I have no quarrel with the honest dealers who are making fine and sincere copies of such furniture, and selling them as copies.  There is no deception here, we must respect these men as we respect the workers of the Eighteenth Century:  we give them respect for their masterly workmanship, their appreciation of the best things, and their fidelity to the masterpieces they reproduce.

Not so long ago the New York papers published the experience of a gentleman who bought a very beautiful divan in a European furniture shop.  He paid for it—­you may be sure of that!—­and he could hardly wait for its arrival to show it to his less fortunate neighbors.  Within a few months something happened to the lining of the divan, and he discovered on the inside of the frame the maker’s name and address.  Imagine his chagrin when he found that the divan had been made at a furniture factory in his own country.  You can’t be sorry for him, you feel that it served him right.

[Illustration:  A BANQUETTE OF THE LOUIS XV.  PERIOD COVERED WITH NEEDLEWORK]

[Illustration:  A CHINESE CHIPPENDALE SOFA COVERED WITH CHINTZ]

This is an excellent example of the vain collector who cannot judge for himself, but will not admit it.  He has not developed his sense of beauty, his instinct for excellence of workmanship.  He thinks that because he has the money to pay for the treasure, the treasure must be genuine—­hasn’t he chosen it?

I can quite understand the pleasure that goes with furnishing a really old house with objects of the period in which the house was built.  A New England farmhouse, for instance, may be an inspiration to the owner, and you can understand her quest of old fashioned rush bottomed chairs and painted settles and quaint mirrors and blue homespun coverlets.  You can understand the man who falls heir to a good, square old Colonial house who wishes to keep his furnishings true to the period, but you cannot understand the crying need for Eighteenth Century furniture in a modern shingle house, or the desire for old spinning wheels and battered kitchen utensils in a Spanish stucco house, or Chippendale furniture in a forest bungalow.

I wish people generally would study the oak and walnut furniture of old England, and use more reproductions of these honest, solid pieces of furniture in their houses.  Its beauty is that it is “at home” in simple American houses, and yet by virtue of its very usefulness and sturdiness it is not out of place in a room where beautiful objects of other periods are used.  The long oak table that is so comfortably ample for books and magazines and flowers in your living-room may be copied from an old refectory table—­but what of it?  It fulfils its new mission just as frankly as the original table served the monks who used it.

The soft brown of oak is a pleasure after the over-polished mahogany of a thousand rooms.  I do not wish to condemn Colonial mahogany furniture, you understand.  I simply wish to remind you that there are other woods and models available.  French furniture of the best type represents the supreme art of the cabinet-maker, and is incomparable for formal rooms, but I am afraid the time will never come when French furniture will be interchangeable with the oak and mahogany of England and America.