porating theaters and Roman baths, so many
women are building club houses, so many others are building palatial
houses that are known as girls' schools, perhaps the swimming-pool will
soon be a part of all large houses. This pool occupies the greater part
of the basement floor of the Club house, the rest of the floor being
given over to little rooms where one may have a shampoo or massage or a
dancing lesson or what not before or after one's swim. The pool is
twenty-two by sixty feet, sunken below the level of the marble floor.
The depth is graded from four feet to deep water, so that good and bad
swimmers may enjoy it. The marble margin of floor surrounding the pool
is bordered with marble benches, placed between the white columns. The
walls of the great room are paneled with mirrors, so that there are
endless reflections of columned corridors and pools and shimmering
lights. The ceiling is covered with a light trellis hung with vines,
from which hang great greenish-white bunches of grapes holding electric
lights. One gets the impression of myriads of white columns, and of
lights and shadows infinitely far-reaching. Surely the old Romans knew
no pleasanter place than this city-enclosed pool.

XVI

THE SMALL APARTMENT

This is the age of the apartment. Not only in the great cities, but in
the smaller centers of civilization the apartment has come to stay.
Modern women demand simplified living, and the apartment reduces the
mechanical business of living to its lowest terms. A decade ago the
apartment was considered a sorry makeshift in America, though it has
been successful abroad for more years than you would believe. We
Americans have been accustomed to so much space about us that it seemed
a curtailment of family dignity to give up our gardens, our piazzas and
halls, our cellars and attics, our front and rear entrances. Now we are
wiser. We have just so much time, so much money and so much strength,
and it behooves us to make the best of it. Why should we give our time
and strength and enthusiasm to drudgery, when our housework were better
and more economically done by machinery and co-operation? Why should we
stultify our minds with doing the same things thousands of times over,
when we might help ourselves and our friends to happiness by intelligent
occupations and amusements? The apartment is the solution of the living
problems of the city, and it has been a direct influence on the houses
of the towns, s