with something which is crumbly and tottery with the accumulated weight of the hoary years. 

 He taught me about patina, too. Patina is a most fascinating subject, once you get thoroughly into it. Everybody who goes in for period furniture must get into it sooner or later, and the sooner the better, because if you are not able to recognize patina at a glance you are as good as lost when you undertake to appraise antique furniture. When a connoisseur lays hold upon a piece of furniture al-leged to have rightful claims to antiquity the first thing he does is to run his hand along the exposed surfaces to ascertain by the practiced touch of his fingers whether the patina is on the level or was applied by a crafty counterfeiter. After that he upends it to look for the wormholes. If both are orthodox he gives it his validation as the genuine article. If they are not he brands the article a spurious imitation and rejects it with ill-concealed scorn. There are other tests, but these two are the surest ones. 

 For the benefit of those who may not have had any advantages as recently and expensively enjoyed I will state that patina is the gloss or film which certain sorts of metal and certain sorts of polished woods acquire through age, long usage and wear. With the passage of time fabrics also may acquire it. You may have noticed it in connection with a pair of black diagonal trousers that had seen long and severe wear or on the elbows of summer-before-last's blue serge coat. However, patina in pants or on the braided seams of a presiding elder's Sunday suit is not so highly valued as when it occurs in relation to a Jacobean church pew or a William-and-Mary what-not. 

 When I look back on my untutored state before we began to patronize the antique shops and the auction shops I am ashamed—honestly I am. The only excuse I can offer is based on the grounds of my earlier training. Like so many of my fellow countrymen, born and reared as I was in the crude raw atmosphere of interior America—anyhow, almost any wealthy New Yorker will tell you it is a crude raw atmosphere and not in any way to be compared with the refined atmosphere which is about the only thing you can get for nothing in Europe—as I say, brought up as I was amid such raw surroundings and from the cradle made the unconscious victim of this environment, I had an idea that when a person craved furniture he went for it to a regular furniture store having ice boxes and porch hammocks and unparalleled bargains in golden oak dining-room sets in the show windows, and there he made his selection and gave his order and paid a deposit down and the people at the shop 

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