What is known in America as the arts and crafts movement has, in its sincere developments, sought to adapt the better qualities of the old designs of furniture to the demands of modern conditions, artistic and practical. Not always, however, has it been possible to distinguish between the honest effort to enforce a better standard and the various forms of charlatanry under which clumsy and unsightly creations have been and are being worked off upon an ingenuous public at prices proportioned to their degrees of ugliness. In colonial times many an humble carpenter vainly scratched his noggin as he puzzled over the hopeless problem of duplicating with rude tools and scant skill the handiwork that graced the lordly mansions of merrie England; to-day some wight who can scarcely distinguish a jackplane from a saw-buck essays to "express himself" (at our expense) in furniture, repeating all the gaucheries that the colonial carpenter could not avoid making. MISSION FURNITURE Others have set themselves to reproducing the so-called mission furniture which the good priests of early California would have rejoiced to exchange for the convenient modern furniture at which the faddist sniffs. But most of us who stop to think, realize that there is no magic virtue in antiquity of itself. The average man, at least, cannot delude himself into the belief that there is comfort to be found in a great deal of the harsh-angled stuff paraded as artistic. Let us not be understood, however, as hinting that artistic qualities must be disregarded. Though furniture should not be chosen for its beauty or associations alone, it must not be considered at all if beauty is absent. COMFORT, AESTHETIC AND PHYSICAL The first consideration of the home is comfort. Let no one dispute that fact. But there is such a thing as being aesthetically as well as physically comfortable. Conceptions of physical comfort differ with individuals, but are usually well defined; some of us actually have no conception whatever of aesthetic comfort. That is no reason why we should not seek it. Probably we had a very faint idea of what good music or good painting was like until we came to an acquaintance with the masters; but we are surely not sorry to have progressed in experience and feeling. And so it is that though we may not feel specially urged to insist upon tasteful surroundings, the higher instincts within us that persuade us to make the most of ourselves demand that we shall not be content with mere physical comfort. Therefore we may need to look a bit beyond our definite inward aspirations, and we should not disdain to follow others so far as they adhere to certain well-authenticated canons of good taste. OLDER MODELS IN FURNITURE