The carpets being now down, I sent to the warehouse for the eighty cases, and after a year again looked at my household goods. They were very skilfully unpacked, but (here is the difference between the English and the American workman) each one of the men expected a fee every time he moved a box for me. Every time I went to the warehouse to open a trunk one or two men had to be fee'd, and at the end it came to quite a little sum. In America, this would not have been expected, even for harder work done, and quite rightly, for the men were receiving proper wages, and I was paying the Storage Company liberally.
Our American furniture being cosmopolitan it was speedily at home in our English rooms; only these high studded rooms have such a way of devouring furniture! I thought piteously of that which I had rashly flung into the Boston auction-room, and when it came to replacing it, what did I find? That American furniture is much better and much cheaper. My soul yearned even for the big black chest of drawers which I had left behind, and it loathed the brand-new "art furniture," sticky with paste and varnish.
I demanded Chippendale and such--but, alas! their day is over, except for millionaires! Praed Street, Brompton Road, Great Portland Street, and Wardour Street should blush for the faked-up antiquities that ogle the passerby. I have no prejudice against modern furniture if it is good; nor do I love old furniture simply because it is old, but undoubtedly the old taste was artistic and simple, and workmen had plenty of leisure and used their hands. But when it comes to American or English machine-made furniture I prefer the American because, it is in better taste, is made of better wood, and is cheaper.
I paid twenty-four shillings apiece for painted pine chests of drawers for the servants. In New York I saw a pretty one, all of oak with brass handles, for thirteen shillings. That is only a sample. Perhaps it is ungenerous urging the importation of American wares that can, because of English free trade, undersell the English manufacturer, but it remains true that it can be done, and ought to be done, and competition will improve the home produce, and there is room for improvement.