ure and meaning of human intercourse will be clear in your
disposition of your best things, in your elimination of your worst ones.

When you have emptied the tables of _rubbish_ so that you can put
_things_ down on them at need, placed them in a light where you can
write on them in repose, or isolated real works of art in the middle of
them; when you have set your dropsical sofas where you want them for
talk, or warmth and reading; when you can see the fire from the bed in
your sleeping-room, and dress near your bath; if this sort of sense of
your rights is acknowledged in your rearrangement, your rooms will
always have meaning, in the end. If you like only the things in a chair
that have meaning, and grow to hate the rest you will, without any other
instruction, prefer--the next time you are buying--a good Louis XVI
_fauteuil_ to a stuffed velvet chair. You will never again be guilty of
the errors of meaningless magnificence.

To most of us in America who must perforce lead workaday lives, the
absence of beauty is a very distinct lack. I think, indeed, that the
present awakening has come to stay, and that before very long, we shall
have simple houses with fireplaces that draw, electric lights in the
proper places, comfortable and sensible furniture, and not a gilt-legged
spindle-shanked table or chair anywhere. This may be a decorator's
optimistic dream, but let us all hope that it may come true.

II

SUITABILITY, SIMPLICITY AND PROPORTION

When I am asked to decorate a new house, my first thought is
suitability. My next thought is proportion. Always I keep in mind the
importance of simplicity. First, I study the people who are to live in
this house, and their needs, as thoroughly as I studied my parts in the
days when I was an actress. For the time-being I really am the
chatelaine of the house. When I have thoroughly familiarized myself with
my "part," I let that go for the time, and consider the proportion of
the house and its rooms. It is much more important that the wall
openings, windows, doors, and fireplaces should be in the right place
and should balance one another than that there should be expensive and
extravagant hangings and carpets.

My first thought in laying out a room is the placing of the electric
light openings. How rarely does one find the lights in the right place
in our over-magnificent hotels and residences! One arrives from a
journey tired out and travel-stained, only to find ones