The more honest and tasteful of the framemakers would admit
as much themselves.
"Yes, it is ugly when you look at it," said one to me, as we stood
surveying it from the centre of the room. "But what one feels about
it is that one has done it oneself."
Which reflection, I have noticed, reconciles us to many other things
beside cork frames.
Another young gentleman friend of mine--for I am bound to admit it
was youth that profited most by the advice and counsel of The
Amateur: I suppose as one grows older one grows less daring, less
industrious--made a rocking-chair, according to the instructions of
this book, out of a couple of beer barrels. From every practical
point of view it was a bad rocking-chair. It rocked too much, and
it rocked in too many directions at one and the same time. I take
it, a man sitting on a rocking-chair does not want to be continually
rocking. There comes a time when he says to himself--"Now I have
rocked sufficiently for the present; now I will sit still for a
while, lest a worse thing befall me." But this was one of those
headstrong rocking-chairs that are a danger to humanity, and a
nuisance to themselves. Its notion was that it was made to rock,
and that when it was not rocking, it was wasting its time.
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