Page:The lady or the tiger and other stories, Stockton (Scribner's 1897 ed).djvu/192

182 my wife's brother, but there were some things about him I did not like. He annoyed me a good deal by coming around to our house, after it was newly furnished, and making remarks about the things.

"I can't see the sense," he said, one day, "in imitating furniture that was made in the days when people didn't know how to make furniture."

"Didn't know how!" I exclaimed. Why, those were just the days when they did know how. Look at that bedstead! Did you ever see any thing more solid and stanch and thoroughly honest than that? It will last for centuries and always be what you see it now, a strong, good, ash bedstead."

"That's the mischief of it," Tom answered. "It will always be what it is now. If there was any chance of its improving I'd like it better. I don't know exactly what you mean by an honest bedstead, but if it's one that a fellow wouldn't wish to lie in, perhaps you're right. And what do you want with furniture that will last for centuries? You won't last for centuries, so what difference can it make to you? "

"Difference enough," I answered. "I want none of your flimsy modern furniture. I want well-made things, in which the construction is first-class and evident. Look at that chair, for instance; you can see just how it is put together."

"Exactly so," replied Tom, "but what's the good of having one part of a chair run through another part and fastened with a peg, so that its construction may be evident? If those old fellows in the Middle Ages had known how to put chairs together as neatly and