Year: 1875

4


WHICH rooms of the house it shall b,


where the direct sunshine falls is Ger


tainly an important question, as ever,
physician will assure you. Sunshine il


drawing-room is, of course, very pleas


ant when it can be had it lights up tn,


beauty of the room, it brings out tn,
| colors of the pictures, it Eliminates th.


marble, it throws all the thousand and


one charms of the place into relief, bu


it is not indispensable. for the drawing


room is usually occupied less during


sunshiny hours than any room in tht


house is. Sunshine in a library, too, i!


not matter OF the greatest consequence


welcome though it might be If it were
| possible attainment; yet in the library
the books should make their own sun


shine for you. But sunshine In the
daily sitting-room, in the dining room, il
the kitchen, and in as many sleeping
| rooms as may be, is absolutely vital


Think what it is to wake up in room
| into which no broad yellow beam
streams to give you good morning and
tell you whether the day is fair or foul
| TO clear away the cobwebs of sleep anG
afford you the good spirits which such
| benediction always doesl The sunshine
in your sleeping-room at any price
| Think, then, of the breakfast-room
where there is no sunlight, where the
table, as you come down to it to begin
the day, does not glitter with the cheer
| full ray, and which seems merely dis


NAL den for people to enter and eat and
hurry away from as if it were rail
road restaurant. Have sunshine in youI
breakfast-room, dear reader. Then
think of the sitting where more
than half the day you busy yourself,
| where the children find you, where pos
sibly your choicest intimate comes, and
where you are at your unrestrained ease
and say whether it would be a pleasant
and wholesome room or a dreary and
depressing one if the sun did not lie
there.


The pleasantest house in which we
ever were stood in such a Cornerinc
direction to the points of the compass
that the sun rose in one window of the
sitting and, you might say, set III
anotheri The breakfast-room, behind
the sitting-room, had the morning sun in
its eastern window, while projecting
bay-window there caught still little OF
the sun just before noon; in the sitting
room aforesaid the eastern window OF
course had the CHEEKY morning rays, the
corner of the house took off the extreme
noon sun, and an hour or two after noon
it was in at the front windows, and they
even had large segment of the radiance
and color of the sunset. Meanwhile the
parlor across the hall had all the after
noon sun too, and the full blaze of the
direct sunset, while there was even one
long, level beam left over for the cellar
What more could be desired?


Certainly there is nothing materlal-if
so heavenly thing can be called mate
rial-so conducive to health and happi-
ness, as largess of the positive sunshine
is; no mere pittancc of it creeping in be-
tween the curtains, but broad and gen
erous viyitying sweep of it. We do not
know anything about one of the medical
practices of sun-baths, SO called but we
do know that the house where plants
are etiolated for want of the clear, life
giving presence of the light of the world
is not house where human beings, and
especially the little, tender blossoms OF
humanity, for whom we all care more
than for ourselves, can ever thrive and
flourish. That housckeeper who fears
its blanching strength, who drops her
curtains lest the pattern of her carpet
uuiIS, dutA tlOSCC hSI lCSb liNl Nbl-
tains presently hang in streaks, values
the color of her carpet and curtains be-
yond the rose upon her check, or on her
babies cheeks, and will pay the price of
many carpets and curtains in doctors
and in druggists bills. Get carpets, gen.
tie readers, that will not fade, or that
will not vex you if they do; and if you
are going to use your curtains to shut out
~ b1oce,rp no init h
out curtains altogether.


For look abroad and outdoors. What
healthy thing N nature shuns the sun?
What growth but mushrooms and net
ties and darnels and the things that
spring rankly on shallow and neglected
graves exists without it? See the fields
brighten and brighten the longer its
light lies on them-see a cloud sweep
the sun come sailing after and bringing
out all the brilliance of the verdure, all
the rose and purple of the clover, as if it
Just leaped into being in the path of that
light, and consider, if the rest of the
world blooms and smiles and is so
healthy in it, whether it is altogether
wise to deprive yourselves of such a po-
tent principle of strength and. pleasure.
All no, the tabled bath that gave youth
to age, the elixir that bestowed immortal
youth, will never be more nearly simu-
lated than by the sunshine with which
wise nousekeepers and wise architects
food house.


But, apart from cheerful and bygienic
considerations, there is a question of
ornamentation in the matter, and that is
in the presence of plants and flowers
about your rooms. Not many of us can
afford Conservatives, but all of US, with
the suns aid, can compass the window
garden; and what picture on our walls is
apt to be half so beautiful as window
where the sun is sitting through the
snow and gold of tropical-leaved callas,
through the geranium blossoms like
scarlet fire, through blue lobelia and
yellow oxalis, and rose and carnation,
and the network of all their leaves?
What curtains of Utrecht velvet, what
bangings of Gobelin tapestry, will be
more charming than such a window
And what is there that can be bought
that will give such grace and beauty TO a
room as the vine that winds round pict-
ures and brackets, and lays its lovely
length along the cornice beneath the cell
ing? Let the sun alone for ornament
ing: it is his profession. He will festoon
an old stump with beauty, he will turn a
broken stone into a marvel of decoration.
Bring him into your house, and we do
not speak too strongly when we say that
he will make an Eden of it. For, other
things not working very viciously against
him, the house in which the sunshine has
its way is filled speedily with that inner
sunshine of the spirit too, without which,
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