ate-leg table would be charming for books
and things.

The wing chair and willow chairs, and the hour-glass Chinese chairs,
will go beautifully with mahogany things or with oak things. If most of
your furniture is to be oak, be sure and select well-made pieces stained
a soft brown and waxed. Oak furniture is delightful when it isn't too
heavy. A large gate-leg table of dark brown oak is one of the most
beautiful tables in the world. With it you would need a bench of oak,
with cane or rush seat; a small octagonal, or butterfly oak table for
your couch end, and one or two Windsor chairs. Oak demands simple,
wholesome surroundings, just as mahogany permits a certain feminine
elegance. Oak furniture invites printed linens and books and brass and
copper and pewter and gay china. While mahogany may be successfully used
with such things, it may also be used with brocade and fragile china and
carved chairs.

Use chintzes in your apartment, if you wish, but do not risk the light
ones in living-rooms. A chintz or printed linen of some good design on a
ground of mauve, blue, gray or black will decorate your apartment
adequately, if you make straight side curtains of it, and cover one
chair and possibly a stool with it. Don't carry it too far. If your
rooms are small, have your side curtains of coarse linen or raw silk in
dull blue, orange, brown, or whatever color you choose as the key color
of your room, and then select a dark chintz with your chosen color
dominant in its design, and cover your one big chair with that.

The apartment hall is most difficult, usually long and narrow and
uninteresting. Don't try to have furniture in a hall of this kind. A
small table near the front door, a good tile for umbrellas, etc., a good
mirror--that is all. Perhaps a place for coats and hats, but some halls
are too narrow for a card table.

The apartment with a dining-room entirely separated from the living-room
is very unusual, therefore I am hoping that you will apply all that I
have said about the treatment of your living-room to your dining-room as
well. People who live in apartments are very foolish if they cut off a
room so little used as a dining-room and furnish it as if it belonged to
a huge house. Why not make it a dining-and book-room, using the big
table for reading, between meals, and having your bookshelves so built
that they will be in harmony with your china shelves? Keep all your
glass and silver and china in the kitchen,