Standard Household-Effect Company | Page 8

large towns and cities, and when you hire a new house these will be
sent to advise with the eternal-womanly concerning its appointments,
and tell her what she wants, and what she will like; for at present the
eternal womanly, as soon as she has got a thing she wants, begins to
hate it. The company's agents will begin by convincing her that she
does not need half the things she has lumbered up her house with, and
that every useless thing is an ugly thing, even in the region of pure
aesthetics. I once asked an Italian painter if he did not think a certain
nobly imagined drawing-room was fine, and he said 'SI. Ma troppa
roba.' There were too many rugs, tables, chairs, sofas, pictures; vases,
statues, chandeliers. 'Troppa roba' is the vice of all our household
furnishing, and it will be the death of the eternal-womanly if it is not
stopped. But the corrupt agents of a giant monopoly will teach the
eternal-womanly something of the wise simplicity of the South, and she
will end by returning to the ideal of housekeeping as it prevails among

the Latin races, whom it began with, whom civilization began with.
What of a harmless, necessary moth or two, or even a few fleas?"
"That might be all very well as far as furniture and carpets and curtains
are concerned," I said, "but surely you wouldn't apply it to pictures and
objects of art?"
"I would apply it to them first of all and above all," rejoined my friend,
hardily. "Among all the people who buy and own such things there is
not one in a thousand who has any real taste or feeling for them, and
the objects they choose are generally such as can only deprave and
degrade them further. The pictures, statues, and vases supplied by the
Standard Household-Effect Company would be selected by agents with
a real sense of art, and a knowledge of it. When the house-letting and
house- furnishing finally passed into the hands of the state, these things
would be lent from the public galleries, or from immense municipal
stores for the purpose."
"And I suppose you would have ancestral portraits supplied along with
the other pictures?" I sneered.
"Ancestral portraits, of course," said my friend, with unruffled temper.
"So few people have ancestors of their own that they will be very glad
to have ancestral portraits chosen for them out of the collections of the
company or the state. The agents of the one, or the officers of the other,
will study the existing type of family face, and will select ancestors and
ancestresses whose modelling, coloring, and expression agree with it,
and will keep in view the race and nationality of the family whose
ancestral portraits are to be supplied, so that there shall be no chance of
the grossly improbable effect which ancestral portraits now have in
many cases. Yes, I see no flaw in the scheme," my friend concluded,
"and no difficulty that can't be easily overcome. We must alienate our
household furniture, and make it so sensitively and exclusively the
property of some impersonal agency--company or community, I don't
care which--that any care of it shall be a sort of crime; any sense of
responsibility for its preservation a species of incivism punishable by
fine or imprisonment. This, and nothing short of it, will be the salvation
of the eternal-womanly."
"And the perdition of something even more precious than that!"
"What can be more precious?"
"Individuality."

"My dear friend," demanded my visitor, who had risen, and whom I
was gradually edging to the door, "do you mean to say there is any
individuality in such things now? What have we been saying about
character?"
"Ah, I see what you mean," I said.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARK:
As soon as she has got a thing she wants, begins to hate it Heard praises
of the thorough housekeeping of our grandmothers Yes, I see what you
mean

End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Standard Household Effect Co.
by William Dean Howells

Standard Household-Effect Company

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