e house and garden should be planned together to have the best effect.
Each can be added to as time goes on, but when a plan is followed there
is a look of belonging together which adds greatly to the charm.

[Illustration: A hall to conjure with--although a Hepplewhite or
Sheraton chair would be more in keeping.]

In an all-the-year country house a vestibule is a necessity as much as
in a town house, and the hall should be treated with the dignity a
hall deserves, and not as a second living-room. In many English houses
of Tudor days the stairs were behind a carved screen, or concealed in
some manner, which made it possible to use the hall as a gathering
place. Our modern hall is not a descendant of this old hall of a past
day (the living-room is much more so), but is really only a passage,
often raised to the _n_th power, connecting the different rooms of the
house, and should be treated as such. The stairs and landing and vista
should be beautiful, and the furnishing should be dignified and in
perfect scale with the rest of the house. Marble stairs and tapestry and
old carved furniture and beautiful rugs, or the simplest possible
furniture, may be used, but the hall should have an impersonally
hospitable air, one which gives the keynote of the house, but reserves
its full expression until the privacy of the living-rooms is reached.

[Illustration: A very rare block-front chest of drawers with the
original brasses.]

The average country house is neither very magnificent nor very simple,
but strikes the happy medium and achieves a most delightful home-like
charm, which at the very outset makes life seem well worth living. It is
rarely furnished in a period style throughout, but has the modern air of
comfort which good taste and correct feeling give. For instance, the
hall may have paneling and Chippendale mirror, a table, and chairs; the
living-room furnished in a general Colonial manner mixed with some
comfortable stuffed furniture, but not over-stuffed, lovely chintz or
silk hangings, and a wide fireplace; the morning-room on something the
same plan, but a little less formal; and the drawing-room a little more
so, say in Adam or simple Louis XVI furniture. The library should have
plenty of comfortable sofas and chairs, and a large table (it is hard to
get one too large), some of the bookcases should be built in to form
part of the architectural plan of the room, and personally I think it is
a better idea to have al