第18章

As soon as we put the Standard Household-Effect Company in possession and render it a relentless monopoly,it will corrupt a competent architect and decorator in each of our large towns and cities,and when you hire a new house these will be sent to advise with the eternal-womanly concerning its appointments,and tell her what she wants,and what she will like;for at present the eternal womanly,as soon as she has got a thing she wants,begins to hate it.The company's agents will begin by convincing her that she does not need half the things she has lumbered up her house with,and that every useless thing is an ugly thing,even in the region of pure aesthetics.I once asked an Italian painter if he did not think a certain nobly imagined drawing-room was fine,and he said 'SI.Ma troppa roba.'There were too many rugs,tables,chairs,sofas,pictures;vases,statues,chandeliers.'Troppa roba' is the vice of all our household furnishing,and it will be the death of the eternal-womanly if it is not stopped.But the corrupt agents of a giant monopoly will teach the eternal-womanly something of the wise simplicity of the South,and she will end by returning to the ideal of housekeeping as it prevails among the Latin races,whom it began with,whom civilization began with.