no other
way, perhaps.

I do not like the very large bedrooms, dear to the plans of the American
architect. I much prefer the space divided. I remember once arriving at
the Ritz Hotel in London and being given temporarily a very grand royal
suite, overlooking the park, until the smaller quarters I had reserved
should be ready for me. How delighted I was at first with all the huge
vastness of my bedroom! My appreciation waned, however, after a
despairing morning toilet spent in taking many steps back and forth from
dressing-table to bathroom, and from bathroom to hang-closets, and I was
glad indeed, when, at the end of several hours, I was comfortably housed
in my smaller and humbler quarters.

I think the ideal bedroom should be planned so that a small ante-chamber
should separate it from the large outside corridor. The ideal
arrangement is an ante-chamber opening on the boudoir, or sitting-room,
then the bedroom, with its dressing-room and bath in back. This outer
chamber insures quiet and privacy, no matter how small it may be. It may
serve as a clothes-closet, by filling the wall with cupboards, and
concealing them with mirrored doors. The ante-chamber need not be a
luxury, if you plan your house carefully. It is simply a little well of
silence and privacy between you and the hall outside.

[Illustration: MISS CROCKER'S LOUIS XVI. BED]

To go on with my ideal bedroom: the walls, I think, should be simply
paneled in wood, painted gray or cream or white, but if wood cannot be
afforded a plastered wall, painted or distempered in some soft tone, is
the best solution. You will find plain walls and gay chintz hangings
very much more satisfying than walls covered with flowered papers and
plain hangings, for the simple reason that a design repeated hundreds of
times on a wall surface becomes very, very tiresome, but the same design
in a fabric is softened and broken by the folds of the material, and you
will never get the annoying sense of being impelled to count the
figures.

One of the bedrooms illustrated in this book shows an Elizabethan paper
that does not belong to the "busy" class, for while the design is
decorative in the extreme you are not aware of an emphatic repeat. This
is really an old chintz design, and is very charming in blues and greens
and grays on a cream ground. I have seen bedrooms papered with huge
scrolls and sea shells, many times enlarged, that suggest the noisy and
methodical thumping of a dr