78 
House & Garden 
cl A JFall in the Showrooms 
Early 17 th Century English Oak Court Cupboard by Kensington 
T HE fascination of old furniture lies no doubt 
to some degree in the mellowness that time 
brings and in the sense it imparts of service faith¬ 
fully performed; still more in charm of design, 
inherent in the well defined style that has devel¬ 
oped naturally as the every-day expression of the 
life of a people; but above all in the fact that it 
possesses character — the quality that can be ex¬ 
pressed only by craftsmanship. 
It is the distinction of Kensington furniture 
that it retains the charm and the decorative qual¬ 
ity of the antique because it also is the product of 
craftsmanship, and because it faithfully interprets 
and gives life to the spirit of old work in design 
as well as in execution. 
Kensington furniture is made 
in all the decorative styles ap¬ 
propriate for American homes. 
The purchase of Kensington 
Furniture may be arranged 
through your decorator or 
furniture dealer. 
Illustrated booklet 
pamphlet, “How 
It on Furniture 
e purchased.’’ 
MANUFACTURERS AND N —s IMPORTERS 
FINE FURNITURE ART OBJECTS 
NEW YORK 
Showrooms : 14 East 32nd Street 
Coming On Books Unexpectedly 
(Continued j\ 
break the regular routine of the per¬ 
fectly equipped library, and the strenu¬ 
ousness of life. What daughter with 
cropped hair has scorned the story of 
Rapunzel, or the balcony love moment 
of Melisande? What advocate of eu¬ 
genics has not longed for the untabu¬ 
lated, unchecked moment with Orlando 
in the Forest of Arden? To come un¬ 
expectedly on your own self, in some 
removed corner of the house, is pleasant. 
The ta*tered raiments of magazines 
and papers usually festoon the chair or 
the hammock on the porch. It is sur¬ 
prising what a grab-bag of literature the 
hammock is,—French novels, Greenwich 
Village free verse, the latest play—like 
Maughan’s ‘‘The Circle,” or Clemence 
Dane’s ‘‘A Bill of Divorcement”—the 
Blue Book, and, sandwiched in between 
them all, yourself. You have brought 
your own book, but like as not you read 
some other. Or better still, with the 
lazy clouds and the butterflies, and the 
distracting sounds of obscure bird's nests, 
you read nothing. You poke your book 
under the secret recesses of a soft pil¬ 
low. 
In the days of Addison, writers used 
to recommend books suited to a lady's 
boudoir. The Restoration taste, in these 
days of cosmetics, might be restored. 
We till our columns now with discus¬ 
sions of what books we would take 
with us on a desert island. The Bible 
has been the chief recommendation, as 
containing under one cover the largest 
mixture of allspice. The questions are 
now raised: What are some good bed¬ 
time stories for the grown-up sleeper? 
What are the just-before-dinner books, 
when most of your attention is riveted 
for the second gong? What would be 
permissible reading for the bath, other 
than “The Water Babies” and “Three 
Men in a Boat”? I think the book in 
relation to the uses of the different 
rooms is just as important as the archi¬ 
tect's perturbations regarding the physi¬ 
cal aspects of the landscape in relation 
to the house. 
I am sure that beds could be designed 
with the picturesque hint of a shelf as 
part of the head board; desks are hugged 
on either side or topped by shelves with 
diamond panes of glass, behind which 
the old-fashioned tastes of a past gen¬ 
eration are assembled in quaint volumes. 
In other words, in planning a house, 
we should allow the same rule to per¬ 
tain that holds in the city of New York 
regarding branch library buildings. I 
think it is the boast of the Trustees that 
there is not a citizen of the town who is 
farther away from a public collection of 
books than a mile. Books should never 
be more than a few steps away from a 
reader in the home at the moment of 
desiring to read. Hence the necessity 
for book sanctuaries. 
r om page 76) 
There is one house in my remem¬ 
brance whose owners always did the 
correct thing. There were dogs, but these 
were kept in the kennels. There were 
children, but these were kept in the 
nursery. People like these keep their 
books strictly in a library. My hostess 
would say, as occasion demanded: “Go 
up into the nursery and bring Mary 
Ann or Peter Boy down,” “Go into the 
kennel and get Barbe Bleue,” “Look in 
the library for that book I was reading.’’ 
