these--his name is John A. Williar--I have learned to trust. Not only
did I make some purchases of him while I was in Baltimore, but I have
even gone so far, since leaving there, as to buy from him by mail,
accepting his assurance that some article which I have not seen is,
nevertheless, what I want, and that it is "worth the price."

At the other antique shop which interested me I made no purchases. The
stock on hand was very large, and if those who exhibited it to me made
no mistakes in differentiating between genuine antiques and copies, the
assortment of ancient furniture on sale in that establishment, when I
was there, would rank among the great collections of the world.

However, human judgment is not infallible, and antique dealers sometimes
make mistakes, offering, so to speak, "new lamps for old." The eyesight
of some dealers may not be so good as that of others; or perhaps one
dealer does not know so well as another the difference between, say, an
old English Chippendale chair and a New York reproduction; or again,
perhaps, some dealers may be innocently unaware that there exist, in
this land of ours, certain large establishments wherein are manufactured
most extraordinary modern copies of the furniture of long ago. I have
been in one of these manufactories, and have there seen chairs of
Chippendale and Sheraton design which, though fresh from the workman's
hands, looked older than the originals from which they had been
plagiarized; also I recall a Jacobean refectory table, the legs of which
appeared to have been eaten half away by time, but which had, in
reality, been "antiqued" with a stiff wire brush. I mention this
because, in my opinion, antique dealers have a right to know that such
factories exist.

What curious differences there are between the customs of one trade and