gement of windows and entrance door with the badly balanced houses
of the old type, and you will realize anew the value of balance and
proportion.

From the fore-court you enter the hall. Once within the hall, the, house
widens magically. Surely this cool black and white apartment cannot be
a part of restless New York! Have you ever come suddenly upon an old
Southern house, and thrilled at the classic purity of white columns in a
black-green forest? This entrance hall gives you the same thrill; the
elements of formality, of tranquillity, of coolness, are so evident. The
walls and ceiling are a deep, flat cream, and the floor is laid in large
black and white marble tiles. Exactly opposite you as you enter, there
is a wall fountain with a background of mirrors. The water spills over
from the fountain into ferns and flowers banked within a marble curb.
The two wall spaces on your right and left are broken by graceful niches
which hold old statues. An oval Chinese rug and the white and orange
flowers of the fountain furnish the necessary color. The windows
flanking the entrance doorway are hung with flat curtains of coarse
white linen, with inserts of old filet lace, and there are side curtains
of dead black silk with borderings of silver and gold threads.

In any house that I have anything to do with, there is some sort of desk
or table for writing in the hall. How often I have been in other
people's houses when it was necessary to send a message, or to record an
address, when the whole household began scurrying around trying to find
a pencil and paper! This, to my mind, is an outward and visible sign of
an inward--and fundamental!--lack of order.

[Illustration: THE FORECOURT AND ENTRANCE OF THE FIFTY-FIFTH STREET
HOUSE]

In this hall there is a charming desk particularly adapted to its
place. It is a standing desk which can be lowered or heightened at will,
so that one who wishes to scribble a line or so may use it without
sitting down. This desk is called a _bureau d'architect_. I found it in
Biarritz. It would be quite easy to have one made by a good
cabinet-maker, for the lines and method of construction are simple. My
hall desk is so placed that it is lighted by the window by day and the
wall lights by night, but it might be lighted by two tall candlesticks
if a wall light were not available. There is a shallow drawer which
contains surplus writing materials, but the only things permitted on the
writing surface o