Armchair

“ There was no one in the drawing-room—unless shades are people. O little black velvet armchair with your two yellow tassels, hideous piece of squat puffiness, so well termed a crapaud, could I behold you again as of yore without imagining [59] seated on your toad-like form the shade of my anecdotal aunt? And you, my mother’s chair—an austerer one, and one I cannot jest about—will she not always be in my memory leaning over your back as long as you shall be an armchair, if indeed you ever really were one? ”

“ Suppose the arms of an armchair really were arms—the arms of a patient domestic permanently held out, like those of an old nurse waiting for a baby. It would be calculated to make the luxurious occupant of the easy-chair feel rather like a baby ”

“ There, lying back in a great luxurious armchair, was a preternaturally thin and sallow-faced man. His pose and appearance suggested the invalid or the convalescent. He lay as if half dozing, and from his lips ran a heavy tube, connected with a great glass tank at his side. ”

“ But if, from behind some tapestry-covered armchair in the corner, a small, wizened, yellow face were to look out now, and a little naked arm guided an arrow, tipped with barbed bone dipped in poison, at her heart, the cry of the human preserving itself would surely arise ”

“ They are placed upon a simple wooden armchair, with one band fastened in front of them to prevent their falling off, and another beneath for them to place their feet on—a most horrible sight when the sick person is so weak that he can no longer hold himself in an upright posture. ”

“ I was tired with the journey, with the knocking about in town, and the discomfort and alarm produced by the apparition of the finger. I felt worn out. I was unable to give my attention to what I read, and before I was aware was asleep. Roused for an instant by the fall of the book from my hands, I speedily relapsed into unconsciousness. I am not sure that a doze in an armchair ever does good. It usually leaves me in a semi-stupid condition and with a headache. Five minutes in a horizontal position on my bed is worth thirty in a chair. ”

“ In that time she had retreated from the balcony and was lying back in a deep, upholstered armchair near the open window, a soft woolen lap-robe over her knees and tucked about her feet. He leaned over her anxiously.
"You are ill? What is it?" he questioned her swiftly. "Let me go for the doctor!" ”

“ I believe that we owe the ancient etiquette concerning armchairs to the circumstance that our barbarians of ancestors had at most but one in a house, and even this was used only by the sick. In some provinces of Germany and England an armchair is still called a sick-chair. ”

“ Is it really necessary to struggle? Wouldn't it be better to put my head in my hands and drop into the softness and restfulness of my new armchair?
When we came here a little while ago, it was he who was the first to experience this sort of trouble. We had been looking over our home and when the tour was ended he took me in his arms, and I felt the warm flesh of his kiss under my chin. A blow seemed to strike my bowels. I tightened up into a ball, my muscles tense, thrown on the defensive. An evil fear made me shiver. He raised his head. I had never seen him look so tragic. ”

“ Suppose you'd been robbed of the finest armchair that ever you sat in——"
"Finest fiddlesticks!" burst out Dan. "That chair had spinal meningitis, I guess, or the dinkbots. Every time you sat in it you could tell how many springs there were in the seat and back without counting. ”

“ Silence interviewed the majority of his “queer” cases, and the one into which he had directed Barker to show his present caller.
To begin with, the armchair in which the patient was always directed to sit, was nailed to the floor, since its immovability tended to impart this same excellent characteristic to the occupant. Patients invariably grew excited when talking about themselves, and their excitement tended to confuse their thoughts and to exaggerate their language. The inflexibility of the chair helped to counteract this. ”

“ At the hour of curfew, he was bound to extinguish his lamp, and we perceive how much he was favored, in being allowed to keep it burning even till then. Near the bed a large leathern armchair, with twisted legs, sustained his clothes. ”

“ There should also be a wide, deep wicker armchair, nicely cushioned, and there should be a long chair for the invalid, where he or she could rest while the bed is made or remain{212} when convalescence has begun, and the bed may be left for some hours at least. ”

“ So it was, my dear Watson, that at two o’clock to-day I found myself in my old armchair in my own old room, and only wishing that I could have seen my old friend Watson in the other chair which he has so often adorned.” ”

