Page:Bedroom and Boudoir.djvu/67

52 would be carried from place to place slung on poles carried on men's shoulders. There is a good deal of iron used in the construction, which must be intended to give strength, but it does not add to the weight in any excessive degree, for it is very thin. The wood is soft and light, and rather over-polished, but the Japanese artist would have delighted in varnishing it still more, and covering it with grotesque gilt designs in lacquer, if he had been allowed. On page 55 will be found a roomy Chinese cupboard with drawers and nicely-carved panels.

Many of our most beautiful old Indian chests of drawers and cabinets have this black ground with quaintest bronze or brazen clamps and hinges, locks and handles, to give relief to the sombre groundwork. Except that the drawers seldom open well, and are nearly always inconveniently small, they are the most beautiful things in the world for keeping clothes in, but it would certainly be as well to have, out of the room in a passage, some more commodious and commonplace receptacles. I have seen a corridor leading to bedrooms, lined on each side with wardrobes, about six or seven feet high, consisting merely of a plain deal top with divisions at intervals of some five feet from top to bottom. A series of hanging cupboards was thus formed, which had been lined with stretched brown holland, furnished with innumerable pegs, and closed in by