d itself,"
as Kipling would put it. Time gives an inimitable finish to any
surface.

If you are young in years, immature in taste, and limited as to bank
account, you will doubtless go in for a frankly modern room, with
cheerful painted furniture, gay or soft-toned chintzes, and
inexpensive smart floor coverings. To begin this way and gradually to
collect what you want, piece by piece, is to get the most amusement
possible out of furnishing. When you have the essential pieces for any
one room, you can undertake an _ensemble_. Some of the rarest
collections have been got together in this way, and, if one's fortune
expands instead of contracting, old pieces may be always replaced by
those still more desirable, more rare, more in keeping with your
original scheme.

To buy expensive furnishings in haste and without knowledge, and
within a year or two discover everything to be in bad taste, is a
tragedy to a person with an instinctive aversion to waste. Antique or
modern, every beautiful thing bought is a cherished heirloom in
embryo. Remember, we may inherit a good antique or _objet d'art_, buy
one, or bequeath one. Let us never be guilty of the reverse,--a
bar-sinister piece of furniture! Sympathy with unborn posterity should
make us careful.

It is always excusable to retain an ugly, inartistic thing--if it is
_useful_; but an ornament must be beautiful in line or in colour, or
it belies its name. Practise that genuine, obvious loyalty which hides
away on a safe, but invisible shelf, the bad taste of our ancestors
and friends.

Having settled upon a type of furniture, turn your attention to the
walls. Always let the location of your room decide the colour of its
walls. The room with a sunny exposure may have any colour you like,
warm or cold, but your north room or any room more or less sunless,
requires the warm, sun-producing yellows, pinks, apple-greens, beige
and wood-colours, never the cold colours, such as greys, mauves,
violets and blues, unless in combination with the warm tones. If it is
your intention to hang pictures on the walls, use plain papers.
Remember you must never put a spot on a spot! The colour of your walls
once established, keep in mind two things: that to be agreeable to the
artistic eye your ceilings must be lighter than your sidewalls, and
your floors darker. Broadly speaking, it is Nature's own arrangement,
green trees and hillsides, the sky above, and the dark earth beneath
our feet. A c