The Craze of Christina — page 21: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Craze of Christina. 17 ingly, at the end of his life he had wished to atone for this long neglect, hence the clause in his will which had desired his heir to restore the interior of the house—a task which possibly an inborn indolence as much as anything else had deterred him from carrying ont during his own lifetime. The task of restoring and beautifying the house, which with all its faults was a comforta- ble and roomy one, and presented great capa- bilities to an artistic mind, would to a good many persons have been a congenial one. But Mark Clifford was not one of these persons. The whole subject of high art decoration was an unknown country to him. He had no views with regard to the dado versus the frieze, no ideas upon wall papers, no inspirations with re- spect to styles and periods. His only idea was to take somebody else’s advice. Whose advice could he take? Not Docker’s, surely! his whole inner man rebelled, his very gorge rose at the mere thought of appealing to Docker ior advice. Yetif not Docker, who then? Docker was here on the spot, ever present, ever ready; permeating the very atmosphere as it were, with his bland and offensive sugges- tions and his no less offensive limitations and delineations of duty. Clifford was well aware GComichooksnco