et on with but one article of furniture, I think I would
choose a bed. One could if necessary sit, eat, read, and write in the
bed. In past time it has been a social centre: the hostess received in
it, the guests sat on benches, and the most distinguished visitor sat on
the foot of the bed. It combines the uses of all the other articles in
the '$198 de luxe special 4-room outfit' that I have seen advertised for
the benefit of any newly married couple with twenty dollars of their own
for the first payment. Very few houses, if any, nowadays are without
furniture that nobody uses, chairs that nobody ever sits on, books that
nobody ever reads, ornaments that nobody ever wants, pictures that
nobody ever looks at; an accumulation of unessential objects that does
credit chiefly to the activity of manufacturers and merchants catering
to our modern lust for unnecessary expenditure. Not so many centuries
ago one or two books made quite a respectable library; dining-room
tables were real banqueting boards laid on trestles and taken away after
the banquet; one bench might well serve several Perfect Gentlemen to sit
upon; and a chair of his own was the baron's privilege. Today the $198
de luxe special 4-room outfit would feel naked and ashamed without its
'1 Pedestal' and '1 Piece of Statuary.' Yet what on earth does a happy
couple, bravely starting life with twenty dollars, want of a pedestal
and a piece of statuary? And I notice also that the outfit--'a complete
home,' says the description--makes no provision for a kitchen; but
perhaps they are no longer de luxe.

It is impossible, at this time, to recover with complete certainty the
antiquity of the bed. We may presume that the Neanderthal man had a wife
(as wives were then understood) and maintained a kind of housekeeping
that may have gone no further than pawing some leaves together to sleep
on; but this probably was a late development. Earlier we may imagine the
wind blowing the autumn leaves together and a Neanderthal man lying down
by chance on the pile. He found it pleasant, and, for a few thousand
years, went out of his way to find piles of leaves to lie down on, until
one day he hit upon the bright idea of piling the leaves together
himself. Then for the first time a man had a bed. His sleep was
localized; his pile of leaves, brought together by his own sedulous
hands, became property. Monogamy was encouraged, and the idea of home
came into being. Personally I have no doub