WHEW IS A CHAIR NOT A CHAIR?

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12394, 13 March 1926, Page 9

WHEW IS A CHAIR NOT A CHAIR?

. THE MASCULINE IDEA. (By Sonia Gray.) My cousin stood at the diningroom door surveying. the dinner-table with a contented smile. “Thank goodness, Mary,” he remarked, “you’ve got the sense to keep a good white tablecloth 1” “Why?” I asked. “Those, rotten mat-things,” Tom went on, ’ “drive me nearly orasy. There’s nothing for your plate to sit on. Why, only last. week at Mrs Brown’s I tilted my whiting right on toe my best black trosuers. Not only did I look a fool, but the maid took my whiting away and didn't bring me another 1” Men in general hate all the newfangled notions'un furnishing and decoration that women are introducing into the' home with such 1 enthusiasm. Concealed lighting, for instance, is a positive bugbear to men. Softly glowing vases and ornaments, the gentle light through a porcelain bowl—these don’t strike them as lights at all, save for rare, romantic moments. . “Give me three good globes in the middle of the ceiling,” says Tom; “I can’t see ray way about mother’s lounge.” Humpties and fragile tables arc also taboo. A man likes a sent with a back to it in which he can lounge at his ease. Moreover, he likes a table he chn lean against or even sit upon—while the fragile legs of a nest of tables do not oermit of this. As for polished floors—these are anathema I Nine women ont of ten would choose a polished floor and rugs rather than an all-over carpet;, hut a man sees in it nothing hut a trap for unwaty feet and a further opportunity of looking ridiculous by unintentional acrobatic feats. “You’re positively Victorian,” 1 chided Tom, “I believe you’d like this house furnished as grandmother would have had it—except for the liorsebait sofa.” , •“I’d rather have a horsehair sofa than a humptyil” Tom replied. So I let him have the last word on furnishing, being content to exercise j the “last word in” furnishing my--1 self I