THE SECRETARY'S PORTFOLIO. 415 



THE INNER HOME. 



Mrs. E. A. Horton of the Coldwator Grange read a beautiful essay on home 

 decoration, from which we cull the following extract: 



In decorating the inside of our homes art is but in its infancy. Most of us 

 can remember when the decorations of the parlor consisted of the looking 

 glass, pictures of the Washington family, of General Washington with old 

 Whitey (his horse), of General Lafa3'ette, and the family record neatly framed, 

 and perhaps the silhouette of some dear old granddame in the days of her 

 youth. There was asparagus around the glass and picture frames, and in the 

 summer, bushes in the fire place, and a plaster of Paris dog on the mantel — 

 was it so long ago, after all ? The first attempt to grow plants in the house I 

 ever saw, my mother filled an old sugar bowl with cotton, moistened it and 

 sowed wheat in it; it grew beautifully and sat on the mantel all winter and 

 delighted our childish eyes with its greenness. It is from just such beginnings 

 that the present state of decorative art has grown. Who does not remember 

 the old fashioned testers and bed curtains ? They were but the forerunners of 

 the lovely canopies we all admire. The old stick chimney with its open tire- 

 place, its brick hearth and broad mantle, were but the unformed idea of the 

 beautiful grates and marble mantels we now see in the homes of wealth and 

 culture. 



I am firmly convinced that much of the fancy work we put up in our homes 

 is sheer nonsense, and as far as real decoration goes is a miserable failure, 

 because of the lack of harmony in the whole. There is the whole secret of 

 success in decoration — harmony, harmonious arrangement of colors, of fitness 

 of the whole combined. Our efforts are a success or failure, or the effect is 

 indifferent, and we feel illy paid for our labor and poorly satisfied with our 

 taste, just in proportion as we follow its laws. But it is well to try, even if 

 now and then, to have an ideal in mind to strive after. Why I know a lady 

 who raised ducks for two years to buy silver knives and forks to use on her 

 table every day, that her table might satisfy her love of beauty, and she said to 

 me, "Mrs. Horton, I have always been glad I did make the effort, for I have 

 never been ashamed of my table since, and the family have all enjoyed them so 

 much." It seems to me her efforts were more praiseworthy than the work of 

 a lady I heard of the other day who is embroidering coffee sacking with wools 

 for a dado to extend around the room. We find the true and the false every- 

 where, and here is the rock on which we split. To discern which is which 

 culture alone will decide the point to our satisfaction. What Avas beautiful to 

 us twenty years ago is but passably so now if we have improved as we should 

 our opportunities for observation. 



There is no field where there is greater need for improvement, or more room 

 for the exercise of our taste than in decorating our homes. 



Let us not live in vain. Let us leave behind us monuments of beauty in the 

 homes we shall soon go from to enter no more forever. Let our children say 

 with pride, "Father planned this house — is it not tasteful? This yard — is not 

 the arrangement of the walks and trees fine ? Ah ! he was a man of taste. 

 And within, mother planned this cornice and this arrangement of rooms, liked 

 this combination of light and dark woods in the finish, suggested this tint of 

 wall for this room, and that for the other — her taste was exquisite, only 

 equaled by her judgment, which, of course, must always accompany taste, or 

 all will be imuerlect." 



