period, as you may recall, is equal to a full stop; in fact a period is a full stop. This is a rule in punctuation which applies in other departments of life, as I have discovered. Go in extensively for the period stuff in your interior equipments and presently you will be coming to a full stop in your funds on hand. The thing works out the same way every time. I care not how voluminously large and plethoric your cash balance may be, period furniture carried to an excess will convert it into a recent site and then the bank will be sending you one of those little printed notices politely intimating that “your account appears overdrawn.”  And any time a banker goes so far as to hint that your account appears overdrawn you may bet the last cent you haven't left that he is correct. He knows darned good and well it is overdrawn and this merely is his kindly way of softening the blow to you. 

 I have a theory that when checks begin to roll in from the clearing house made out to this or that dealer in period furniture the paying teller hastens to the adjusting department to see how your deposits seem to be bearing up under the strain. It is as though he heard you were buying oil stocks or playing the races out of your savings and he might as well begin figuring now about how long approximately it will be before your account will become absolutely vacant in appearance. 

 As I was remarking, I know a trifle about period furniture. Offhand now, I can distinguish a piece which dates back to Battle Abbey from something which goes back no farther than Battle Creek. Before I could not do this. I was forever getting stuff of the time of the Grand Monarch confused with something right fresh out of Grand Rapids. Generally speaking, all antiques—whether handed down from antiquity or made on the premises—looked alike to me. But in the light of my painfully acquired knowledge I now can see the difference almost at a glance. Sometimes I may waver a trifle. I look at a piece of furniture which purports to be an authentic antique. It is decrepit and creaky and infirm; the upholstering is frayed and faded and stained; the legs are splayed and tottery; the seams gape and there are cracks in the paneling. If it is a chair, no plump person in his or her right mind would dare sit down in it. If it is a bedstead, any sizable adult undertaking to sleep in it would do so at his peril. So, outwardly and visibly it seems to bear the stamp of authenticity. Yet still I doubt. It may be a craftily devised counterfeit. It may be something of comparatively recent manufacture which has undergone careless handling. In such a case I seek for the wormholes—if any—the same as any other seasoned 

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