g different kinds of wood, the raised portions,
being more exposed, may be of hard varieties, the sunken portions of
softer materials, even lath and plaster, which may be frescoed,
covered with some rich colored plain paper, or hung with violet
velvet, according to your taste and means. The old-fashioned
chair-rail seems to me a sensible institution It occupies the
debatable ground between use and beauty, and may therefore be somewhat
enriched. The plastering beneath it may be given a different tint from
that above, and when the walls are high its effect is good. It is
really carrying out the idea of panelling, to which there is hardly a
limit in the way of variety.

Some of your questions have led me a little way from the building
toward the furnishing, but I've tried to dispose of them
categorically, and am now ready for another lot.

LETTER XXX.

From Miss Jane.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND ARCHITECTURE, POTATOES AND POSTSCRIPTS.

MR. ARCHITECT: Dear Sir,--After so long an indirect acquaintance
through our mutual friends, it is quite time we were formally
introduced. Allow me to present myself: Sister Jane, spinster; native
of New England, born to idleness, bred to school-teaching; age not
reported, temperament hopeful, abilities average; possessor of a
moderate competence, partly acquired, mainly inherited; greatly
overestimated by a friendly few, somewhat abused as peculiar (in
American idiom "funny") by strangers; especially interested in the
building of homes, and quite willing to help Mr. Fred carry out his
ambitions in that direction by any suggestions I am able to make.

[Illustration: "SISTER JANE, SPINSTER."]

I've taught school, and I've taught music; sold goods in a store and
worked in a factory; run a sewing-machine, travelled with
subscription-books, and hired out to do house-work; and I solemnly
aver that the only time I was conscious of genuine enthusiasm for my
work, or felt that I was doing myself or others any actual good, was
while keeping house. In school I was required to teach things I knew
little and cared less about, and to punish the dear children for doing
precisely what I would have done myself had I been in their places,
losing all the while in amiability more than was gained in mental
discipline. My experience in a factory was limited to three months.
From working with the machines and as they worked, hardly using more
intelligent volition than they, I began to fancy myself becomin