for forgetting orders or messages. This seems to
me absolutely necessary in our modern domestic routine: it is part of
the business principle we borrow from the efficient office routine of
our men folk. The dining-room and the bathrooms are the only places
where the writing-table, in one form or another, isn't required.

I like the long flat tables or small desks much better than the huge
roll-top affairs or the heavy desks built after the fashion of the old
_armoire_. If the room is large enough, a secretary after an Eighteenth
Century model will be a beautiful and distinguished piece of furniture.
I have such a secretary in my own sitting-room, a chest of drawers
surmounted by a cabinet of shelves with glass doors, but I do not use it
as a desk. I use the shelves for my old china and porcelains, and the
drawers for pamphlets and the thousand and one things that are too
flimsily bound for bookshelves. Of course, if one has a large
correspondence and uses one's home as an office, it is better to have a
large desk with a top which closes. I prefer tables, and I have them
made big enough to hold all my papers, big enough to spread out on.

There are dozens of enchanting small desks that are exactly right for
guest-rooms, the extremely feminine desks that come from old France. One
of the most fascinating ones is copied from a _bureau de toilette_ that
belonged to Marie Antoinette. In those days the writing of letters and
the making of a toilet went together. This old desk has a drawer filled
with compartments for toilet things, powders and perfumes and patches,
and above this vanity-drawer there is the usual shelf for writing, and
compartments for paper and letters. The desk itself suggests brocade
flounces and powdered hair, so exquisitely is it constructed of
tulipwood and inlaid with other woods of many colors.

Then there are the small desks made by modern furniture-makers, just
large enough to hold a blotting-pad, a paper rack, and a pair of
candlesticks. There is always a shallow drawer for writing materials.
Such a desk may be decorated to match the chintzes of any small bedroom.

If it isn't possible for you to have a desk in each guest-room, there
should be a little writing-room somewhere apart from the family
living-room. If you live in one of those old-fashioned houses
intersected by great halls with much wasted space on the upper floors,
you may make a little writing-room of one of the hall-ends, and screen