have been applied like a poultice, regardless of
the proportions of the rooms and the distribution of the spaces.

Building and decorating are, however, the best of educations. The
husband, freed at last from his business occupations, finds in this new
study an interest and a charm unknown to him before. He and his wife are
both vaguely disappointed when their resplendent mansion is finished,
having already outgrown it, and recognize that in spite of correct
detail, their costly apartments no more resemble the stately and simple
salons seen abroad than the cabin of a Fall River boat resembles the
_Galerie des Glaces_ at Versailles. The humiliating knowledge that they
are all wrong breaks upon them, as it is doing on hundreds of others, at
the same time as the desire to know more and appreciate better the
perfect productions of this art.

A seventh and last step is before them but they know not how to make it.
A surer guide than the upholsterer is, they know, essential, but their
library contains nothing to help them. Others possess the information
they need, yet they are ignorant where to turn for what they require.

With singular appropriateness a volume treating of this delightful "art"
has this season appeared at Scribner's. "The Decoration of Houses" is
the result of a woman's faultless taste collaborating with a man's
technical knowledge. Its mission is to reveal to the hundreds who have
advanced just far enough to find that they can go no farther alone,
truths lying concealed beneath the surface. It teaches that consummate
taste is satisfied only with a perfected simplicity; that the facades of
a house must be the envelope of the rooms within and adapted to them, as
the rooms are to the habits and requirements of them "that dwell
therein;" that proportion is the backbone of the decorator's art and that
supreme elegance is fitness and moderation; and, above all, that an
attention to architectural principles can alone lead decoration to a
perfect development.

No. 13--Our Elite and Public Life

The complaint is so often heard, and seems so well founded, that there is
a growing inclination, not only among men of social position, but also
among our best and cleverest citizens, to stand aloof from public life,
and this reluctance on their part is so unfortunate, that one feels
impelled to seek out the causes where they must lie, beneath the surface.
At a first glance they are not apparent. Why shou