“The only mistake is to belong to the middle generation, which curiously enough is always the present one. We crave what our grandparents owned but our parents did not. Our grandchildren will crave what we had but our own children won't. They'll junk it. To-day's monstrosity is day-after-tomorrow's art treasure just as today's museum piece is day-before-yesterday's monstrosity. Therefore, I repeat, let us remain calm. I figure that when we actually get into that house our grandchildren will be of a proper age to appreciate the belongings now appertaining to us, and all will be well.”
Thus in substance I spoke. The counter argument offered was that—conceding what I said to be true—the fact remained and was not to be gainsaid that we did not have anywhere near enough of furnishings to equip the house we hoped at some distant date to occupy.
“You must remember,” I was told, “that for the six or eight years before we decided to move out here to the country we lived in a flat.”
“What of it?” I retorted instantly. “What of it?” I repeated, for when in the heat of controversy I think up an apt bit of repartee like that I am apt to utter it a second time for the sake of emphasis. Pausing only to see if my stroke of instantaneous retort had struck in, I continued:
“That last flat we had swallowed up furniture as a rat hole swallows sand. First and last we must have poured enough stuff into that flat to furnish the state of Rhode Island. And what about the monthly statements we are getting now from the storage warehouse signed by the president of the company, old man Pl. Remit? Doesn't the size of them prove that in the furniture-owning line at least we are to be regarded as persons of considerable consequence?”
“Don't be absurd,” I was admonished. “Just compare the size of the largest bedroom in that last flat we had in One Hundred and Tenth Street with the size of the smallest bedroom we expect to have in the new place. Why, you could put the biggest bedroom we had there into the smallest bedroom we are going to have here and lose it! And then think of the halls we must furnish and the living room and the breakfast porch and everything. Did we have a breakfast porch in the flat? We did not! Did we have a living room forty feet one way and twenty-eight the other? We did not! Did we have a dining room in that flat that was big enough to swing a cat in?”
“We didn't have any cat.”
“All the same, we—”
“I doubt whether any of the neighbors would have loaned us a cat just for that purpose.” I felt I had the upper hand and I meant to keep it. “Besides, you know I don't like cats. What is the use of importing foreign matters such as cats—and purely problematical cats at that—into a discussion about something else? What relation does a cat bear to furniture, I ask you? Still, speaking of cats, I'm reminded—”
“Never mind trying to be funny. And never mind trying to steer the conversation off the right track either. Please pay attention to what I am saying—let's see, where was I? Oh, yes: Did we have a hall in that flat worthy to be dignified by the name of a hall? We did not! We had a passageway—that's what it was—a passageway. Now there is a difference between furnishing a mere passageway and a regular hall, as you are about to discover before you are many months older.”