Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 August 1882 — Concerning Parlors. [ARTICLE]

Concerning Parlors.

London Society. The word “parlbr” is the remnant of a bygone state of things. The days are gone past when Sir Charles Grandison made his stately bow in the cedar parlor. “There are no parlors nowadays, my dear,” said an old lady, whom we may call Mrs. Partington, “except, I believe, in the public houses.” We have dining-room, drawing-room, studios, libraries, smoking-rooms,but the parlor in the ordinary British mansion has almost become a thing of the past. It remains, in a highly fossilized condition, as a venerable institution prized by the lower middle class. “Will you walk into my parlor? said the spider to the fly,” anil I always recognize the wretched feelings of that suicidal fly when I am invited into what people call a parlor. Very probably it is only used on state occasions. The family may burrow in some subterranean apartment in the basement. We perceive by a hundred signs that such a parlor is not a living room, but a dead room. It is full of stiffness and angularities, hard chairs and still harder sofas. The region in .which the parlor retains any vitality is the agricultural region. In multitudes of farm-houses, and in some vicarages, this kind of apartment is still found. But the British farmer follows hard on the tracks of the ’Squire, and gives up the humbler for the more ambitious nomenclature. It is the better class of laborer and the thriving artisan who are now aiming at the possession of parlors. Among them the parlor is really a happy and an educating influence. So prevalent have been peace and plenty of recent years, that in the suburbs of great towns you may pass whole rows of tenements in which you

may distinguish pleasant parlors, with flowering plants filling the windows and the sound of pianos clashing all down the row. Still, in special eases, the name of parlor yet survives, and of these I would say a few words. Tne parlor or parloir (La. pardbolare; Fr. paroler,parlor), as the name indicates, is a place wherein to converse. The waiting-room of a club is essentially a parlor; in a less formal, but more real, sense so is the smoking-room. The old lady was perfectly correct in her allusion—which, however, was hardly to be expected of her—to public houses. It would have been more decent if she had talked about taverns. And what glorious talk there has been in tavern Sartors before now! We think of Ben onson at the Mermaid and Sam Johnson at the Turk’s Head. There are still a few wits and scholars who haunt the sanded parlors of hostels about Fleet street: i “When all bls warm heart, sherrls-warmed. Flashed forth in random speeches.” Such men have felt and said that there is no throne like the easy chair of a tavern parlor. Perhaps there are other attractions besides wit and liquor for a tavern parlor. I know a great firm that advertises for pretty bar maids, and always sends them home at nights ip a special conveyance, to be intrusted to the charge of a most respectable matron.