Thus did she sprinkle largesse; thus did 
she show her possession. But, as I 
have hinted more than once, if the good 
God of Life is set on humanizing the 
race, even country houses must conform 
to His will. You cannot order a dog not 
to bark; even the most unhappy chil¬ 
dren laugh aloud at their own thoughts. 
And a book delights sometimes in being 
where it ought not to be. 
Such people as my hostess have ro¬ 
mantic notions of how they should look 
on such and such occasions. How well, 
in a painting, the mother would appear 
with her golden-haired child sedately 
descending the winding staircase. Send 
for the child, please. How well the mas¬ 
ter, in his riding togs, with his hand 
resting on the Dane’s head—so like Sir 
Walter Scott! Send for the dog, please. 
“Don't you think,” suggests the artist, 
“a little touch of the literary would look 
well amidst the delicacy of your gown?’’' 
Send for a book, please—oh, anything 
that isn’t heavy, so that your ringed 
finger may rest lightly on one of the 
leaves in the act of turning. That gives 
life to the picture, it leaves an impres¬ 
sion of you! 
I recall going to a very formal func¬ 
tion there. My outside wrappings were 
whisked aside by groomed magic, my 
feet sank into the soft carpet of the 
stairs. And an unwilling will propelled 
me up tow'ard the drawing room. But 
just as I was reaching the top, my foot 
kicked against the open pages of a 
child’s “Swiss Family Robinson." I could 
tell by crumbs between the leaves wdiere 
youthful eyes had left off reading. I 
held the book, and a warm thrill passed 
over me. I recalled in years gone by—in 
a much humbler house—a small boy- 
being allowed—on rainy and thunderous 
evenings of a southern summer—to get 
out of bed and bring his book to the 
head step leading into the hall below. 
Ah, madam, send for your boy, send 
for his book, and place them there on 
the steps. The curve of the baluster 
leads, not into the drawing room, but 
into the realm of imagination; the stair 
covering is the magic carpet; the bracket 
lights are the flame of desire—all be¬ 
cause one book has escaped the nursery,, 
and is found in an unaccustomed place. 
So it is with all books that have 
escaped the formal library. 
If You Are Going to Build 
(Continued ji 
ful study, just as the old Spanish archi¬ 
tects designed chimneys that were 
almost indistinguishable from their tur¬ 
rets and towers. 
It is not at all necessary to have 
chimney stacks in pairs. A single stack 
even at the corner of a roof announces 
its purpose. It is of necessity in that 
particular place. That is where it does 
its work in connection with the heating 
system. An unnecessary twin to match 
it would be an absurdity. 
Where there is a deep pitched roof, as 
in the French chateaux type of archi¬ 
tecture, usually a tall slender stack 
starts up from the first story at the 
corner of the house. A low square 
chimney on this type of roof would 
make the whole house chunky and 
■om page 61 ) 
heavy in effect, which is undesirable. 
But after all, types of houses and 
chimneys are studied in relation to each 
other, the first consideration is the 
utilitarian one—the chimney so con¬ 
structed and placed that it will in every 
possible way co-operate for the right and 
adequate heating of the house. And 
never will the wise home owner sacri¬ 
fice health, and physical well-being to- 
a purely decorative roof detail. Of 
course, the ideal house will have beauty 
of form combined with the most prac¬ 
tical and aesthetic construction, but if,, 
for any fundamental reason, because of 
any peculiarity of site or building ma¬ 
terial, a compromise is necessary, prac¬ 
tical design should take precedence over 
the picturesque detail. 
