Thanks for the vision of summer placidity in the “Sitting Pretty” photo from 1912 (“Readers’ Album,” July/August). This glimpse at back-yard contentment, featuring a double-benched device known as the Meisner Rocker Swing, afforded me some spiritual succor through this summer’s contemporary swelter.

I was mildly surprised, though, that the wooden swing was described as “a beautiful outdoor and indoor piece of furniture.” So massive an article presupposes an enormous parlor to contain it, and the head of the household would have been thought eccentric to have the thing inside.

Nevertheless, the real beauty of the scene is that the family members are poised to look at and converse with one another. Nowadays, the television set draws the household’s undivided attention.