"So few people have ancestors of their own that they will be very glad to have ancestral portraits chosen for them out of the collections of the company or the state.The agents of the one,or the officers of the other,will study the existing type of family face,and will select ancestors and ancestresses whose modelling,coloring,and expression agree with it,and will keep in view the race and nationality of the family whose ancestral portraits are to be supplied,so that there shall be no chance of the grossly improbable effect which ancestral portraits now have in many cases.Yes,I see no flaw in the scheme,"my friend concluded,"and no difficulty that can't be easily overcome.We must alienate our household furniture,and make it so sensitively and exclusively the property of some impersonal agency--company or community,I don't care which--that any care of it shall be a sort of crime;any sense of responsibility for its preservation a species of incivism punishable by fine or imprisonment.This,and nothing short of it,will be the salvation of the eternal-womanly."