And if a door-plate, why not a curtain-rod? A curtain-rod is a
necessity to the incoming tenant; a door-plate is merely a luxury for
the grubby-fingered to help them to keep the paint clean. One might
be expected to bring one's own door-plate with one, according to the
size of one's hand.


For the whole idea of a fixture or fitting can only be that it is
something about which there can be no individual taste. We furnish a
house according to our own private fancy; the "fixtures" are the
furnishings in regard to which we are prepared to accept the general
fancy. The other man's curtain-rod, though easily detachable and able
to fit a hundred other windows, is a fixture; his carpet-as-planned
(to use the delightful language of the house-agent), though securely
nailed down and the wrong size for any other room but this, is not a
fixture. Upon some such reasoning the first authorized schedule of
fixtures and fittings must have been made out.


It seems a pity that it has not been extended. There are other things
than curtain-rods and electric-light bulbs which might be left behind
in the old house and picked up again in the new. The silver
cigarette-box, which we have all had as a birthday or wedding present,
might safely be handed over to the incoming tenant, in the certainty
that another just like it will be waiting for us in our next house.
True, it will have different initials on it, but that will only make
it the more interesting, our own having become fatiguing to us by this
time. Possibly this sort of thing has already been done in an
unofficial way among neighbors. By mutual agreement they leave their
aspidistras and their "Maiden's Prayer" behind them. It saves