Page:Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal, Volume 1, 1869.djvu/62

 42 Sloan's Architectural Review and Builders' Journal. [July, already been disposed of. But there is a heavy, low stool needed for attaining quickly, without the cumbrous presence of a step-ladder, a higher part of a room, than the unaided stature can reach. These stools, as at present made, often cause unlucky falls. The true construc- tion is this : For the sake of greater solidity and steadiness, the stuff should be two inches thick. After planing up and squaring your stuff, say to 18 or 20 inches length, and 8 or 9 inches width, take off a rebate on the under side, say a half-inch cross-section, and the same rebate off the ends. This latter rebat- ing will make your heavy stool look light. Then with bevel square, scribe your sides, so as to form a thorough dove-tail, of the lower part of the leg- pieces, arranging the lines so that the outer angle of the lower parts, or feet, of the leg-pieces, shall be perpendicular- ly beneath the end of the stool. When nails are driven through the top into the end-pieces, it will be impossible to take the stool apart, save by splitting the wood into small fragments. Finish by nailing, or screwing on, half-inch sides, fitted in flush as per dotted line. Or, for greater I in aaiiwiiuiiiiiiiir security, another dove-tail could be formed, as per cross-section, and then, after put- ting in screws, no portion of the stool could ever loosen, or break away from the rest. No mat- ter when, or how suddenly, weight is placed upon this stool, it cannot possi- bly uptilt, a very important point in the household, as the head and limbs of its users are safe. Recurring a little, we have the com- mon wooden rocking-chair, sometimes with cane, or rush bottom, best repre- sented for our purpose by the nursing- chair, without arms. The omni-prevalent idea is that the rocking-chair is a New England inven- tion ; and, while John Bull has, for many years, used it, and j)raised it, and given brother Jonathan the credit ! — so that the writer well remembers an extract from an English newspaper, of the years of his boyhood, surmising that Jonathan would, one day, put all his houses upon rockers, so that the visiting European would be equally edified and amused, by the spectacle of all the dwellings, in a town nid-nodding at one another after dinner, the fact is, that the Yankee only improved the device John himself had originated — amid the fens of Lincoln- shire ; rocking himself so fast asleep in it, after a grand symposium, under the shndow of the famous tower of the parish church, in the original town of Boston, as, being carefully taken up, and tucked away in bed, — to have himself forgotten it entirely; forgetting utter- ly, as well, a few obstinate and perse-