Lures of Life

ain at ￡1,000 profit to the buyer. There must be great charm in old furniture when people scramble for it regardless of cost. I suppose money is dull stuff to own heaps of unless you ca

ds gladdens the heart of a child amazingly, and he dreams the pleasure over again in his sleep. It costs over 5,000

eenth-century period; also several pieces of walnut furniture which are old Italian. The Italian pieces lie fallow in a villa just outside the barriéra St. Domenico, Florence, where we live with them half the year round. Beautiful old

ds; surely man's delight is in man's work. A piece of old furniture reflects the mind of its maker in every detail of its construction, and that is a very fascinat

ade, and I hold no kinship with machinery to cherish warm feeling in its favour; but

gned and ornamented imitations of ancient handcraft at trifling cost. Who cares for beauty produced by formula? Beauty is the flowering of noble labour linked

is tools are not the sword and the cannon, but the plane, the chisel, and the swift-moving saw. His art is not destructive to life, piling on misery to man's many woes, but he enriches life manifold by adding comfort and luxury to the widening circle of human happiness. His rewards are not stars and garters and hereditary honours conferred by princes for brave deeds done on the field of battle, but just the recompense that the master of the tools' true play appreciates; the simple pleasure of good work well and truly done sent forth

al excellence. Its appearance is garish and crude. New stones and raw bricks are ugly in the days of their youth, but age transforms the place, be it manor-house or thatched cottage, until enchantm

a newly made rich man. His manners smell strongly of varnish just put on; his vanity and self-importance are unsavoury morsels to swallow without salt. He is a terror

by centuries of wear and tear and the wondrous old-time bloom of rich deep colour glorifies the ripened oak with softness and transparency of tone, that quali

dle the key of the legend locked up in it. There may be tragedy or comedy, or a mixture of both, recorded in the family log-book, and the stately old carved-oak court cupboard dozing in the banqueting-hall, generation after generation, saw it all through from beginning to end, but it whispers away no fami

generations. When the old squire dies, the last of his line, the land grieves. It seems to know that it is going to be sold and broken up, and it loses heart. It goes r

the ancestral acres? Or is it silently and sullenly i

is one large panel carved with heavy flora and foliated decoration;

IN RYL

d front legs are twisted in good Jacobean manner, and the broad stretcher is carved with two long feathery, flowing acanthus-leaves curling round gracefully at the tips as if under pressure of a strong breeze, and crouching w

ve it her on her birthday, or her husband on their wedding-day. No doubt the chair's existence celebrates a red-letter day in the annals of the family. The name now is only a legend to us, but there it is,

ng two hundred and twenty years the moss and lichen, the sun and the frost, conspire together to obliterate any lettering in churchya

genuine article I bought it in framework and had it upholstered and finished at home, under my eye. As years rolled on, piece by piece the Victorian furniture vanished from our rooms and old pieces supplanted them, and the rooms grew pleasant to look upon and cosy to sit in. Your furniture has a subtle influence on your disposition. You live with it daily all the year round as you do with your wife, and you m

e travels joyously over its well-balanced proportions and hovers with admirance over its downright dexterity of carving. No literal copy of antique furniture made in the forcing factories of to-day has feeling in it. It is very accurate in line and detail but it lacks expression, and that is where the artistic spirit enters, that is where the charm holds us. As old Higgery the carpenter explained himself out of it when Lord Louis Lewis complimented him on being the

rkman of their period has left us the splendid legacy of his "ideas" in furniture which is scattered over the

ess of purpose. The essence of simplicity is the absence of self-consciousness. A combination of simplicity of character and great artistic power is difficult to find, but when found it is the most perfect combination and produces finest work. Art is often self-conscious, a

u, ogling you, and saying, "Observe me, and admire." Just the very character of the frivolous women, the Pompadour and the Du Barri, who ruled the voluptuous Court of Louis XV., and w

elegant devil-may-care swagger, mixing with superbly decorated marqueterie cabinets and tables and bronze statuettes and Sèvres china bleu du roi; and shadowy ladies of high degree would be there, wearing capacious and flowery dresses and powdered hair, sitting in the chequered light of evening on seats richly upholstered in pale rose Gobelin tapestry, smiling dreamily on the exquisites of the old régime--all of them fatally gifted mortals with m

e quantity that remains in the country, drawn from the homes of our easy-going port-wine-drinking Georgia

for buyers. Americans are the greedy collectors who raid the market with their unlimited dollars

treets of provincial towns or in out-of-the-way villages searching for spoil is an alluring pastime to indulge in, and if you love the country through which you travel for the country's sake you will be very happy on the trail, and want to go again whether much or little plunder falls to your quest. Old cathedral towns yield the best results. There are many sleepy second

e choice pieces are assembled, polished and poised adroitly to arrest attention. Some of these elegant salons resemble museu

u round. Any object you look at he explains for your edification. He rivals the showman at Windsor Castle or the Tower of London for knowing his part and throwing at you torrents of information as he strides along. He revels in it, and his import

belonged to the Hon. Oliver Grimes, a great friend of King Edward; it was the King's favourite seat when he visited the Hon. Oliver at Redcote Manor. And here is the oak table you admired so much as we passed along. We know the pedigree of it. It came from Monkwood Hall, Derbyshire. It has been in possession of the family since the year 1620. We bought it at the Hall

e smiling landscape. Fraud is not unknown side by side with honest dealing. Not all furniture is old as it looks. That is whe

ayed furniture. New wood is added in parts where necessary to complete the transformation, and when these modern antiques are blended, stained to harmonize in colour, and a glowing patina rubbed on by the artful dodgers,

ets his own price on his goods, and the cupidity of the public guides him how best to do it. He is a keen obs

n two different suits of clothes, and you have all the difference in our cursory opinion between a lord and a tinker. The same article exhibited in shop-windows East or

fancied the table, and paid twenty-four pounds for it straightway, and removed it to his own premises, which are spacious and commanding. The man in quest of a Tuscan table visited the spacious premises and saw the table in its grander home, fell in love with it again, and bought it for forty pounds. Afterward he told the dealer in the small shop that he had found the table he wanted at Mr. So-and-

uld compete with the crowd to raise the price of it incontinently. It is the consistent conduct of inconsistent human nature. It is that bellicose little devil who hides himself at the bottom of every human being, impelling him down into the danger zone to fight, who is guilty of the rash and feckless deed. A man enters the auction-room in a happy, breezy frame of mind, not to buy, just to look on and see what things are fetching. The serp