The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1909-11-03

googoo glances at us. The GROWING
decoration of the front hall was mis-
sion hat rack that weighed four hundred
pounds and could accommodate three hats
and an umbrella. This was regarded
as being what the French call the durn
yer cry in the furniture line. And in
my ignorance I still supposed that when
you bought furniture it was the same as
buying eggs or breakfast foods or your
wife's clothes. You wanted the newest
and the freshest the market afforded and
If you didn't get 1t you were entitled
to make roar.
But now my eyes have been opened
and l know better. If you've got
chair strong enough to hold your weight,
chuck it out. You don't want it. There's
no class to it. Go down to a veterinary
hospital for diseased and suffering furn-
iture-they're called antique stores-and
get one about a thousand years old that's
afflicted with spavins and saddle boils.
If you can get one with such bum
springs in it's cushions that it'll say
Mamma, like one of those dolls with
a talented stomach, when you sit down
on it, you've got a treasure and you
want to nail it no matter how much the
proprietor of the store may ask for 1T.
If you can get slender chair for your
hall with fractured Chippendale legs and
cane bottom that's caved In till 1t looks
like a waste basket, don't overlook that
chance either. You're acquiring a price,
less trophy thatll bring tears of envy
to the eyes of every connoisseur that's
allowed the precious boon of looking at
it. For nine hundred dollars, anyway
think that's the price, but maybe it's more
you can get a rare bargain in the shape
of grandfathers clock that quit strik-
ing the year the boys came back from
| the Mexican war and has more things
the matter with its works than a lady
| hypohondriac. For a slightly smaller
| figure you can often pick up a perfect
| gem of spinning wheel with most of the
spolSes missing and the legs falling out
/ by the roots, or a mahogany bureau with
| skin disease and drawers that you
couldn't open with anything short of a
| blast of dynamite.
Yes sir, the manufacture of antique
| furniture has become one of our greatest
modern industries. 1t gives employment
| to thousands of union antiquarians out
at Grand Rapids and other centres of
what you might call grand rapid antiq-
uity, not to mention the travelling agents
| who're constantly employed planting the
| products in New England farm houses
! and colonial Virginia homesteads where
| they're kept in stock until the collectors
come along and snatch them up"
| .sWell, 1t certainly sounds foolish to
! me- said the House Detective.
| you've got to remember that nearly
! everybody of any prominence has the
| collecting fad in one form or another,
| these times" said the Hotel Clerk. when
| / was kid, only the small boys had the
| collection fad. We collected bird eggs
In the spring, one another's clothes In the
swimming season, stone bruises In the
/, summer snd sniffles in the winter Out
| side of US there wasn't but one or two
| collectors in town. One was party who
collected bugs. He ran the county in
| sane asylum. And the other was the
president of the local bank. He collected