"
They had other music to offer, too, for these were the happy days of
"Olivette" and "The Macotte" and "The Chimes of Normandy" and
"Girofle-Girofla" and "Fra Diavola." Better than that, these were
the days of "Pinafore" and "The Pirates of Penzance" and of
"Patience." This last was needed in the Midland town, as elsewhere,
for the "aesthetic movement" had reached thus far from London, and
terrible things were being done to honest old furniture. Maidens
sawed what-nots in two, and gilded the remains. They took the rockers
from rocking-chairs and gilded the inadequate legs; they gilded the
easels that supported the crayon portraits of their deceased uncles.
In the new spirit of art they sold old clocks for new, and threw wax
flowers and wax fruit, and the protecting glass domes, out upon the
trash-heap. They filled vases with peacock feathers, or cattails, or
sumac, or sunflowers, and set the vases upon mantelpieces and marble-
topped tables. They embroidered daisies (which they called
"marguerites") and sunflowers and sumac and cat-tails and owls and
peacock feathers upon plush screens and upon heavy cushions, then
strewed these cushions upon floors where fathers fell over them in the
dark.
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