are not
necessarily expensive. Simple pine pieces, made by the village
cabinet-maker or, sometimes, by an ingenious farmer in his leisure
hours; Windsor and slat-back chairs; low four-post beds; trestle or
tuckaway tables; even an occasional Victorian piece; all, if on simple
lines, fit into such a house as though made for it.

One of the many advantages of furnishing with antiques is that there
is nothing final about them. If you buy a piece at a proper price and
after due time do not like it or it fails to fit into your decorative
scheme, you can sell for as much as you paid for it and often a little
more. On the other hand, new furniture or reproductions become merely
second-hand pieces as soon as you have bought and put them to use.
Only at distinct financial loss can you change them in six months or a
year for others. That is a good commercial reason for the growing
tendency to furnish with antiques. We believe, however, that the real
reason is the effect of individuality gained by the use of pieces made
by old craftsmen a century or more ago when things were built to last
and mass production and obsolescence were unknown terms.

Several years ago, a family bought a house of the type prevalent in
the region of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, "as a summer shack for three or
four months in the year." The floors with their wide boards were
simply scrubbed, waxed, and left in the natural tone taken on by old
wood in the course of a hundred and fifty years. All trim and paneling
were painted a soft apple green, and walls and ceilings throughout
were calcimined a deep cream color. Curtains of unbleached muslin were
hung at the small, many-paned windows. The furnishings came out of the
attic of their Boston home where the contents of a great-grandfather's
New Hampshire farmhouse had been stored.

These were the average accumulation of family possessions from the
turn of the 19th century down through the Civil War period. There was
a pine tavern table, 17th century in feeling but made nearly two
hundred years later. It had been used in the summer kitchen and bore
the scars of harsh treatment. A skillful cabinet-maker restored it to
a condition suitable for a dining table. At this point, the
antiquarian of the family spoke wistfully of "some nice little
rod-back Windsors that Cousin Julie made off with" when the old
homestead was broken up some twenty years and how they would be "just
right for dining room chairs here."

But