Ctit Uit of Natural JForms in 



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The art, or practice, of conventional decoration has 

 had many vicissitudes, especially in America. This 

 land, quick to respond to all influences that seem new, 

 whether desirable or not, and with its population made 

 up in some part from every land of all the earth, has 

 had its crazes or vogues of decoration. Sometimes these 

 vogues have pervaded everything from dress to archi- 

 tecture, and while the former has reacted immediately 

 from an enormity, there yet remain to be seen mournful 

 examples of "Eastlake" effect in grotesque houses. The 

 recoil from the "Queen Anne" type is fully within re- 

 membrance, as well, and these ornate and specialized 

 architectural forms, with many others I need not name, 

 have always had a strikingly distinct effect on decorative 

 procedure. Wall-papers, picture-hanging, linen, book- 

 covers, car interiors and all the familiar surroundings 

 of our daily life take form from the prevailing decorative 

 thought, whether it be true or false. 



It is possibly apropos to say that these words are 

 written in a Pullman sleeping-car, the second one in 

 which I have found a shelf to attempt rest upon in 

 three days. The other one, in the Canadian service, 

 was of the vintage of 1890, and full of nameless but 

 not formless horrors of wooden, woollen and mosaic 

 ornamentation, calculated to banish rest in the daytime 

 and to induce nightmare when sleep was attempted. 

 The one in which I write shows a vast improvement 

 in line, form and color, and it is not too much to ex- 



