TASTEFUL SITTING-ROOMS. 
T HERE is a great difference between sitting-rooms. 
Did you ever go into a room when everything was 
topsy-turvy even in the middle of the afternoon ? Books, 
clothes, papers, everything thrown into a chaotic mass. 
The mistress, with hair still uncombed and wearing her 
morning dress, comes forward to greet you with profuse 
excuses. 
“ Oh, it’s of no consequence,” you hasten to reply ; “ pray 
don’t mention it,” and you sit down in the midst of the 
disorder. Nevertheless you are embarrassed, the host¬ 
ess is embarrassed, and the call is rendered unprofitable 
and unpleasant, because of the slovenly habits of this 
woman who calls herself a housekeeper. 
Now, no sitting-room need look like this; everybody 
may not be able to keep a room in apple-pie order the 
whole of the time, but it can be made fit to receive com¬ 
pany in a part of the twenty-four hours. It may be 
fancy, but it seems to me that this chronic disorder must 
extend to the mental as well as to the material; that such 
a woman cannot be a good housewife. If she cannot keep 
an orderly sitting-room, nine chances to one if she is a 
good cook. Of course she cannot be economical, because 
she has not learned to systematize. 
We have visited other sitting-rooms. One reminds 
you of an old-fashioned church, with its straight-backed 
pews and its box pulpit. Everything is placed against 
the wall with the most careful regularity. The entire 
room impresses one with its solemn and funereal air. 
Its occupant, too, partakes of the hue of her sur¬ 
roundings, as with grave mien she ushers you into the 
room. 
Another room looks tawdry with tinsel and ornament, 
and glitters like a gin saloon. You do not feel at ease in 
it, and you are relieved when you go away. The owner 
is mostly tinsel, too. There is no grace, no elegance, no 
comfort where she is. 
Once in a while we find the model room, the cheery, 
cosy, comfortable, yet orderly room. When you enter, the 
occupant gives you a greeting full of cordiality. Her 
room is clean, healthy and artistic. We can scarcely 
imagine her other than a healthy, cheerful, artistic mind. 
We stay a great while longer than we ought, perhaps, 
and depart with regret. 
We human beings are a sort of chameleons after all. 
Not only do our surroundings exhibit to some degree our 
taste and character, but these latter cannot help being in¬ 
fluenced by our surroundings. The hue of our circum¬ 
stances is apt to be transmitted to our mental condition. 
If we would cultivate orderly and systematic habits of 
labor, we must also cultivate orderly and systematic hab¬ 
its in other things as well. 
The wise man has said, “There is a time for every¬ 
thing.” Surely we ought to take time to make home 
cheerful and happy, and of the many things which go to¬ 
ward doing this nothing is more essential than a tidy, 
cosy, pleasant living-room. Here is where the family 
meet in the social circle; here the busy housewife sits 
after the labors of the day are over ; here is where friends 
are received who make an informal call. It should be 
made to reflect the hospitality, the taste, the love, the 
ease of the household. Some degree of order and a little 
artistic taste will make the humblest sitting-room as com¬ 
fortable and as inviting as the costly drawing-rooms of 
palaces. 
Not a few sitting-rooms are unlovely from a lack of 
artistic ornamentation. I do not mean that every house¬ 
wife can, or should, even were her means sufficient, adorn 
her walls with paintings of the old masters, set up statues 
in every niche and corner and place Henri Deux ware on 
her mantel-pieces. “Art,” says a great critic, “ is never 
more supreme than when it fashions from the commonest 
materials objects of the greatest beauty.” It seems to me 
an obvious truism, that the beautiful is equally beautiful, 
however much or however little it may cost, and that the 
lilies of the field, though every village child may pluck 
them, are yet arrayed in purer loveliness than an Eastern 
emperor in all his glory. A vase of flowers in a room 
goes a wonderful way in making it attractive. Mere 
pictures are nothing if not beautiful. I remember a sit¬ 
ting-room, two or three years ago, in which hung a 
framed woodcut of the death-bed scene of Abraham 
Lincoln, and on the opposite wall was a colored picture 
of a tomb embowered in weeping willows and two kneel¬ 
ing mourners before a marble monument, which was 
“Sacred to the Memory of N D——.” 
Now, this housewife was an excellent woman, but she 
had no more taste than a Patagonian. Why did she not 
banish these rude, unartistic copies to the garret and hang 
upon her wall some pretty landscape or a child’s lovely 
face, some photograph or chromo ? She would then have 
had a thing of beauty before her eyes forever. Not that 
I am partial to chromos, though I must confess that to 
my mind a pretty chromo is superior to an ugly painting, 
even though the last is bounded by a showy, gilded frame. 
It costs but little to be graceful and artistic, and with the 
means that are now open for simple but pure ornamen¬ 
tation, no mistress of a house has an excuse for an un¬ 
lovely sitting-room. 
Again, in the rage for virtuosos, which has been preva¬ 
lent several years, the well-to-do have filled their parlors 
and cabinets and mantel-shelves with articles of genuine 
value, indeed, but in many cases, of, no artistic grace. A 
museum is one thing and a dwelling-house is another. 
The two are sometimes confused, even among the most 
cultured classes. Let us religiously preserve curiosities 
by all means, just as we preserve Phoenician jars, Be¬ 
nares metal work and Chinese bronzes ; but don’t let us 
imagine, that because they are curious or ancient they are 
necessarily decorative. Above all, don’t let us assent to 
the converse proposition, that because pretty things are 
cheap and modern they are necessarily unworthy of ar¬ 
tistic consideration. F. M. Colby. 
