We have a decided penchant for all that smacks of antiquity. We like old houses and old furniture, particularly if comely and serviceable. We delight in painting to ourselves the scenes through which they must have passed; we believe, too, that they exert a much greater influence in producing a love for home than those constructed at a more recent period.

We would gladly see the money now expended in the trashy, half-made articles of furniture, merely because the uncomfortable shapes of some of them are said to be of the latest style, laid out for those which are truly strong and serviceable, and, for this reason, elegant.

George E. Woodward, Cottages and Farm Houses, 1867