sent it up to his house in a truck with historic scenes such as Washington Crossing the Delaware and Daniel in the Lions' Den painted on the sides of the truck, and after that he had nothing to worry about in connection with the transaction except the monthly installments. 

 You see, I date back to the Rutherford B. Hayes period of American architecture and applied designing—-a period which had a solid background of mid-Victorian influence with a trace of Philadelphia Centennial running through it, being bounded at the farther end by such sterling examples of parlor statuary as the popular pieces respectively entitled, “Welcoming the New Minister,” “Bringing Home the Bride,” and “Baby's First Bath,” and bounded at the nearer end by burnt-wood plaques and frames for family portraits with plush insets and hand-painted flowers on the moldings. By the conceptions of those primitive times nothing so set off the likeness of a departed great-aunt as a few red-plush insets. 

 Some of my most cherished boyhood memories centered about bird's-eye-maple bedroom sets and parlor furniture of heavy black walnut trimmed in a manner which subsequently came to be popular among undertakers for the adornment of the casket when they had orders to spare no expense for a really fashionable or—as the saying went then—a tony funeral. Tony subsequently became nobby and nobby is now swagger, but though the idioms change with the years the meaning remains the same. When the parlor was opened for a formal occasion—it remained closed while the ordinary life of the household went on—its interior gave off a rich deep turpentiny smell like a paint-and-varnish store on a hot day. And the bird's-eye maple, as I recall, had a high slick finish which, however, did not dim the staring, unwinking effect of the round knots which so plentifully dappled its graining. Lying on the bed and contemplating the footboard gave one the feeling that countless eyes were looking at one, which in those days was regarded as highly desirable. 

 I remember all our best people favored bird's-eye maple for the company room. They clung to it, too. East Aurora had a hard struggle before it made any noticeable impress upon the decorative tendencies of West Kentucky, for we were a conservative breed and slow to take up the mission styles featuring armchairs weighing a couple of hundred pounds apiece and art-craft designs in hammered metals and semi-tanned leathers. Moreover, a second-hand shop in our town was not an antique shop; it was what its name implied—a second-hand shop. You didn't go there to buy things you wanted, but to sell things you did not want. 

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