, the knots, the worm-holes, and, if possible, the
worms themselves should be displayed. "Besides," said he, "if we decide
on hard wood, who shall choose the kinds? There's beech, birch and
maple; cherry, whitewood and ebony; ash and brown ash and white ash and
black ash; ditto oak, drawn and quartered; there's rosewood, redwood,
gopherwood and wormwood; mahogany, laurel, holly and mistletoe; cedar
of Lebanon and pine of Georgia, not to mention chestnut, walnut,
butternut, cocoanut and peanut, all of which are popular and available
woods for finishing modern dwellings. If we choose from this list,
which may be indefinitely extended, the few kinds for which we can find
room in our house, we shall be tormented with regret as long as we both
do live because we didn't choose something else. Now if we paint,
behold how simple a thing it is! We buy a lot of white pine boards, put
them up where they belong and paint them in whatever unnamable hues the
prevailing fashion may chance to dictate. Our boards need not even be
of the best quality; an occasional piece of sound sap, a few hard
knots, or now and then a 'snoodledog'--as they say in Nantucket--would
do no harm. A prudent application of shellac and putty before painting
will make everything right. Then if the fashions change, or if we
should be refined beyond our present tastes and wish to go up higher,
all we should need to lift the house to the same elevated plane
is--another coat of paint. On the other hand, if we had a room finished
in old English oak, growing blacker and blacker every year; in mahogany
or in cheap and mournful black walnut, what could we do if the
imperious mistress of the world should decree light colors? With rare,
pale, faded tints on the walls our strong, bold, heavy hard-wood finish
would be painful in the extreme. We couldn't change the wood and we
couldn't change the fashion."

"If you were not my own husband, Jack, I should say you were dreadfully
obtuse. Concerning _fashions_ in house-building and furnishing I feel
very much as Martin Luther felt about certain, formal religious dogmas.
If we are asked to respect them as a matter of amiable compliance, if
we find them convenient, agreeable and at the same time harmless, then
let us quietly accept them; but, if we are commanded to obey them as
vital, if they are set before us as solemn obligations to be reverenced
as we reverence the everlasting truth, then, for Heaven's sake, let us
tear them