lock, its face flush with the wall [no dust-catcher].

"The room has no corners to gather dirt, wall meets floor with a
gentle curve, and the apartment could be swept out effectually by a
few strokes of a mechanical sweeper [sucked out by the now-used
cleaning-machine.--Author]. The door-frames and window-frames are of
metal, rounded and impervious to draft. You are politely requested to
turn a handle at the foot of your bed before leaving the room, and
forthwith the frame turns up into a vertical position, and the bedclothes
hang airing. You stand in the doorway and realize that there remains not
a minute's work for any one to do. Memories of the fetid disorder of many
an earthly bedroom after a night's use float across your mind.

[In America the use of the sleeping-room as a sitting-room is more common
than in England, and the fetid disorder is far greater.]

"And you must not imagine this dustless, spotless, sweet apartment as
anything but beautiful. Its appearance is a little unfamiliar, of course,
but all the muddle of dust-collecting hangings and witless ornament that
cover the earthly bedroom, the valances, the curtains to check the draft
from the ill-fitting windows, the worthless irrelevant pictures, usually a
little askew, the dusty carpets, and all the paraphernalia about the dirty
black-leaded fireplace are gone. The faintly tinted walls are framed with
just one clear colored line, as finely placed as the member of a Greek
capital; the door-handles and the lines of the panels of the door, the two
chairs, the framework of the bed, the writing-table, have all that
exquisite finish of contour that is begotten of sustained artistic effort.
The graciously shaped windows each frame a picture--since they are
draughtless the window-seats are no mere mockeries as are the window-seats
of earth--and on the sill the sole thing to need attention in the room is
one little bowl of blue Alpine flowers."

The true office of the house is not only to be useful, but to be
aesthetically a background for the dwellers therein, subordinate to them,
not obtrusive. In most of our modern building and furnishing the people
are relegated to the background as insignificant figures. This is largely
why the home feeling is absent, why children do not form an affection for
the rooms they live in.

Let there be nothing in the room because some other person has it; this
shows poverty of ideas. Let there be nothing in the room which does n