Baltimore—­as I found out later—­is probably the headquarters for the South in this trade.  It has at least one dealer of Fifth Avenue rank, located on Charles Street, and a number of humbler dealers in and near Howard Street.  Among the latter, two in particular interested me.  One of 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 those of another.  Compare, for instance, the dealer in old furniture with the dealer in old automobiles.  The latter, far from pronouncing a machine of which he wishes to dispose “a genuine antique,” will assure you—­and not always with a strict regard for truth—­that it is “practically as good as new.”  Or compare the seller of antiques with the horse dealer.  Can you imagine the latter’s taking you up to some venerable quadruped—­let alone a three-year-old—­and discoursing upon its merits in some such manner as the following: 

“This is the oldest and most historic horse that has ever come into my possession.  Just look at it, sir!  The farmer of whom I bought it assured me that it was brought over by his ancestors in the Mayflower.  The place where I found it was used as Washington’s headquarters during the Revolutionary War, and it is known that Washington himself frequently sat on this very horse.  It was a favorite of his.  For he was a large man and he liked a big, comfortable, deep-seated horse, well braced underneath, and having strong arms, so that he could tilt it back comfortably against the wall, with its front legs off the floor, and—­”