The Wichita daily eagle., 1894-02-15
ARRANGING A ROOM.
II Depends Upon the Housekeeper wheth-
er 1t Shall BE Artistic or Ugly.

''Oh, dear!" exclaimed one aristocrat-
ic woman to another of deep aesthetic
sensibility, sit makes me i'll to think OF
it. I've just seen such an ugly roomp'
well. l wonder at the fuss you
make" said No. .. you've just seen
| an ugly room. That is only equal to
saying you haven't been out of doors
all day."
''Of course, most peoples rooms are
ugly, but now those Blanks are people
of means, they've been abroad again
and again-wouldn't you think they'd
learn something? Well, they don't, not
a thing. Their drawing-room is long
and narrow. with no light except from
the north-that's bad room to
trying to manage, of course; but the
first thing they've done to make it
worse is to curtain off the bow-window
the alcove it makes-with heavy
satin curtains, so that all the light that
can get in the room struggles through
the opening between them in long,
grey, spectral, shaft that makes you
feel as if you were a ghost and lost
soul yourself.
why can't people learn that the
light has everything to do with the
looks of any room?
well, the things these people have
that might help them out is quantity
of beautiful books and some decent pic.
lures. Of course, the only place in the
room possible for a picture is in tho
bay-window alcove, and the best possi-
BILE thing to light up and warm up and
help out the gloomy corner behind
it would be the books. The deep
tones and touches of gilt in well-bound
books make the prettIest wall covering
in the world always. Now see with
what fendish ingenuity they get
things wrong; the alcove is filed with
books and the pictures are hung back
in the corner.
Surely the most ignorant-looking
thing in the whole range of house
decorative mistakes is hanging pictures
in bad light, or, as in this case, in NO
light at ALL
That is thing it is strange people
don't learn" said No. l. 'sThey say:
oh, it fills up that space nicely and
they hang the biggest ones low down
and the little ones pyramid shape
above it, so that the least is highest,
and may be the Mater Dolorosa' or q
ship in storm for anything you can
tell
Some body ought to print a tract set.
ting forth that for decoration people
who know anything on the subject use
draperies or tapestry or armor, or even,
if you like, japanese fans and dried
palms, but that they don't use pictures
in the same way. That if you have
taste you put up pictures only because
they are worth looking at themselves,
and then you realize that above every
thing else in the home they exist only
everything else yield to that. But
your Blanks-they had their pictures
stuck back in the dark. What else?'
Another thing-the most idiotic i'm.
agina ble-some Of their beautiful books
they had to put in the corner, and they
carefully did what they could to keep
them from helping that hole out: they
had hung a lot of nondescript varied
satin curtains in front of them.
''There is some excuse for shutting
books up in glass cases, for it may save
the books, but for breaking up wall
covered with books with curtains that
do nothipg-neithe keep out light,
nor dust nor air-there is none. It
simply makes everything look ragged
and hodge -pody. But they think those
curtains look rich; they add that much
more to the sum total that room repre-
sents!
Didn't 1 always tell you that the
more money many people have the
worse they make their places look ~
n y. Recorder.