“But the old chest won’t sarve her gran’son’s wife,
(For ’thout new furnitoor what good in life?)
An’ so old claw foot, from the precinks dread
O’ the spare chamber, slinks into the shed,
Where, dim with dust, it fust and last subsides
To holdin’ seeds an’ fifty other things besides.”
Illus. 19.—“Low-boy” and “High-boy” of Walnut, about 1740.
But carefully wrapped up and tucked away in one of the small drawers were the torches for the upper and the acorn-shaped drops for the lower part. These drops were used as long as the curves followed those of the lower part of six-legged chests, but were omitted when more graceful curves and lines were used, as the design of high chests gradually differed from the early types.
Illus. 20.—Walnut Double Chest,
about 1760.
The “low-boy,” or dressing-table, was made to accompany every style of high chest. The low-boy in Illustration [19] shows the dressing-table which was probably used in the room with the bandy-legged high-boy, flat-topped or with the broken arch cornice. It is lower than the under part of the high-boy, which is, however, frequently supplied with a board top and sold as a low-boy, but which can be easily detected from its height and general appearance. The measurements of this high-boy and low-boy are
| HIGH-BOY, lower part | LOW-BOY |
| 3 feet high | 2 feet 4 inches high |
| 3 feet 1½ inches long | 2 feet 6 inches long |
| 21 inches deep | 18 inches deep |
The high-boy measures seven feet from the floor to the top of the cornice.