concerning its appointments, and tell her what she wants, and what she
will like; for at present the eternal womanly, as soon as she has got a
thing she wants, begins to hate it. The company's agents will begin by
convincing her that she does not need half the things she has lumbered up
her house with, and that every useless thing is an ugly thing, even in
the region of pure aesthetics. I once asked an Italian painter if he did
not think a certain nobly imagined drawing-room was fine, and he said
'SI. Ma troppa roba.' There were too many rugs, tables, chairs, sofas,
pictures; vases, statues, chandeliers. 'Troppa roba' is the vice of all
our household furnishing, and it will be the death of the eternal-womanly
if it is not stopped. But the corrupt agents of a giant monopoly will
teach the eternal-womanly something of the wise simplicity of the South,
and she will end by returning to the ideal of housekeeping as it prevails
among the Latin races, whom it began with, whom civilization began with.
What of a harmless, necessary moth or two, or even a few fleas?"

"That might be all very well as far as furniture and carpets and curtains
are concerned," I said, "but surely you wouldn't apply it to pictures and
objects of art?"

"I would apply it to them first of all and above all," rejoined my
friend, hardily. "Among all the people who buy and own such things there
is not one in a thousand who has any real taste or feeling for them, and
the objects they choose are generally such as can only deprave and
degrade them further. The pictures, statues, and vases supplied by the
Standard Household-Effect Company would be selected by agents with a real
sense of art, and a knowledge of it. When the house-letting and house-
furnishing finally passed into the hands of the state, these things would
be lent from the public galleries, or from immense municipal stores for
the purpose."