“ It was a strongly made wooden armchair (the surviving specimens are of oak) in which the culprit was seated, an iron band being placed around her so that she should not fall out during her immersion. Usually the chair was fastened to a long wooden beam fixed as a seesaw on the edge of a pond or river. ”

“ In the widely open cup of the armchair was I-330. I, on the floor, embracing her limbs, my head on her lap. We were silent. Everything was silent. Only the pulse was audible. Like a crystal I was dissolving in her, in I-330. I felt most distinctly how the polished facets which limited me in space were slowly thawing, melting away. I was dissolving in her lap, in her, and I became at once smaller and larger, and larger, unembraceable. For she was not she but the whole universe. For a second I and that armchair near the bed, transfixed with joy, we were one. ”

“ She takes them into her life when she settles them in the comfortably disposed armchairs of the room she lives in. They may drop out of it again when the door closes behind them, but while they are there all equally share the warmth. ”

“ The old Squire died as a gentleman should, of apoplexy, in his armchair, with a decanter at his elbow. ”

“ Other inspired men are carried in armchairs, of which the seat, back, arms, and foot-rest are set with nails or composed of rows of parallel sword-blades, that cut into the flesh of the wretches seated on them: others are stretched at full length on beds of nails. For hours these bleeding votaries are carried about the city. Again, [pg 118] it is not uncommon to see in the procession a medium or man-god with a thick needle thrust through his tongue. ”

“ The flower-table can be bought at Wallace’s, as can the smaller tables and chairs. A sofa and corner cabinet, can be had of Smee, while a ‘grandfather’ chair is to be had at Hewetson’s, and Bartholomew & Fletcher’s ‘Seabright’ armchair must never be forgotten. These are by far the most comfortable chairs in the whole furniture world. If we cannot rise to the oak panelling, a charming parlour may be made from plain ‘goehring,’ painted some soft colour,{143} either sea-green, electric turquoise or real ivory, and above the panelling should be a paper in the same shade as the paint ”

“ When a man tells me that a horse is an armchair, I always tell him to put the brute into his bedroom. ”

“ I said, ‘Can you, at your time of life, be so headstrong, my friend, as to persist that an arm-chair is a thing to put upon a shelf and look at? That it is an object to contemplate, to survey from a distance, to consider from a point of sight? ”

“ You immediately see yourself as a great, fat, loose body dropping into an arm-chair. You see a luscious smile spread over your imagined face as the kindly solicitous one unlaces your boots—you feel mushy all over. ”

“ A passing thought of asking her young friend if she could spare one of the easy-chairs and take a plain one for her feet was abandoned in sudden indignation at this heartless piece of impudence, and, being unable to accommodate herself to the hard iron bars and high seats of the straight chairs without actual pain, and seeing no one near to fetch her a less penitential seat, the invalid was obliged to beat a retreat with as little loss of dignity as possible, resting once more under the olive on her way, and then very slowly climbing down the marble steps. ”

“ Beyond this, if the lady chose, she might insist upon a leather girdle being worn by the man before her, so as to afford safe hold for her other hand; or, dispensing with the girdle, she might, in extreme danger, draw her own arm around the person of the man; but this resource our grandmothers, no doubt, reserved for cases very extreme indeed.
No arm-chair ever invented could be more comfortable, or feel more safe, than the actual seat of the pillion. ”

“ During our experiments, while we four persons are seated around a table asking for a communication which does not arrive, an arm-chair, placed about twenty-four inches from the medium's foot (upon which I have placed my foot to make sure that she cannot use hers) ,—an arm-chair, I say, begins to move, and comes sliding up to us. I push it back; it returns. It is a stuffed affair (pouf) , very heavy, but easily capable of gliding over the floor. ”

“ I've bedewed it with tears and embalmed it with sighs
'Tis bound by a thousand bands to my heart;
Not a tie will break, not a link will start.
Would ye learn the spell?—a mother sat there:
And a sacred thing is that old arm-chair. ”

“ One wee child with a big head—bigger than I had ever been accredited with—was sitting in an invalid's chair with her head resting in an iron prop, because it was too heavy for one body to support in those hard times, and seated around in ordinary chairs were epileptic, paralytic, cross-grained idiots, etc., so far advanced toward health and sanity by careful training as to play a game. ”

