The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-12-24
By Margaret E. sanEster.

(Copyright, 1905, by Joseph B. Bowles') ,
 One summer day a friend and l were driving over the hills in the deep green solitudes of a New England parish where abandoned farms were numerous and neighbors scattered.
 Suddenly my companion uttered rapturous exclamation.
 Look, oh! look; see that quit spread on the rail fence near those hen coops! I wonder If that woman would sell IL! Oh, what a beauty!
 Appreciation of old quilts, old china, old mahogany and all the rest is suit. I have not mastered it, but never quarrel with those who have. held the horse while my friend inter viewed the quilts owner. Presently was called from the doorstep.
 Come in. do There is a sugar bowl here in the loveliest copper luster! Leave the pony. He will stand"
 He dId stand, until the bargaining for quilt and sugar bowl was com pleted.
 As I have said, Knowledge of old china and mahogany is a cult! Some have learned it. Some have not. But, owing to it's hold on the feminine public It has created new trade, and the old farmsteads of the country have been searched and gleaned and too often
  song and sold for fortune. '
 I can understand love and reverence for furniture and dishes which have been in ones family for generations, handed down from mother to daughter. and from father to son. Ap old clock Ehich has ticked faithfully in one household during the changes of 200 years is an heirloom to be prized, no matter how ugly an article it may be in Itself.
 A mahogany table at which ones great great grandmother poured tea is 2 possession to be tenderly cherished. So with china if it be Crowned Derby Or Wedgewood. or copper luster' and wonen of the same blood and lineage have owned it since colonial days, they are not to blame for considering 1t as a thing of which they may boast.
 Apart from family associations, I am enough of a Phillistine to prefer exam ming elegant survivals which have a large commercial value when they are safe behind glass doors in museum or when they stand about in halls where historical collections are in the custody of curator. l don't want them in my home, however well they are insured. For chairs and tables that are simply old I do not care. If they have belonged to somebody else they are nothing to me I would be quite
 
 thing antique as with the antique itself, were l given the choice, principally for the reason that everyday home life brings burdens and cares enough with out stupidly adding to them responsibil- n ities which one need not carry.
 What we really want of chair is solidity responsibility and comfort :. Perish the thought of spider-legged chairs and tottering sofas and jim cracks of every kind that are traps for The unwary. A table should be large enough to hold papers. books. lamp or what-not; should have a flat surface and good legs of it's own. If it be elab- orately carved it will need time and pains to keep 1t in decent order. for while carving is beautiful when immac- ulate, 1t is not beautiful when clogged with dust and dirt, Whether table be of oak, pine, walnut or mahogany is matter of indifference if it har- monize with the rest of ones furniture and meet the uses of a table. The pe- culiar beauty of mahogany is in it's deep wine-color and it's capability of retaining polish, The older 1t is and the more polish 1t has had the more pleasing it is to the eye of the notable housekeeper
 Tn the South in -bellum days there was a good deal of old mahogany that had come down in families, some of it imported from the old home be- yond the sea, and 1t was kept in per feet condition by the daily rubbing or the house servants. The air of stabil- lty, comfort and leisure in those lovely Southern homes was in entire contrast with that of a cIuttered modern draw ing room, where there is a chaotic med ley of all sorts of articles some of one period, some of another, many of them purchased without the least view to the general effect. It must be mournfully admitted that the taste of the average householder is a little doubtful. or else that the ideal of house furnishing misses the point of simplicity and util- ity.
 A house to be well-furnished must have one of two advantages. Either its old china and mahogany, with its old . hangings and rugs must have been an inheritance meliowed and subdued and enriched by time and loving labor, or else the furniture from attic to cellar must have been selected and arranged according to a good color scheme, by somebody who knew what to buy and how to arrange what was bought.
 To me there is breathless delight in looking through the stores of exquisite china and glass which are shown in the large establishments devoted to their sale. Nothing more charming g than the dull opaque and graceful shapes of articles from our American potteries can one see though one wan der over the wide earth.
 And the importations are as satisfy ing to the sense of beauty as the do- esAattN nroancts. One loses one's heart