dallied along and killed time until process curing came into fashion among the best families of Ancient Rome and smokehouses lost their vogue altogether. Let us not be too impetuous about the detail of furnishings. I have a feeling—a feeling based on my own observations over yonder at the site of our own little undertaking—that when that house is really done the only furnishings we'll require will be a couple of wheel chairs and something to warm up spoon victuals in. 

 “Anyhow, what's wrong with the furnishings we already have in storage? Judging by the present rate of non-progress—of static advancement, if I may use such a phrase—long before we have a place to set them up in our furnishings will be so entirely out of style that they'll be back in style all over again, if you get me. These things move in cycles, you know. One generation buys furniture and uses it. The next generation finding it hopelessly old-fashioned and out of date burns it up or casts it away or gives it away or stores it in the attic—anything to get rid of it. The third generation spends vast sums of money trying to restore it or the likes of it, for by that time the stuff which was despised and discarded is in strong demand and fetching fancy prices. 

 “The only mistake is to belong to the middle generation, which curiously enough is always the present one. We crave what our grandparents owned but our parents did not. Our grandchildren will crave what we had but our own children won't. They'll junk it. To-day's monstrosity is day-after-tomorrow's art treasure just as today's museum piece is day-before-yesterday's monstrosity. Therefore, I repeat, let us remain calm. I figure that when we actually get into that house our grandchildren will be of a proper age to appreciate the belongings now appertaining to us, and all will be well.”  

 Thus in substance I spoke. The counter argument offered was that—conceding what I said to be true—the fact remained and was not to be gainsaid that we did not have anywhere near enough of furnishings to equip the house we hoped at some distant date to occupy. 

 “You must remember,” I was told, “that for the six or eight years before we decided to move out here to the country we lived in a flat.”  

 “What of it?” I retorted instantly. “What of it?” I repeated, for when in the heat of controversy I think up an apt bit of repartee like that I am apt to utter it a second time for the sake of emphasis. Pausing only to see if my stroke of instantaneous retort had struck in, I continued: 

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