CHAPTER XI 



HOUSE FURSISEING A^I) DECORATION 



House furnishings do not exist for them- 

 selves, but as a background for the people 

 who live among them. Just as the trees, 

 rocks, fields and animals have for their set- 

 ting the green earth and the blue sky, and 

 as pictures have a background, a middle dis- 

 tance and a foreground, so human beings have 

 their setting. If the setting be more striking 

 or more elegant than the people for whom 

 it exists, they are made uncomfortable and 

 overshadowed by it; if meaner and uglier than 

 they, the people are belittled by it. How many 

 houses there are whose furnishings are much 

 more attractive than their inhabitants ! A 

 woman of superficial education and trivial 

 character has the distinction of having the 

 most beautiful library in her state; rows on 

 rows of the best books, in beautiful bindings, in 

 a room of the most artistic design, and nobody 

 to read them. The contrast between the woman 

 and her environment is pitiful. 



The house and its contents should be an out- 



M (193) 



