, quite in the manner of the Brothers Adam, but delightful
results may be obtained by using any simple modern cottage furniture
and applying fanciful decorations.

Be wary of hanging many pictures in your bedroom. I give this advice
cheerfully, because I know you will hang them anyway (I do) but I warn
you you will spoil your room if you aren't very stern with yourself.
Somehow the pictures we most love, small prints and photographs and
things, look spotty on our walls. We must group them to get a pleasant
effect. Keep the framed photographs on the writing table, the dressing
table, the mantel, etc., but do not hang them on your walls. If you have
small prints that you feel you must have, hang them flat on the wall,
well within the line of vision. They should be low enough to be
_examined_, because usually such pictures are not decorative in effect,
but exquisite in detail. The fewer pictures the better, and in the
guest-room fewer still!

I planned a guest-room for the top floor of a New York house that is
very successful. The room was built around a pair of appliques made from
two old Chinese sprays of metal flowers. I had small electric light
bulbs fitted among the flowers, mounted them on carved wood brackets on
each side of a good mantel mirror and worked out the rest of the room
from them. The walls were painted bluish green, the woodwork white. Just
below the molding at the top of the room there was a narrow border (four
inches wide) of a mosaic-like pattern in blue and green. The carpet rug
is of a blue-green tone. The hangings are of an alluring _Chinoiserie_
chintz, and there are several Chinese color prints framed and hanging in
the narrow panels between the front windows. The furniture is painted a
deep cream pointed with blue and green, and the bed covering is of a
pale turquoise taffeta.

Another guest room was done in gentian blue and white, with a little
buff and rose-color in small things. This room was planned for the
guests of the daughter of the house, so the furnishings were naively and
adorably feminine. The dressing-table was made of a long, low box, with
a glass top and a valance so crisp and flouncing that it suggested a
young lady in crinoline. The valance was of chintz in gentian blue and
white. The white mirror frame was decorated with little blue lines and
tendrils. Surely any girl would grow pretty with dressing before such an
enchanting affair! And simple--why, she could hinge the mirror