had read every printed word that Emerson had written. And further he
congratulated me on the success of my book, "Songs From Vagabondia."

* * * * *

The housekeeping world seems to have been in thrall to six haircloth
chairs, a slippery sofa to match, and a very cold, marble-top center
table, from the beginning of this century down to comparatively recent
times. In all the best homes there was also a marble mantel to match the
center table; on one end of this mantel was a blue glass vase containing a
bouquet of paper roses, and on the other a plaster-of-Paris cat. Above the
mantel hung a wreath of wax flowers in a glass case. In such houses were
usually to be seen gaudy-colored carpets, imitation lace curtains, and a
what-not in the corner that seemed ready to go into dissolution through
the law of gravitation.

Early in the Seventies lithograph-presses began to make chromos that were
warranted just as good as oil-paintings, and these were distributed in
millions by enterprising newspapers as premiums for subscriptions. Looking
over an old file of the "Christian Union" for the year Eighteen Hundred
Seventy-one, I chanced upon an editorial wherein it was stated that the
end of painting pictures by hand had come, and the writer piously thanked
heaven for it--and added, "Art is now within the reach of all." Furniture,
carpets, curtains, pictures and books were being manufactured by
machinery, and to glue things together and give them a look of gentility
and get them into a house before they fell apart, was the seeming
desideratum of all manufacturers.

The editor of the "Christian Union" surely had a basis of truth for his
statement; art had received a sudden chill: palettes and brushes could be