American Adventures | Page 7

Charles Street, midway on its course between the Union Station
and Mount Vernon Place, are at night, even more than by day, full of
the suggestion of comfortable and settled domesticity. Their brick
houses, standing wall to wall and close to the sidewalk, speak of
honorable age, and, in some cases of a fine and ancient dignity. One
fancies that in many of these houses the best of old mahogany may be
found, or, if not that, then at least the fairly old and quite creditable
furniture of the period of the sleigh-back bed, the haircloth-covered
rosewood sofa, and the tall, narrow mirror between the two front
windows of the drawing room.
Through the glass panels of street doors and beneath half-drawn
window shades the early-evening wayfarer may perceive a feeble glow
as of illuminating gas turned low; but by ten o'clock these lights have
begun to disappear, indicating--or so, at all events, I chose to
believe--that certain old ladies wearing caps and black silk gowns with
old lace fichus held in place by ancient cameos, have proceeded slowly,
rustlingly, upstairs to bed, accompanied by their cats.
At Cathedral Street, a block or two from Charles, Biddle Street
performs a jog, dashing off at a tangent from its former course, while
Chase Street not only jogs and turns at the corresponding intersection,
but does so again, where, at the next corner, it meets at once with Park
Avenue and Berkeley Street. After this it runs but a short way and dies,
as though exhausted by its own contortions.
Here, in a region of malformed city blocks--some of them pentagonal,
some irregularly quadrangular, some wedge-shaped--Howard Street
sets forth upon its way, running first southwest as far as Richmond
Street, then turning south and becoming, by degrees, an important
thoroughfare.

Somewhere near the beginning of Howard Street my attention was
arrested by shadowy forms in a dark window: furniture, andirons,
chinaware, and weapons of obsolete design: unmistakable signs of a
shop in which antiquities were for sale. After making mental note of
the location of this shop, I proceeded on my way, keeping a sharp
lookout for other like establishments. Nor was I to be disappointed.
These birds of a feather bear out the truth of the proverb by flocking
together in Howard Street, as window displays, faintly visible,
informed me.
Since we have come naturally to the subject of antiques, let us pause
here, under a convenient lamp-post, and discuss the matter further.
Baltimore--as I found out later--is probably the headquarters for the
South in this trade. It has at least one dealer of Fifth Avenue rank,
located on Charles Street, and a number of humbler dealers in and near
Howard Street. Among the latter, two in particular interested me. One
of these--his name is John A. Williar--I have learned to trust. Not only
did I make some purchases of him while I was in Baltimore, but I have
even gone so far, since leaving there, as to buy from him by mail,
accepting his assurance that some article which I have not seen is,
nevertheless, what I want, and that it is "worth the price."
At the other antique shop which interested me I made no purchases.
The stock on hand was very large, and if those who exhibited it to me
made no mistakes in differentiating between genuine antiques and
copies, the assortment of ancient furniture on sale in that establishment,
when I was there, would rank among the great collections of the world.
However, human judgment is not infallible, and antique dealers
sometimes make mistakes, offering, so to speak, "new lamps for old."
The eyesight of some dealers may not be so good as that of others; or
perhaps one dealer does not know so well as another the difference
between, say, an old English Chippendale chair and a New York
reproduction; or again, perhaps, some dealers may be innocently
unaware that there exist, in this land of ours, certain large
establishments wherein are manufactured most extraordinary modern
copies of the furniture of long ago. I have been in one of these

manufactories, and have there seen chairs of Chippendale and Sheraton
design which, though fresh from the workman's hands, looked older
than the originals from which they had been plagiarized; also I recall a
Jacobean refectory table, the legs of which appeared to have been eaten
half away by time, but which had, in reality, been "antiqued" with a
stiff wire brush. I mention this because, in my opinion, antique dealers
have a right to know that such factories exist.
What curious differences there are between the customs of one trade
and those of another. Compare, for instance, the dealer in old furniture
with the dealer in old automobiles. The latter, far from pronouncing a
machine of which he