June, 1919 
27 
Not all the ivories show carving in relief. 
The cabinet above is elaborately inlaid with 
a variety of bird, butterfly and flower, de¬ 
signs. Japanese, of the 19th Century 
seum I have flattened my nose against a cer¬ 
tain case there that contains two inlaid daggers 
ornamented with ivory that date from the time 
of Moses. Moses and those days thirty-seven 
hundred years ago—^how much more real they 
seem when I am looking at daggers! If old 
Lord Chesterfield were here in the flesh, instead 
of in the spirit, on my library shelf there suit¬ 
ably bound by Riviere, I would not give a fig 
for the scorn he might heap upon my way of 
thinking, should he repeat the paragraph pom¬ 
pously indited to his helpless son, which runs 
“I do by no means advise you to throw away 
time in ransacking, like a dull antiquarian, the 
minute and unimportant parts of remote and 
fabulous times.” I hope you too, dear Reader, 
will be on my side. As gentle suasion, if that 
be necessary, I shall add Lord Chesterfield’s 
parting dart anent the matter, “Let blocklieads 
read what blockheads wrote!” I am sure we 
are one against the old gentleman. I don’t 
suppose nature graced him with enough humor 
to anticipate the time when he himself would 
come to seem to all of us as much part and 
parcel of remote and fabulous times as Cheops 
or Moses. 
Mary Magdalene as a French carver 
of the early 16th Century represented 
her in an ivory figurine 
An ivory knight of the chessboard. He is of 
English workmanship, from the 12>th Century 
Bone “ivory” marking wheels and pricking 
forks for the needleworker. Both of these 
are of American make and date from the 
late lUh and early 19th Centuries 
On a rainy day like this I like to bring 
forth my few ivory treasures and feel that the 
moisture in the air is good for them. True it 
is that there are no ivory palaces, or thrones 
and sceptres of ivory such as Tarquin was 
forced to hand over to Lars Porcenna; would 
that there were! Would that I might touch, 
might own, the very rod wherewith the grave 
senator of ancient Rome, Marcus Paperius, 
smote the Gaul who, marveling that the sen^a- 
tors sat unmoved in disconcerting dignity when 
their victorious enemy burst into the Capitol, 
touched the beard of the noble sire to see if he 
were alive. I may even confess that whenever 
I re-read the Iliad I shall be sure to pause at 
once part and give furtive wish that I might 
have one of the worn check-pieces there de¬ 
scribed. Perhaps you remember the lines— 
•‘As when some Carianor Mjeonian maid 
With crimson dye the ivory stains, designed 
To be a check-piece of a warrior’s steed: 
By many a valiant horseman coveted. 
As in a house it lies, a monarch’s boast 
The horse adorning, and the horseman’s pride.” 
But I cannot hope for any such luck. I 
{Continued on page 62) 
The back view of a Chinese ivory screen of the Ch’ien Lung period, 
1736-1796, shows six relief panels each with a different design. The 
figure of the ivory itself is clearly shown 
The front view of the same screen is more pretentious, depicting what 
may be interpreted as some of the ways in which one amuses oneself 
at a Chinese week-end party in the country 
