318 Missouri Agric til hired Iicpoii. 



multitude ul' onu's possessions, tnid with tlie ri^'ht spirit as guide the 

 simplest things may be made beautiful. Mr. Batchelder says, in the 

 Craftsman, "To design is to give expression to an idea. This term im- 

 plies an interesting, possibly a beautiful, at least an orderly expression 

 of that idea, but first we must have the idea.'* 



The first question to ask one's self, then, before planning household 

 furnishings and decorations is, "What is to be -the purpose of these rooms, 

 what idea are they to express to those who come into them? A Columbia 

 University professor enumerates seven reasons why people construct 

 buildings, viz. : protection from weather, security from enemies, privacy, 

 gathering places, monuments, expressions of taste, ostentation of wealth. 

 The building of a home covers several of these, the first three in any 

 case. Most of us wish it also to be a gathering place for our friends. 

 Whether we think of it or not, it is bound to be an expression of our 

 taste, and perhaps, some of us are not free from a desire to let the world 

 know that we have prospered. All of these things are bound to show 

 in a degree proportionate to that in which we possess them, for con- 

 sciously or unconsciously, we are bound to express our real selves. If 

 we try to express the thing which we are not, we are sure to betray our- 

 selves; it is necessary here, as elsewhere, to "be what thou seemest." 



The Craftsman quotes the following from Barry Parker's "Smaller 

 Middle Class House:" 



"The true method of making a room beautiful is to make all the 

 necessary and useful things in it beautiful. So much is this true that it 

 becomes almost impossible to design a really beautiful room that is to 

 have no useful work done in it or natural life lived in it. An architect 

 called upon to design a room in which nothing more earnest is to be 

 done than to gossip over afternoon teas has a sad job ; for a room must 

 always derive its dignity or meanness from and reflect somewhat, the 

 character and kind of occupation which is carried on in it. For in- 

 stance, t-he studio of an artist, the study of the man of letters, the work 

 shop of a carpenter, or the kitchen of a farm house, each in its position 

 and degree, derives a dignity and interest from the work done in it. 

 The things in the room bear some relation to that work and will be the 

 furniture and surroundings natural to it ; as the bench and tools in the 

 carpenter's shop; the easels and canvasses in the studio; the books and 

 papers in the study; the bright pans and crockery in the kitchen. All 

 these lend a sense of active, useful, human life to the room, which re- 

 deems it from vulgarity, though it be the simplest possible; and no 

 amount of decoration or ornamentation can give dignity or 'homeyness' 

 to a room which is used as a show room, or in which no regular useful 

 life is lived. For in the work room all things have a place by reason 



