espair. We call attention to the fact that it gains greatly in width
from the perspective shown in the tapestry, one of the rare, old,
painted kind, which depicts distance, wide vistas and a scene flooded
with light. (An architectural picture can often be used with equally
good results.) To increase size of this hall, the woodwork, walls and
carpets were kept the same shade of pale-grey. The landscape paper in
our Colonial houses of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,
often large in design, pushed back the walls to the same amazing
degree.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Louis XIV, XV, and XVI.]

CHAPTER XIV

PERIODS IN FURNITURE

Periods in furniture are amazingly interesting if one plunges into the
story, not with tense nerves, but gaily, for mere amusement, and then
floats gently, in a drifting mood. One gathers in this way many
sparkling historical anecdotes, and much substantial data really not
so cumbersome as some imagine!

To know anything at all about a subject one must begin at the
beginning, and to make the long run seems a mere spin in an auto, let
us at once remind you that the whole fascinating tale lies between the
covers of one delightful book, the "Illustrated History of Furniture,"
by Frederick Litchfield, published by Truslove & Hanson, London, and
by John Lane, New York. There are other books--many of them--but first
exhaust Litchfield and apply what he tells you as you wander through
public and private collections of furniture.

If you care for furniture at all, this book, which tells all that is
known of its history, will prove highly instructive.

One cannot speak of the gradual development of furniture and
furnishing; it is more a case of _waves of types_, and the story
begins on the crest of a wave in Assyria, about 3000 years before
Christ! Yes, seriously, interior decoration was an art back in that
period and can be traced without any lost links in the chain of
evidence.

From Assyria we turn to Egypt and learn from the frescoes and
bas-reliefs on walls of ruined tombs, that about that same time, 3000
B.C., rooms on the banks of the Nile were decorated more or less as
they are to-day. The cultured classes had beautiful ceilings, gilded
furniture, cushions and mattresses of dyed linen and wools, stuffed
with downy feathers taken from water fowl, curtains that were
suspended between columns, and, what is still more interesting to the
lover of furniture, we find that the