Two pages, I distinctly recollect, were devoted to the encouragement of the manufacture of umbrella stands out of old gaspiping. Anything less adapted to the receipt of hats and umbrellas than gas-piping I cannot myself conceive: had there been, I feel sure the author would have thought of it, and would have recommended it.
Picture-frames you fashioned out of ginger-beer corks. You saved your ginger-beer corks, you found a picture—and the thing was complete. How much ginger-beer it would be necessary to drink, preparatory to the making of each frame; and the effect of it upon the frame-maker’s physical, mental and moral well-being, did not concern The Amateur. I calculate that for a fair-sized picture sixteen dozen bottles might suffice. Whether, after sixteen dozen of ginger-beer, a man would take any interest in framing a picture—whether he would retain any pride in the picture itself, is doubtful. But this, of course, was not the point.
One young gentleman of my acquaintance—the son of the gardener of my sister, as friend Ollendorff would have described him—did succeed in getting through sufficient ginger-beer to frame his grandfather, but the result was not encouraging. Indeed, the gardener’s wife herself was but ill satisfied.
“What’s all them corks round father?” was her first question.
“Can’t you see,” was the somewhat indignant reply, “that’s the frame.”
“Oh! but why corks?”
“Well, the book said corks.”
Still the old lady remained unimpressed.
“Somehow it don’t look like father now,” she sighed.
Her eldest born grew irritable: none of us appreciate criticism!