If the doors and windows in such a room are high and narrow, they can be
made to come into the scheme by placing the curtain and portiere rods
below the actual height and covering the upper space with thin material,
either full or plain, of the same colour as the upper wall. A brocaded
muslin, stained or dyed to match the wall, answers this purpose
admirably, and is really better in its place than the usual expedient of
stained glass or open-work wood transom. A good expedient is to have the
design already carried around the wall painted in the same colour upon a
piece of stretched muslin. This is simple but effective treatment, and
is an instance of the kind of thought or knowledge that must be used in
remedying faults of construction.

Colour has much to do with the apparent size of rooms, a room in light
tints always appearing to be larger than a deeply coloured one.

Perhaps the most difficult problem in adaptation is the high, narrow
city house, built and decorated by the block by the builder, who is also
a speculator in real estate, and whose activity was chiefly exercised
before the ingenious devices of the modern architect were known. These
houses exist in quantities in our larger and older cities, and mere
slices of space as they are, are the theatres where the home-life of
many refined and beauty-loving intelligences must be played.

In such houses as these, the task of fitting them to the cultivated eyes
and somewhat critical tests of modern society generally falls to the
women who represent the family, and calls for an amount of ability which
would serve to build any number of creditable houses; yet this is
constantly being done and well done for not one, but many families. I
know one such, which is quite a model of a charming city home and yet
was evolved from one of the worst of its kind and period. In this case
the family had fallen heir to the house and were therefore justified in
the one radical change which metamorphosed the entrance-hall, from a
long, narrow passage, with an apparently interminable stairway occupying
half its width, to a small reception-hall seemingly enlarged by a
judicious placing of the mirrors which had formerly been a part of the
"fixtures" of the parlour and dining-room.

[Illustration: HALL IN CITY HOUSE SHOWING EFFECT OF STAIRCASE DIVIDED
AND TURNED TO REAR]

The reception-room was accomplished by cutting off the lower half of the
staircase, which had extended itself to w