s that shut it out.
Perhaps it is partly because it is inexpensive, God-given to all people,
that housewives frequently draw their curtains against it. If they had
to pay more for it than for carpets and hangings, you may be very sure
that a great many husbands and fathers would be overworking in order
that their families might buy a whole display of sunshine instead of
tapestries.

Do you know what is the most helpful thing you can have in your room,
the article without which you cannot live in it at all, no matter how
fine the rugs and bric-a-brac may be? _Air!_ Air is the one thing which
is almost instantly and absolutely indispensable to human life, for we
breathe it in not only through our noses but also all over our skin.
Every hundredth fraction of an inch of our bodies is feeding upon air,
and the purer that air and the cooler the better and more invigorating
food it provides for the skin surface as well as for the lungs. The
mind, for it is housed in the body and its tenant, must depend for its
vigour or tone upon the fresh air in school or college study. Even a
very good head cannot work well set upon an anaemic body which is
suffocating for want of good clean air. If you wish to do your best work
and keep well, the first thing to do is not to open your books but to
open your windows. After that the books and a reasonable number of hours
of continuous study. American audience halls, pullmans, ordinary coaches
and public buildings of all sorts, especially libraries, are notoriously
overheated and unventilated. It is the intelligent American girl and
woman who, beginning with the home, will correct this evil. The schools
are, on the whole, in the forefront of the fresh air movement,
especially the public schools. As every one knows, the public schools
are establishing open air rooms for their children who need them.
Although there is much to be said about what a room should contain to
make it attractive, it should never be forgotten that sunshine and
fresh air are more beautiful and more priceless than anything else which
it can hold.

The first object in furnishing a bare room is to make it
habitable,--that is useful. Take the kitchen, for example, and
usefulness is practically the sole object in fitting it up. And the
curious thing about it all is that it cannot help being beautiful in a
homely, motherly way, for it exemplifies one of the strongest elements
of all beauty and that is _service_. The kitchen ma