Ebook A Bachelor's Talks

It is not so in my brother's house. Each sepa~ rate chair (and they are of no uniform pattern), the small rocker, the big arm-chair, the low-seated high back, the moderately-sized ones — not with rounded backs that cut you under each shoulder-blade, and let you through a great vacancy where there ought to be a support — all seem to smile on you and say, Just put yourself on one of us; we will not groan nor creak nor break down we will hold you nicely; and if you don't like us, there is our brother sofa that will be sure to make you comfortable. They have a good deal of mahogany about them. They, my brother and his wife, say, Mahogany is best. Those chairs (they were her grandmother's, carved back and legs they have) are mahogany. That is the wood to last. It is not like your shoddy black-walnut. It grows better by age, deepens its color, and lays out its grain as it grows old. When, after supper, the family gather in the back parlor around the centre-table under the gaslight, with books and papers and games, the little one on the ?oor with blocks or cards, and you hear laugh ing and merry talk, the picture is a very pleasant one. At least it is so to me.