nd it
is rather difficult to make it seem appropriate for the average American
house, so it is usually used only for important houses and buildings.
Some of the Tudor manor houses can be copied with delightful effect. The
styles of Henri II and Louis XIII can both be used in libraries and
dining-rooms with most effective and dignified results.

The best period of the style of Louis XV is very beautiful and is
delightfully suited to ball-rooms, small reception-rooms, boudoirs, and
some bedrooms. In regard to these last, one must use discretion, for one
would not expect one's aged grandmother to take real comfort in one. Nor
does this style appeal to one for use in a library, as its gayety and
curves would not harmonize with the necessarily straight lines of the
bookcases and rows of books. Any one of the other styles may be chosen
for a library.

The English developed the dining-room in our modern sense of the word,
while the French used small ante-chambers, or rooms that were used for
other purposes between meals, and I suppose this is partly the reason we
so often turn to an English ideal for one. There are many beautiful
dining-rooms done in the styles of Louis XV and XVI, but they seem more
like gala rooms and are usually distinctly formal in treatment. Georgian
furniture, or as we so often say, Colonial, is especially well suited to
our American life, as one can have a very simple room, or one carried
out in the most delightful detail. In either case the true feeling must
be kept and no startling anachronisms should be allowed; radiators, for
instance, should be hidden in window-seats. This same style may be used
for any room in the house, and there are beautiful reproductions of
Chippendale, Adam, Hepplewhite, and Sheraton furniture that are
appropriate for any need.

In choosing new "old" furniture, do not buy any that has a bright and
hideous finish. The great cabinet-makers and their followers used wax,
or oil, and rubbed, rubbed, rubbed. This dull finish is imitated, but
not equaled, by all good furniture makers, and the bright finish simply
proclaims the cheap department store.

In parts of the country Georgian furniture has been used and served as a
standard from the first, and it is a happy thing for the beauty of our
homes that once more it has come into its own. It is the high grade of
reproduction which has made it possible.

The mahogany used by Chippendale, and in fact by all the eighteenth
centur