July, 1905 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



3 1 



possible to have the services of the trained furniture-man 

 without depleting one's bank account. It is simply a ques- 

 tion of scale and of money. If one wishes professional ad- 

 vice one must pay for it, and it remains with the client to fix 

 the amount that shall be spent. 



The trained furnisher, the man who knows his business, 

 the man of taste and discrimination, can often give advice 

 and assistance that will not only be of special value to the 

 client, but which can be had in no other way. The furnish- 

 ing of the house has become as much a profession as its 

 building. One needs to know how to furnish, exactly as 

 one needs to know how to build. This is the basis of the 

 professional furnisher's business. He meets a demand, and 

 he meets it — often — with success. 



Special makers of furniture, of individual furniture, are a 

 quite modern manifestation of household art. Simplicity 

 and directness, furniture constructed on sound models of art 

 and form are the special characteristic of such products. 

 And very fetching much of this new furniture is. It is hand- 

 made and especially made, and excites lively anticipatory joy 

 in the hearts of the artistic purchaser. 



The department store, the special sale, the machine-made 

 factory of the West, stand at the lowest limit of furniture 

 helps. Yet these sources of supply have their merits and 

 their uses. A wonderful amount of improvement has gone 

 into the designing of furniture of all sorts in the last few 

 years. The quality of furniture that is brought into our 

 great cities by the car load is distinctly in advance of that 

 which came a few years past. There is no longer a market 

 for heavy, ugly furniture. The taste of the public has im- 



proved, broadened and widened. There is but one step 

 further to go, and that is to insist that furniture shall not only 

 look good, but be good. The latter is the quality most in- 

 sisted on by the special furniture maker. 



The chief rule to be observed in furnishing the house is 

 to be harmonious. It is rarely safe to build up a room 

 around a single piece of furniture. No one article should 

 cry aloud for attention; avoid eccentricities; ignore fads. 

 Be sure you are going to like each article, and be sure each 

 article is going to fit in well with each other article. Special 

 styles, especially exotic styles, are very good things to be left 

 alone. One may not always care for a Turkish room or a 

 Japanese parlor, and one certainly can never make them 

 accurate or literal translations. 



The house once furnished is likely to remain as deemed 

 completed. One rarely refurnishes a house completely from 

 top to bottom. In most cases the work done once is always 

 done. Hence the necessity for careful choice. 1 he furni- 

 ture must be good, good in itself, good in its purpose, good 

 in its relations to the room in which it is to be placed. Har- 

 mony and good taste are equally essential. 



The woman of taste can do much by herself. She knows 

 how her rooms are to be used, and perhaps can look some- 

 what into the future. She knows her friends' rooms, and 

 wherein they fail or succeed. With patience and care she 

 may furnish an artistic house very artistically. But if she 

 finds she can't do it alone, the best thing to do is to apply to 

 some one who can really help. It is impossible to be too 

 careful in furnishing a house. 



Science for the Home 



The Dangers of Cheap Houses 



HAT cheap houses, cheaply built, are real 

 sources of danger from a constructional 

 standpoint is widely and universally ad- 

 mitted; it is, perhaps, less generally recog- 

 nized that grave sanitary dangers may re- 

 sult from improper construction, hardly less 

 injurious to human life than a wall that will not stay erect, 

 or a floor that will not support the load put upon it. 



The builder who builds in a cheap way stops at nothing 

 whatever to accomplish what, to him, is an economy. If he 

 is not indifferent to life, it is because he knows that the re- 

 sponsibility can readily be brought back to him if his build- 

 ing falls down. If his construction is sound it is only because 

 he is afraid to make it otherwise. He knows, moreover, 

 that most people look more at the things they see than seek 

 for what they can not see. If the walls appear strong and 

 good, he trusts to inefficient work in the hidden parts, care- 

 less of what may happen several years after he has ceased 

 connection with the work. Often enough he excuses himself 

 on the ground that his contracts do not yield enough to per- 

 mit good work, and that he must himself get out as best he 

 can. 



He may, for example, place his water supply pipe and his 

 waste pipes so closely in juxtaposition that leaks in the latter 

 may contaminate the water in the former. Both are safely 

 covered up, so why should he care? Nothing may happen; 

 and if it does it may be several years hence, when there 

 may be no house at all; for such dwellings are not built to 

 last long. The plaster may be mixed with substances filled 



with disease germs and no care whatever taken as to their 

 origin. The bricks may be porous, admitting the external 

 air. Chimneys so built rapidly accumulate soot, which, being 

 damp, falls down when an extra hot fire is set going, and the 

 dangerous fumes of carbon-dioxide and other gases are gene- 

 rated. Drains have been known to be connected with chim- 

 neys, admitting poisonous gases to rooms when there is no 

 fire to carry them off. Discharge pipes for the conveyance 

 of sewer gas may not be carried to the regulation height 

 above the building, and chimneys may be so constructed as 

 to be quite inadequate for sufficient draft. Arrangements for 

 ventilation are often completely ignored, and the laws gov- 

 erning the cubic contents of sleeping-rooms are often evaded 

 even in cities which maintain an expensive building inspec- 

 tion department. 



In a general sense any one of these things, and sometimes 

 others, are likely to happen where cheapness of construction 

 is the single purpose of the building being erected. Ad- 

 vantage is taken of the ignorance of the public of such mat- 

 ters and to the indifference of the authorities to improper con- 

 struction. It is much more difficult to evade the require- 

 ments of the building law in cities, where the rules are strict 

 and the inspection apparently rigorous, than in rural com- 

 munities where there is neither law nor inspection. It is a 

 matter difficult to remedy, for betterment can only result 

 from a wider acquaintance of the requirements of good 

 building, and the necessity for good building, than exists at 

 present. 