“ My Protean easy-chair is a chair so all over bejointed, behinged, and bepadded, everyway so elastic, springy, and docile to the airiest touch, that in some one of its endlessly-changeable accommodations of back, seat, footboard, and arms, the most restless body, the body most racked, nay, I had almost added the most tormented conscience must, somehow and somewhere, find rest. Believing that I owed it to suffering humanity to make known such a chair to the utmost, I scraped together my little means and off to the World's Fair with it. ”

“ There is one kind of arm-chair for which I entertain a very resentful feeling, it assumes the title of an easy-chair to induce you to believe it one of that amiable fraternity, whereas it only claims kindred on account of its shape, and is in reality the complete antipodes of ease—I mean the horse-hair arm-chair. ”

“ I advanced another step, and my groping sight detected a large arm-chair posted before the easel.
Hanging over the arm of the chair, where the moonlight could not reach, I saw another faint, pale spot. It was where a hand would rest. Was it a hand?
Beckoned forward by this doubt, I moved on and saw, flung back in the arm-chair, a shadowy figure. A man? Yes; dim form and deathly face, — a man!
The air of the room was close and sickly. 1 choked for breath. Life needs a double portion at such moments. ”

“ When we attempt to sit upon the early scarlet runner, hand-embroidered rocking-chair cushion presented to us by our maiden aunt and slide out upon the floor upon our spinal vertebrae, we feel inclined to kneel in our own blood with a dagger between our teeth and swear by heaven never to sit down again. ”

“ Nothing but shafts are needed, and a common rocking-chair, with a foot-board nailed across216 the front rocker, on which to rest the feet. The chair is then slipped along back to the axle of the wheels, so that the shafts, when raised, are under the seat, and lift it up. In this way an invalid can be rolled through yards and gardens with very little effort, and with great comfort and relief to the imprisoned sufferer, who perhaps can ride in no other way. ”

“ But get solid, honestly-made, simple furniture of oak or similar wood, if funds permit. Arm-chairs are not often desirable. They take up much room, are heavy to move, and are not easy to get in and out of at a table. ”

“ The chair-back should project farthest forward at that point which corresponds to the small of the back. Instead of this, there is generally at that point a hollow. This error is the cause of much pain and weakness in the lower part of the spine.
Fig. 12 shows an unphysiological chair. It is a fashionable parlor-chair. Fig. 13 is a physiological chair. Two hours in this will fatigue less than half an hour in that.
Pg 42
Walking.
Americans are bad walkers. It is rare to find an exception, even in our army. Among Europeans, and the aborigines of our own continent, a noble mien is not uncommon. ”

“ And the arm-chair band (of which I am one) ,
Elderly scribblers, who can't even drill,
And are only good at driving a quill—
Humbled and shamed to my inmost core
I wished I could drop clean through the floor. ”

“ There was the getting up from, and the getting out of, her low arm-chair, always a difficult, tedious process; and there was the further time required for reaching up the chimney to get a bit of soot; and for fetching the heavy footstool clear across the big room to stand upon, in order to see in the mirror. Yet all this must be done ere she could go out. ”

“ To those who have been standing much it is particularly restful. This may be easily accomplished lying down, though it must not be forgotten that the tendency to place the feet on a neighboring chair, or over the arm of the chair, so often seen in young folks, is in response to a physiological stimulus that brings relief to the heart by encouraging by means of gravity the return circulation in the veins from dependent portions of the body distant from the heart. ”

“ I believe I should have liked a hard chair to sit in of my own free will, if one of our old fools—Palmer—had not always been gabbling about the horrid luxury of some boys who had arm-chairs in their studies. ”

“ Inanimate things turn into living creatures, the chair we sit on becomes a horse, the arm-chair is turned into a wild beast; and we ride a-hunting through endless drawing-rooms which are full of trees and undergrowth, till the trees are suddenly people and are all dancing and laughing at us, because we have come to the ball in attire so exceedingly scanty that we wonder how the servants could have let us in. ”