Chicago Eagle

THE OLD, OLD STORY.

Thus goes the old familiar song:
"How dear to my heart are the scenes of my childhood."

On second thought, however, one may interpose an exception or two. Let the memory go back to the "parlor."
In the recollections of childhood it does not figure as one of the popular home institutions. There was something sacrosanct about it that did not appeal to boys at least, and the girls didn't seem to give it much appreciation until Horace and Arthur accumulated sufficient courage to inaugurate the custom of calling around on Sunday afternoons, sitting on those frail and artistic Louis XIV. chairs and assuming the joyful expression of slaves on the block while passing stereotyped compliments upon photographs in the family album, many of which pictured numerous freaks of the genealogical tree. Ed Howe, in his Atchison Globe, quoting an architectural authority, says that the American parlor, as an institution of the home, or adjacent thereto, is passing, adding: "That word 'adjacent' is used advisedly, and with a distinct recollection of some parlors all have seen. In the house they were, of course, but they were far enough from the home; perhaps adjacent is a little too close, since they remained a dungeon except on grand occasions like funerals, or weddings, or entertaining the presiding elder. So the parlor's doom will leave no aching void. It was something in the void itself, when most of an institution: devoid at least of comfort or cheer, of sunshine or fresh air. And the chairs ranged about in such excellent order, added to the somber light that filtered through shades and shutter which strove to shut it out, made of it a nice, grim death chamber, which purpose it served frequently, and better than the others, being better suited to the purpose."