hey
are appropriate with any style of decoration and can always be kept
fresh and dainty. But elaborate lace curtains which have seen better
days elsewhere are most emphatically _not_ for bedrooms, and should
find another asylum. A pretty window drapery is the thin white curtain
with a colored figured inner curtain. The use of figured draperies
demands a good sense of proportion and of the eternal fitness of
things, else it easily degenerates into abuse.

[Illustration: The bedroom.]

BEDROOM FURNISHING

The bedroom furniture must be chosen rather with a view to fitness than
to fashion. "Sets" are no more. How stereotyped and assertive they
were, and undecorative! Bed, dresser, and washstand, forcibly
recalling to one the big bear, middle-sized bear, and little bear of
nursery lore, were clumsy and heavy and bad, even in hardwood; but when
they were simply stained imitations of the real thing, and ornate with
wooden knobs, machine carving, and ungraceful lines, they were truly
unspeakable. The bed with its fat bolster, on top of which, like Ossa
on Pelion piled, stood the pillows, perhaps covered with shams which
bade one "Good night" and "Good morning" in red cotton embroidery--was
especially hideous as contrasted with our present-day enameled or brass
bed, and belongs to the dark ages of crocheted "tidies," plush-covered
photograph albums, "whatnots," prickly, slippery haircloth furniture,
and other household idols which bring thoughts that lie too deep for
tears. Only two styles of sets find a welcome in the up-to-date
home--the rich, dark, mellow mahogany, which is too costly for the
average pocketbook, and the white enameled. Even so the component
parts differ from those of a few years back; then the dresser was
considered an absolute essential; now we frequently prefer the more
graceful dressing table, with its small drawer or two for the
unornamental toilet accessories, or the compromise between the two--the
princess dresser--with the roomy chest of drawers or chiffonier. The
all-white furniture gives the room an air of chaste purity and is no
more expensive than a set in any other good wood, but must be well
enameled or it will be impossible to keep it clean.

CAREFUL SELECTION

The trend of popular sentiment is toward the metal bed, with
accompanying furniture in plain or bird's-eye maple, mahogany, dark
oak, curly birch, or mahogany-birch. Dressers range in price from $9
to $50; princ