of rectangular lines. It was, in fact, a period
in which superior minds expressed themselves in material forms, when
Flaxman, Wedgwood, Chippendale and many others of their day, true
artists in form, wrote their thoughts in wood, stone, and pottery, and
bequeathed them to future ages. Certainly the work of such minds in such
company must outlast mere mechanical efforts. It is interesting to note,
that many of the Chippendale chairs keep in their under construction the
square and simple forms of a much earlier period, while the upper part,
the back, and seats are carved into curves and floriated designs. One
cannot help wondering whether this square solidity was simply a
reminiscence or persistence of earlier forms, or a conscious return to
the most direct principles of weight-bearing constructions.

All furniture made under primitive conditions naturally depends upon
perpendicular and horizontal forms, because uninfluenced construction
considers first of all the principle of strength; but under the varied
influences of the Georgian period one hardly expects fidelity to first
principles. New England carpenters and cabinet-makers who had wrought
under the masters of carpentry and cabinet-work in England brought with
them not only skill to fashion, but the very patterns and drawings from
which Chippendale and Sheraton furniture had been made in England. Our
English forefathers were very fond of the St. Domingo mahogany, brought
back in the ship-bottoms of English traders, but the English workmen
who made furniture in the new world, while they adopted this foreign
wood, were not slow to appreciate the wild cherry, and the different
maples and oak and nut woods which they found in America. They were
woods easy to work, and apt to take on polish and shining surface. The
cabinet-makers liked also the abnormal specimens of maple where the
fibre grew in close waves, called _curled_ maple, as well as the great
roots flecked and spotted with minute knots, known as dotted maple.

All these things went into colonial furniture, so beautifully cut, so
carefully dowelled and put together, so well made, that many of the
things have become heirlooms in the families for which they were
constructed. I remember admiring a fine old cherry book-case in Mr.
Lowell's library at Cambridge, and being told by the poet that it had
belonged to his grandfather. When I spoke of the comparative rarity of
such possessions he answered: "Oh, anyone can ha