make a
home of this place, and then go ahead and _treat_ it as a home! If a
certain recess in the wall suggests bookshelves, don't grudge the few
dollars necessary to have the bookshelves built in! You can probably
have them built so that they can be removed, on that far day when this
apartment is no longer your home, and if you have a dreadful wall paper
don't hide behind the silly plea that the landlord will not change it.
Go without a new gown, if necessary, and pay for the paper yourself.

Few apartments have fireplaces, and if you are fortunate enough to find
one with a real fireplace and a simple mantel shelf you will be far on
the way toward making a home of your group of rooms. Of course your
apartment is heated by steam, or hot air, or something, but an open fire
of coal or wood will be very pleasant on chilly days, and more important
still your home will have a point of departure--the Hearth.

If the mantel shelf is surmounted by one of those dreadful monstrosities
made up of gingerbread woodwork and distressing bits of mirrors,
convince your landlord that it will not be injured in the removing, and
store it during your residence here. Have the space above the mantel
papered like the rest of the walls, and hang one good picture, or a good
mirror, or some such thing above your mantel shelf, and you will have
offered up your homage to the Spirit of the Hearth.

When you do begin to buy furniture, buy compactly, buy carefully.
Remember that you will not require the furniture your mother had in a
sixteen-room house. You will have no hall or piazza furnishings to buy,
for instance, and therefore you many put a little more into your
living-room things. The living-room is the nucleus of the modern
apartment. Sometimes it is studio, living-room and dining-room in one.
Sometimes living-room, library and guest-room, by the grace of a
comfortable sleeping-couch and a certain amount of drawer or closet
space. At any rate, it will be more surely a living-room than a similar
room in a large house, and therefore everything in it should count for
something. Do not admit an unnecessary rug, or chair, or picture, lest
you lose the spaciousness, the dignity of the room. An over-stuffed
chair will fill a room more obviously than a grand piano--if the piano
is properly, and the chair improperly placed.

In one of the illustrations of this chapter you will observe a small
sitting-room in which there are dozens of things, and yet