how hideous, and this about represents the' general swing of the ext movement. In neither case was discretion exhibited. Genuine Daekgrounds had been "destroyed without any compunction. There had been no respect for the past fas n past with associations, in the first place; and, in the second, there was no rerpeet for the present ax present, nor any compunction bout upsetting its belongings to Jereate false backrounds—""artificial as they might be called—collected old articles ive and Learn Anybody may change with the ind there is nothing despieor relearn hey may of a Kind anily ree ed for reasons that only an expert could explain. If they have been isearded from ignorance and can lined with knowledge, all all the better, if they fit properly. into their new mandings. But if they were they were really their owners really and if their equi-sought because of fashion leading There is something a little mean in the souls of persons who, at the supposed bidding of the mode, iberately refill their rooms with pictures, ornaments, and furniture of a bygone sort which they do not admire. There is something staunch and fine in the souls of those who have never, at the dictates any alien fancy, rejected posses jons endeared by association and suitable to them and their lives.
Character shows in amalgamated, more than acquired, backgrounds. No decade was all admirable or all abominable, and what makes. true atmosphere is to bring tastefully together whatever was comfortable, yesterds whatever is comfort-beautiful, and agreeable to live with
ble, beautiful, and agreeable live with to-day. The moment a householder starts to make a fixed period in a house not intended for a collector's palace or a museum, it becomes unhomelike. The more perfect the micro unhomelike. We! know of one gentleman who com. plained of feeling as if he should be stood, like an umbrella, in the corner of his own baronial hall when, he entered it from the street, foreign did he seem to ite lofty 18th-century setting.
"Heirlooms" By Purchase.
Of course. collectors' houses houses perfectly constructed and farnished to represent those of a former day hardly come into the ist of those we are banning. The Peoplg who collect, the people who Feconstruct are people who have studied, who have individual taste and knowledge, and the desire, very often, to leave the fruits of it to especially in democratic countries an unenlightened public. Moreover. little targer than the other." wonderfully created not really 80 uncomfortable as might at first sight appear. They.are apt to have cosy modern apartments tucked away somewhere. No, the good ladies and gentlemen we have in our bad books. are the ones who aald inherited possessions without a qualm at the bidding of the family chit and are now, again at her orders, busily buying up those of others to replace them.
"There's Mas," says mother (she vainly christened her child Mary), "saying she must have one of those carly American rooms, and she fairly tired me out yesterday looking through the antique shops prices that would knock you down, too,—for a. bed the moral of geandmother's old maple one that she made me get rid of years ago. And now she's dragged two moth-fate old hook rugs out of the garrot and wants me to take up the good velvet carpet and let her Spread them on the bare boards, because she says it's fashionable." Well, there it is; and this sheep-and batlike following of what see as "the mod ing lack of real character and taste. Surroundings collected gradually to suit one's habits, as well as one fancies, are indicative of personalilty—not those obtained in one swoop by dauntless period-shop But well do the wiseacres of the material world understand their clients! They know that, if one sheep sleeps in a maple bed and one hat sips from a sreon glass sroblet, every other will do the same
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.