The Sunday herald and weekly national intelligencer., 1890-05-11
the world shouldn't mind. However, suppose
no such good luck will ever come.

the world shouldn't mind. However, 1 suppose
no such good luck will ever come.
MODERN IDEAS OF A BOOKCASE.
Mr.. Gladstone has gone up five degrees in my
opinion since he has written about the desirable
ity of simple bookcases and the difficulty that
exists in getting them. For weeks past my own
familiar friend has haunted furniture shops, has
attended auctions, and made herself grimy in
secoud-ha shops to find bookcase that will
hold books. 1t must be large enough to hold a
great many. The shelves must be sufficiently
wide apart to admit tall ones, and it must be
q don't know that he'd furnish much, but one
calls him that has his own ideas on the subject
of shelves, and he thinks you ought to agree with
him. He likes them with sort of scalloped bor-
der that will accumulate dust with the same
rapidity that tidy Will and hold It much longer,
have set of Waverey Novels, Maria Edgeworth,
Jane Austen. Little Lord Fauntleroy, "Greene's
History of EnRland,"a a small dictionary, u book
of quotations, and three volumes of poetry in ii,
and the rest will be used for bric-abrac. That
you should simply want shelves for books Is
something that he counts idiotic; but once get it
impressed on that wooden mind of his that one
corner of your room is piled UP high with about
two hundred French novels, an edition of the
Arabian Nights" a full set of Thackeray, and
every English novel that has come out in the last
six months, and that you haven't got any brc-A-
brac that you want to go on shelves, he will then
beam and tell you he has just what you want.
the man is more intelligent than he looks. He
really looks like an escaped convict, but that's
probably the & result of selling furniture on the
installment plan to women. You go over to see
'JUsT THE THING you WANT"
According to his belief, and when you get there
you ask him. once your books are in, does he ex-
pect you te smash your hands with the glass get
ting them out. Hesays, "Oh, no; you unlock the
door and swing it back" and you think you see
yourself, when you want to have confidential
chat with Becky Sharp, or a laughing half hour
with Catulle Mendes, getting out of your easy
chair and opening doors! You want to be able
TO reach out and shake hands with them at once.
He looks at you as If he thought you were little
crazy and then meekly says, THAT there's one
other style that he is sure will fill the bill" You
go down in the cellar to see this and 1t suggests
nothing to you but the steeple of a church. 1t is
very tall and narrow, and has curtain on gilt
and he protests that the curtain will keep the
dust Off the books. You remind him that you are
not member of the Union League Club, and the
dust does not have time to bloom on your books.
You go out feeling that you have been badly
treated-you hear the man muttering something
about people taking up his time who don't in
tend to buy anything, and you wish Mr.. Glad
stone would turn in and make a few plain book
cases himself and ship them over to this country.
You would even be willing to pay duty on one.
What, in the name of all the goddesses of furni-
ture, is the reason that simple things can't be
nader These abominations with squrmy de-
signs on them done by machinery are enough to
ruin ruin the @ taste of the great American people.
than started two months ago.
WHAT A WOMAN WONDERS AT.
When so-called national hymn is tc be sung
why does an audience always come out with my
country. tits of thee" to the tune of God Save
the Queen?" Why don't they sing the "Star-
Spangled Bauner7" There is just as much sense
in doing the first there would be IN expressing
our admiration for Mr.. Harrison to the tune of
that blissful march dedicated to Gen. Boulanger
There are some things that you wonder about and
never do find out. One is why in fashionable
sets the women and the dogs are such fine speci-
mems and the men are so ordinary?
Why a woman is fool enough to take dress
m fnAr ~
having it put down in black and white?
Why men marry women who have been eX-
plotted in the newspapers like variety actresses?
why, when woman gets mad, she scolds one
man. and when man gets mad he wishes the en-
tire universe to know of his indignation?
Why people think that because a man belongs
| to q church he is good Christian?
Why girls who learn fencing swing their arms
as they walk along the street?
| Why woman whose rouge the most
| shortsghted can see doesn't hesitate to tell how
| she hates people who make up?
| Why everybody doesn't try to say nice things,
| be nice, and make everybody else happy? It's
just as easy as being disagreeable, isn't it?