stic to each of us, and I think we
should try to learn just what colors are most sympathetic to our own
individual emotions, and then make the best of them.

If you are inclined to a hasty temper, for instance, you should not live
in a room in which the prevailing note is red. On the other hand, a
timid, delicate nature could often gain courage and poise by living in
surroundings of rich red tones, the tones of the old Italian damasks in
which the primitive colors of the Middle Ages have been handed down to
us. No half shades, no blending of tender tones are needed in an age of
iron nerves. People worked hard, and they got downright blues and reds
and greens--primitive colors, all. Nowadays, we must consider the effect
of color on our nerves, our eyes, our moods, everything.

Love of color is an emotional matter, just as much as love of music. The
strongest, the most intense, feeling I have about decoration is my love
of color. I have felt as intimate a satisfaction at St. Mark's at
twilight as I ever felt at any opera, though I love music.

Color! The very word would suggest warm and agreeable arrangement of
tones, a pleasing and encouraging atmosphere which is full of life. We
say that one woman is "so full of color," when she is alert and happy
and vividly alive. We say another woman is "colorless," because she is
bleak and chilling and unfriendly. We demand that certain music shall be
full of color, and we always seek color in the pages of our favorite
books. One poet has color and to spare, another is cynical and hard
and--gray. We think and criticize from the standpoint of an appreciation
of color, although often we have not that appreciation.

There is all the difference in the world between the person who
appreciates color and the person who "likes colors." The child, playing
with his broken toys and bits of gay china and glass, the American
Indian with his gorgeous blankets and baskets and beads--all these
primitive minds enjoy the combination of vivid tones, but they have no
more feeling for color than a blind man. The appreciation of color is a
subtle and intellectual quality.

Sparrow, the Englishman who has written so many books on
housefurnishing, says: "Colors are like musical notes and chords, while
color is a pleasing result of their artistic use in a combined way. So
colors are means to an end, while color is the end itself. The first are
tools, while the other is a distinctive harmony in art compo