78 
House & G ard 
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T 
HE aim of Berkey 6? Gay designers 
is to create furniture one delights to 
live with. 
Wrought in this spirit, the simplest piece 
becomes with the passing years a more and 
more cherished possession—the grace of its 
lines, the soft, deep glow of its finish, a breath 
of home. 
How satisfying the purchase of such furni¬ 
ture—at so slight a difference in price—in 
preference to furniture of no particular 
distinction. 
An illustrated brochure 
concerning Ber\ey & Gay furniture, together with 
name of nearest dealer, sent upon request 
THIS SHOP MARK 
is inlaid in every genuine 
Berkey & Qay production. 
It is the customer’s protec¬ 
tion when buying and his 
pride thereafter. 
Berkey 6? Gay Furniture Company 
444 MONROE AVENUE 
GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN 
Collecting Autographs 
(Continued from page 76) 
for fifty cents a letter written by Mar¬ 
tha Washington on note-paper water¬ 
marked with a portrait of her illustrious 
spouse, a note that would probably fetch 
at least a hundred and fifty dollars had 
not disaster overtaken and destroyed it. 
A holograph letter by Button Gwinnett, 
a signer of the Declaration of Independ¬ 
ence would, if such were extant, bring 
at least $25,000, although the discovery 
of a hundred Gwinnett letters would 
send any such price tumbling. I know 
of only one autograph letter signed by 
Thomas Lunch, Jr., another signer, and 
this brought something like $7,000, when 
sold some years ago. It is now in the 
collection of the New York Public Li¬ 
brary. On the other hand I find in a 
catalogue just issued by a noted Amer¬ 
ican dealer fine letters by other signers 
at moderate prices, one by Stephen Hop¬ 
kins of Rhode Island at $20, one by 
Samuel Huntington of Connecticut at 
$10 and so on. This same catalogue of¬ 
fers one an autograph note by John 
Greenleaf Whittier for $2, a page of 
William Cullen Bryant's translation of 
the Odyssey in his own handwriting for 
$5, an extremely interesting letter on 
political matters and giving her ideas as 
to future life by the famous Sarah, 
Duchess of Marlborough for $10, a let¬ 
ter by Ouida, the novelist for $3, the 
autograph manuscript, signed, of Jules 
Verne’s Memories of Infancy and 
Youth, a poem in manuscript by Walt 
Whitman at $10, while a fine two-page 
letter by Emile Zola may be had for 
less than half of that. 
Thus one need have no fear that auto¬ 
graph collecting or the collecting of a 
few fine autographs for the purpose of 
enhancing the interest of a room is be¬ 
yond the purse or the possibility. 
Whether library, music-room, hall or 
living-room, autographs offer a sugges¬ 
tion for making one’s house more inter¬ 
esting. 
It is not everyone, I know, who 
shares with me a delight in catalogs, 
catalogs for the sake of many things, 
and—I do confess it 1—catalogs for their 
own sake. It is an enlightening diver¬ 
sion with which those who do not know 
its seductions might have little patience, 
but I daresay that if such Philistines 
could be persuaded to dip into the lore 
such brochures hold forth, they would 
at least make exception in their anath¬ 
ema to catalogs of autographs. Had 
it not been for a catalog of autographs 
that arrived in the morning’s post 1 
would never have known that Lord 
Byron contemplated going to America 
to start as a planter, that it was Brahms' 
dislike for concerts that kept him from 
a trip to England, Petrograd and Paris, 
that Charles I had his stationer account 
for a "skynne of vellome being guilt 
and lymnd very faier,” that G. P. R 
James troubled to send a friend a recipi 
for an infusion of roses, that Rusldn 
was “pulled up" in his plans of casting 
from the ducal palace by “the need ot 
paying a tax of a hundred per cent”— 
how we can feel for him!—and that 
Robert Louis Stevenson had no idea 
that his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde would 
go “into any other form than the ig¬ 
noble shillingswort," and also that “pub¬ 
lishers are thrifty,” highly important 
matters as you will agree! Blessed 
catalogs 1 
Yes, gentle reader, I can recommend 
autograph collecting highly; one has 
but to begin; there is no ending! But 
let not enthusiasm carry discretion along 
the historic road traveled by the late 
M. Michel Chasles of France, a noted 
scientist, who, incredible as it may seem, 
was induced by a man named Vrain- 
Lucas to purchase from him a collection 
of 27,000 “autographs” for 150,000 
francs, nearly all of which were the most 
ridiculous forgeries, including letters 
written in the French language at¬ 
tributed by the suave Vrain-Lucas to 
the authorship of Julius Caesar, Cleo¬ 
patra, Yercingetorix, Judas Iscariot, 
Sappho, Tiberius Caesar and, of course, 
Mary Magdalene! But the world, for¬ 
tunately, is not as full of preoccupied 
scientists as it is of ingenious charlatans, 
and the affaire Vrain-Lucas did not, 
fortunately, fall as a death blow to auto¬ 
graph collecting. 
Engaging a Landscape Architect 
(Continued from page 40) 
and its surroundings, he will fail in a 
large measure, even if the garden is ever 
so beautiful in itself. 
That is .one of the greatest charms 
of the landscape architect’s work—the 
infinite variety of it, for no two gardens 
ought ever to be alike. 
And what a host of kinds there are— 
terrace gardens for hillsides, shady gar¬ 
dens for woods and courtyards, formal 
gardens and naturalistic ones, walled 
gardens, rock gardens, rose gardens, 
shrub gardens, and even vine gardens, 
stately gardens with fountain; and 
statues, with box bushes and bay trees, 
and intimate gardens with a seat be¬ 
neath an apple tree, large gardens and 
gardens that are made up of a myriad 
of small subdivisions, gardens with long 
vistas, and tiny gardens that nestle so 
close to rooms that they become ver¬ 
itable parts of them. 
On this first visit, too, it is really im¬ 
portant for the landscape architect to 
determine—I might call it sense or feel— 
your social position, the kind of enter¬ 
taining you do and the scale upon which 
you live. Besides, he will want to know 
how much you will spend on the garden 
and how much you can afford for the 
upkeep of it. All these things will de¬ 
termine the nature of your garden. 
The maintenance of the garden is a 
very serious problem today, with the 
shortage and high cost of labor, but 
somehow I feel that just these difficul¬ 
ties will be the impetus to new and 
fresh garden developments. After all. 
these difficulties are not new ones—the 
change from the old and passee bedding- 
out of plants to the use of the herba¬ 
ceous border, for instance, was due, no 
doubt, as much to an increase in wages 
as to the decadence into which the bed¬ 
ding plant had fallen. So foresight into 
the cost of maintenance is very essential. 
I have visited just recently some ex¬ 
tremely rich gardens with marble foun¬ 
tains, great walls and statues, great yews 
and box and cedar hedge;—wonderfully 
effective. Such gardens are very ex¬ 
pensive to build but comparatively sim¬ 
ple to take care of. On the other hand, 
charming little shrubbery gardens can 
be arranged with deciduous plants whose 
cost and care will be a negligible quan¬ 
tity. The flowers for a garden are its 
smallest expenditure, and herbaceous 
borders can be ever so simple for main¬ 
tenance, but they do require not only 
constant attention but intelligent and 
loving care to keep them in beauty year 
after year. 
All these matters the landscape archi¬ 
tect is storing up in his mind—most 
likely while you are having a very 
amiable conversation and are getting 
acquainted with one another. This get¬ 
ting acquainted is important in itself. 
You must like his—or her—personality 
and trust his artistic judgment in much 
(Continued on page 82) 
