The American citizen. [volume] (Topeka, Kan.) 1888-1909, 1889-02-15
HINTS TO INVENTORS.
Let Them Try Their Skill by Designing
a Really Comfortable Seat.

Let Them Try Their Skill by Designing
a Really Comfortable Seat.
Thousands of models of a perfectly
comfortably seat will be made this win
ter in the Northern States by healthy
boys playing in the snow banks. They
will cast themselves backward against
the slope of the drifts and sink and
wriggle themselves into position OF
heavenly rest in which the absolute
content of the head, shoulders, back,
and legs allures body and soul to slum-
Der, even in a temperature OF zero.
And there is not a chair-maker in this
smartest of nations smart enough thus
far to have made a chair on the lines
| left in the snow bank by the boys
body.
For forty-fivo years the male Amerl-
cans experience of chairs and other
furniture to sit on has been martyr
dom to ignorance and fashion. Their
| convex surfaces may be the deserved
punishment of our national sin OF per-
hitting unrestricted immigration.
They came from Germany, and were
the treacherous gift of German uphol-
sterers to the confding Republic that
welcomed and fostered them. By rea-
son of the convexity of the seats there
is not in any well-furnished parlor in
this CITY a comfortable chair or sofa.
To sit on them is to sit on a globe or a
cannon ball. The seat should always
be hollow.
But the palm of reckless cruelty and
unthinking stupidity in the manutact-
ure of furniture for domestic life Is
easily carried off by our American swift
money makers. Consider the rocking
chair which curses our places of sum-
mer resort, seaside and mountain.
Look at the abOminable thing later
ally! 1t is the contrivance of an idiot
or devil. The seat slopes steeply
backward. The rockers short and ex-
, cessively curved, serve additionally to
throw the front edge of the seat up into
( the air. This lifts the sitters feet from
the floor and brings the weight OF the
: legs on the sharp edge of the seat front
and accomplishes torture which nj
= human being can endure for over t1t
Q teen minutes without an cutlery or al
/, oath. Regard the things back! A re
a cess, too deep by half, invites tn
shoulders to repose. Below this re
cess a malicious bulge in the structur
9 Jams the tender small of the back
= forces the lower part of the spine t
y sustain the entire weight of the reclin
ing trunk, and defeats possibility
% rest to the shoulders. 1t must hav
d been a Puritan cabinetmaker' idea {
the line of beauty that established
3, curvature of the American rocking
chairs back, which from the shoulder
"a up recedes into space and mockingl
}. refuses the weary head.
Certainly, there is a great forum
g for somebody in a perfectly resttul Sc;
III on chair, sofa and rocker for America
use. The nation is in a state of ma
re- revolt and in a mood to be reckle
g. about the price of relief. The mechan
as who starts for this gold mine mu
p" carry in his ha nd and hold before b
ar eyes the convex" utterly smashe
Id | hated, despised, and spit on. The e
tablished model of our rOcking-chair
to back must be felt by him to be the u
+ pardonable sin and the browning shan
of American household art. This ~
he chanics soul must be filled with re
of erence for curled horse hair, and b
gorge must rise chronically again
NO moss, excelsior, tow, shOddy and ra
. as material for seat for an hone
man to make for good man to sit O
N Y. Sun