the weighty legs upon which they were built. In short, the careful and
cultivated decorator finds it as imperative to guard against exaggerated
simplicity as unsupported prettiness.

Fortunately there has been a great deal of attention paid to good
cabinet work within the last few years, and although the method of its
making lacks the human motive and the human interest of former days--it
is still a good expression of the art of to-day, and at its best, worthy
to be carried down with the generations as one of the steps in the
evolutions of time. What we have to do, is to learn to discriminate
between good and bad