The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1890-06-29
WHEN T0LEAvE THE CITY.
-
All Well Regulated Fashionables
Bolt Their Doors Before
July 18th.
How Ono Woman Got q Summer
Change Without Leav-
ing Home.
Philosophy of a Complete Set of New I'M
pressions-A Summer Widower's
Second Honeymoon.
Especial Correspondence of TIE INDEPENDENT

Especial Correspondence of The INDEPENDENT
-.NEw YORK, June 24.-This is the seas on
when the, city house greets you with pursed-
up lips and hands behind its back as II to
say. What's your business here? Don't you
know that every well-regulated person
leaves town before the Fourth of July! Its
windows are boarded and its doors bolted
and barred. If, perchance, any life stlrs
behind its masque of desolation, it walks
with bated breath in dim rooms, amid
white-clothed furniture and bookcases
swathed in sheets, like ghost prowling at
night in graveyard.
Onebouse in a tree-shaded street in Brook
lvn does not share this aspect of desolation.
The turf in its front yard is green and not
dust-covered. There are wide. cool-looking
awnings above it's windows and honey
suckle vine which chambers up by the
front steps is in full blossom. The woman
of this establishment is one whose name
most of you, probably, would recognize.
Though her books have fame that is grow
ing. she has not rid herself of a certain old
fashioned view of wifely obligations. why
should l." she said to bird of passage yes
terday at quaint little lunch that was
farewell banquet in view of the BIRDS fit
L
ter off half and 'recuperate, while he
lives at stuffy boarding house and is de-
prived of the home comforts that make the
heat of the CITY endurable? What we all
need in the summer is change. have taken
the money that two months in the Cats.
kills or at the seashore would cost me and
contrived an entire change for myself, for
my husband and for our two grown-up sons
right here. It's fair play all round
Fair play is something so admirable and,
in the matter of summer vacations, so rare,
that by your leave am going to describe
city or country, her change" 1T has
transformed the house SO completely that"
said its mistress, Il quite forget we are in
town and fancy ourselves, when the moon
comes up and the scent is strong from the
honeysuckles, away off in restful spot in
second honeymoon. We've not spent a
summer together in two years. The boys
laugh at us because we actually hold
hands,
The change began with the hall. should
like to see what my friend, the literary
woman, with her ideas about "a complete
alteration of surroundings" would do with
the conventional city hall, but as it happens
now please don't tell me it always does
happen SO in utopian sketches, because this
tale is true-it so happens that her house is
in a new and rather unconventional block
and, moreover, is on corner. Thus it
comes about that her hall is of the nature
of small reception room with stairway on
the left, fireplace opposite the entrance and
doors on the right to the parlors. The fin
ish is oak and the tones of the wall paper
pale olive and cream. From this hall she
has removed the carpet-it was a rich deep
red, and it is part of her theory that red
is to be banished in June that it may come
back with double cheer in November-and
had dark oak stain applied to the floor:
during which the above mentioned husband
and sons went on weeks fishing excur-
sion. just in front of the stairs she has
placed a rug of soft, cool-looking colors,
of the bamboo and bead curtains that
are sold in the Japanese stores, but
are made at home very easily by stringing
the bamboo and beads on fshlines
fastened to a pine strip. 70 get wholly
new impression she has taken out the hat
oak with iron hooks and a small oval mir
ror in the middle. The room thus gained
is given to reed-bottomed piazza chairs
ready when the sun is gone to be taken out
side. In the fireplace stands a big Jug
notified olive and brown, and filled when i
saw it with daisies. C becomes another
man," she says, ''the minute he enters this
other hail.
When -" passes into the parlors his
bitterness must be intensified. These are in
Inc iront anu rear, tne OacR parlOr beng
fitted as library: Here, too, the carpets
have come up and the heavy curtains down.
The woodwork is cherry. | think my friend
was tempted to enamel it-think of the
itching of ones fingers with enamel
at twenty-five cents pot,,but she
bbravely refrained. She has laid the
floors with that fine Japanese mating
which is SO firm and close of texture
and SO odd in design, with its scattered
hleroglyphs of brown eastern characters,
and withal SO cheap, costing only 20 cents
yard. The walls are papered a delicate
pink, and this. though reluctantly, she has
suffered to stay. and turned to the windows
tor further expression of her revolutionary
ideas. my Windows she says, "are the
eyes of my thouse, through which look at
the world and it looks on me.'' These eyes
she has newly lidded for the refreshmenf of
tonne in one of the summer designs of
scattered sprays on a cream ground Gre
tonne sounds cheap at 30 cents the yard,''
she answered doubtingly, but these cur
tains had to be lined with cream-colored
sateen (cream and gold are the colors for
fade) and the cost of making was SO much |
that, although they are SO very pretty T |
should take the Chinese silk hangings if
had 1t to do over again.
For sash curtains inside the draperies she |
has used cream-colored muslin, flecked
with large spots of pink and ecru. It comes. |
I think, fifty inches wide and costs 10 cents
yard.
But the furniture. "My parlor things,
this in half apologize explanation, needed |
re-upholsterlng, SO instead of putting them
into linen overafls. just sent them away.'
In their stead she has not put in a great
many articles. for nobody wants to see |
summer vacation house crowded. but has |
bought few pieces of wicker furniture. |
which costs less than rattan and can't be |
vi cl.
These she has left of their natural color
gem of the room is long wicker lounge
with two heads, over which, that it
may, still be cool and yet not too
hard to the feelings. has been thrown
one of those queer-looking Bagdad curtains
that everybody thinks SO artistic and that
cost So. These are woven by hand by the
native workmen in strips nine inches wide
Five solid color-stripes are then sewed to-
gether and the figured pattern put on in
loose-meshed stitchery. My friends cur
tam is brown, stitched with pink and
cream. and the lounge is heaped with six
puffy cretonne cushions. Here that happy
-" wonder if l mightn't call him
Richard. especially as it isn't his name.
stretches himself when his head aches and
hrs limbs grow tired. You don't have COM
pany IN the city IN summer and you can
stretch yourself, even in your parlor, on
something cool and clean and long, and |
forget care.
81 In the back parlor in window recess
stands student chair IN wicker in which.
as understand the sifnatiop .,R,.b,rd ,. |