A London philosopher was once pleased to remark that the American habit
of sitting on the middle of the back with the feet elevated might in
time profoundly alter the American physical structure, producing a
race having its type in the Bactrian camel. If “our cousins across
the water” understood this matter they would not adopt the flippant
tone toward us that they now do, but in place of ridicule would bestow
compassion. Before endeavoring to clear away the misconceptions
surrounding the subject, so as to let in upon ourselves the holy light
of British sympathy I must explain that the practice of sitting in the
manner which the British philosopher somewhat inaccurately describes
is confined mostly to the males of our race; the American woman will
not, I trust, partake of the structural modification foreseen by the
scientific eye, but remain, as now, simply and sweetly dromedarian.
True, Nature may punish her for being found in bad company, but at
the first stroke of the lash she will doubtless forsake us and seek
sanctuary in the companionship of that bolt-upright vertebrate, the
English nobleman.
The national peculiarity which, one is sorry to observe, provokes
nothing but levity in the British mind—and British levity is no light
affliction—is not our fault but our misfortune. Like every other
people, we Americans are the slaves of those who serve us. Not one
of us in a thousand (so busy are we in “subduing the wilderness” and
guarding our homes against the Redskins) has leisure to plan and
order his surroundings; and to the few whom Fortune has favored with
leisure she has denied the means. We take everything ready-made—our
houses, grounds, carriages, furniture and all. In some of these things
Providence has by special interposition introduced new designs and
revived old ones, but in most of them there is neither change nor the
shadow of turning. They are to-day what they were a century ago, and
a century hence will be what they are to-day. The chair-maker, for
example, is the obscure intelligence and indirigible energy that his
grandfather was before him: the American chair maintains through the
ages its bad eminence as an instrument of torture. Time can not wither
nor custom stale its infinite malevolence. The type of the species is
the familiar hard-pan chair of the kitchen; in the dining-room this has
been deplaced by the “splint-bottom,” and in the parlor by an armed
and upholstered abomination which tempts us to session only to turn
to ashes, as it were, upon our bodies. They are essentially the same
old chair—worthy descendants of the original Adam of Chairs, created
from a block in the image of its maker’s head. The American chair is
never made to measure; it is supposed to fit anybody and be universally
applicable.
It is to the American chair that we must look for the genesis and
rationale of the American practice of shelving the American feet on the
most convenient dizzy eminence. We naturally desire as little contact
with the chair as possible, so we touch it with the acutest angle that
we are able to achieve. The feet must rest somewhere, and a place must
be found for them. It is admitted that the mantel, the sideboard, the
window-sill, the _escritoire_ and the dining table (at least
during meals) are not good places; but _que voulez vous_?—the
chairmakers have not chosen to invent anything to mitigate the
bitterness of the situation as by their genius for evil they have made
it.
I humbly submit that in all this there is nothing deserving of
ridicule. It is a situation with a pathos of its own, which ought
to appeal strongly to a people suffering so many of the ills of
conservitude, as do the English. It is all very well (to use their own
pet locution) to ask why we do not abolish the American chair, but
really the question ought not to come from a nation that endures _Mr.
Punch_, pities the House of Lords and embraces that of Hanover. The
American chair was probably divinely designed and sent upon us for
the chastening of our national spirit, and we accept it with the same
reverent submission that distinguishes our English critic in bowing his
neck to the heavy yoke of his own humor.