Of first importance, of course, are light and air; these we must have,
and sun if possible. One good warm ray of sunshine is a more effective
destroyer of disease and "dumps" than all the drugs on the market;
while good ventilation is one of the most valuable as well as one of
the cheapest and most ignored assets of the home, particularly of the
bedroom, where our hereditary enemy, the microbe, loves especially to
linger. Given air and light, we have the best possible start toward
our rest room and upon its exposure and size depends largely what we
shall add unto it in the way of furnishings and decorations. Dark
walls and floors wrap one in gloom and have no place in any bedroom. A
warm, sunny exposure invites the use of contrastingly cool light blues,
grays, greens, and creams; while the glow of delicate pinks and yellows
helps to make a sunshine in the shadows of a north light. East and
west lights adapt themselves to the tasteful use of almost any color,
saving and excepting red, which cannot be mentioned in the same breath
with rest and has the red-rag-to-the-bull effect on nerves. If an
overstrong affection for it demands its use, it must be indulged in
sparingly and much scattered and tempered with white. Though a certain
sympathetic warmth should be expressed in the bedroom coloring, we want
rather to feel than to see it, and too much becomes a weariness.

CARPETS VERSUS RUGS

Beginning with the base, as becomes a good builder, and working upward,
floor coverings which cover without covering, if one may indulge in an
Irishism, are far preferable to those which extend from wall to wall.
Carpets undoubtedly have their uses: they make over well into rugs,
supply heat to the feet, particularly in summer, and to the disposition
during the semiannual house cleaning. They also cover a multitude of
moths. But they belong to the dark ages of unenlightened womanhood
whose chief end was to keep house, and have been jostled into the
background by bare floors or mattings, with rugs. Hardwood floors
certainly are nice and seem to wear an air of conscious pride of birth,
but their humbler self-made brethren of common pine, stained and
varnished or oiled, answer the purpose fully as well. It really
amounts to a case of rugs make the floor, for if they are pretty and
conveniently disposed about it, the floor itself receives very little
attention. Small rugs before bed, dresser, and chiffonier will suffice
in a