A bare table—or wall-makes Stanley Barrows very nervous. In nearly 79 years of living, he has collected 4,000 books, 45 framed paintings and engravings, 60 pieces of porcelain, and in various sinuous positions of sniffing and leaping, a dozen small bronze whippets and greyhounds. "It's a difference in only of size," Mr. Barrows said of his 19th-century pets, which appear to be chasing each other across the glass dining table.