seem
necessities of use.

As I have said before, contrast on a broad scale can be secured by
choosing carpets of an entirely different tone from the wall, and this
is sometimes expedient. For instance, as contrast to a copper-coloured
wall, a softly toned green carpet is nearly always successful. This one
colour, green, is always safe and satisfactory in a floor-covering,
provided the walls are not too strong in tone, and provided that the
green in the carpet is not too green. Certain brownish greens possess
the quality of being in harmony with every other colour. They are the
most peaceable shades in the colour-world--the only ones without
positive antipathies. Green in all the paler tones can claim the title
of peace-maker among colours, since all the other tints will fight with
something else, but never with green of a corresponding or even of a
much greater strength. Of course this valuable quality, combined with a
natural restfulness of effect, makes it the safest of ordinary
floor-coverings.

In bedrooms with polished floors and light walls good colour-effects can
be secured without carpets, but if the floors are of pine and need
covering, no better general effect can be secured than that of plain or
mixed ingrain filling, using with it Oriental hearth and bedside rugs.

The entire second floor of a house can in that case be covered with
carpet in the accommodating tint of green mentioned, leaving the various
colour-connections to be made with differently tinted rugs. Good pine
floors well fitted and finished can be stained to harmonise with almost
any tint used in furniture or upon the wall.

I remember a sea-side chamber in a house where the mistress had great
natural decorative ability, and so much cultivation as to prevent its
running away with her, where the floor was stained a transparent olive,
like depths of sea-water, and here and there a floating sea-weed, or a
form of sea-life faintly outlined within the colour. In this room,
which seemed wide open to the sea and air, even when the windows were
closed, the walls were of a faint greenish blue, like what is called
_dead_ turquoise, and the relation between floor and walls was so
perfect that it remained with me to this day as a crowning instance of
satisfaction in colour.

It is perhaps more difficult to convey an idea of happy choice or
selection of floor-colour than of walls, because it is relative to
walls. It must relate to what has already bee