Note 2 — Chapter XII · GENERAL CONCLUSIONS
Reading edition
Some attempt has already been made to suggest the general domestic and architectural conveniences of the next century, but the subject of furniture has not been referred to in detail. Allowing for the fact that animal fabrics, as wool, leather, etc., will be absent, there is no particular reason why chairs, carpets and curtains should be very different from what they are now. No doubt light metallic alloys will often be used in the framework of chairs and tables instead of wood, because the tendency of civilisation is to make things lighter and less cumbersome whenever this is possible. At one time it might have been thought that upholstery, carpets and curtains would have to be dispensed with. But to a thoughtful observer there must always have been a difficulty here. A wooden chair, and even a rattan one, however cunningly shaped, is so extremely discomfortable to sit in without cushions, that it was easier to imagine that invention would correct the unhealthiness of cushions and stuffing, than that an advanced age would consent to dispense with these luxuries. The manner in which the former solution of the difficulty would be attained was actually foreseen by the present writer before the introduction of vacuum cleaning was accomplished, and several passages in an earlier chapter had to be rewritten when what had been somewhat fancifully described as a convenience of the future suddenly became an existing factor of the present: and in one or two places innovations have similarly called for changes in the text—a circumstance which, it is to be hoped, will give pause to critics disposed to condemn certain suggestions in this book as chimerical.2 Obviously, now that we can thoroughly cleanse and free from every particle of dust by a simple mechanical process any fabric or mass of fabrics, there is no longer any reason to expect that our descendants will, on hygienic grounds, find it necessary to dispense with comforts so essential to restful leisure as easy-chairs, soft carpets and wall hangings.