82 
House & Garden 
[V. 
" £v&rlasting CcononzyJ 
Pride in a 
Fine Home 
No costly furnishings, no elaborate 
decorations give the warmth, the 
color, the richness of Oak Floors. 
In cleanliness, in ease of cleaning, 
in durability, in beauty, in economy, 
they have no rivals. 
Unwieldy, unsanitary, dusty carpets are out of 
date. Spotless, dustless Oak Floors with rugs are 
the modern ideal. 
Oak Floors cost less than ordinary floors, plus 
carpets. Any dealer’s figures prove this statement. 
No home is too grand for Oak Floors—for there 
are none better. No home is too modest—for they 
are a real economy. Once laid they are good for a 
century. Ask any real estate man how much they 
increase selling and renting values. 
Our free booklets, in colors, contain much inter¬ 
esting and valuable information on Oak Floors and 
their uses. 
Among other things they explain how our special 
thickness of 34-inch Oak Flooring can be laid over 
old flooring, at a small cost. Send for them today. 
OAK FLOORING JWSCMCY. 
1047 Ashland Block, Chicago, 111. 
The trade-mark below 
is always your guaran¬ 
tee of Oak Flooring of 
the highest quality in 
every respect. Stamped 
on every stick. 
Ostracize the Fly 
(Continued jrom page 78) 
never taken down and much labor is 
saved. 
Screens are mot a luxury; they are a 
health measure. When we get more 
civilized we will probably have our 
screens inspected to# see that they fit, 
and the boards of health in the various 
towns will keep a close watch on them 
for diseases are rapidly being traced to 
the minute insect carriers. Typhus and 
yellow fever are the last results. Think 
what Central Europe would have been 
spared had it been properly screened! 
Contrary to usual opinion screens can 
be most attractive and fit in with the 
surrounding wood trim, and be a de¬ 
partment of house furnishing not to be 
belittled. And don’t fail to realize that 
a lot of trouble can be saved and un¬ 
sightliness be avoided, if the screen is 
thought of before building your home— 
and if the roller type is installed, you 
have no storage care, or removal and 
reapplying slavery. 
Collecting Old White For Decoration 
(Continued jrom page 39) 
Collecting a color is good fun, because 
collections of objects are usually hard 
to place. No matter how exquisite queer 
snuff boxes may be individually they 
are difficult to display agreeably. That 
is why collecting a color is so much 
more fun—because it may be the key¬ 
note, the secret basis, of all your dec¬ 
oration. Given a collection of old white 
things—fabrics and ivories and paint¬ 
ings and such—your soft white becomes 
a pervading glamor, which spreads it¬ 
self over your rooms, coloring every¬ 
thing. The ageing of white is exactly 
opposite to the ageing of color. While 
colors constantly lose their intensity, 
white takes on a thousand lovely tones. 
Perhaps it seems a little mad, this 
amateur collecting of a color, and yet 
surely there is a Providence that directs 
the passionate collector to the objects 
of her longing, to the undreamed things 
that give her surprise and enchantment. 
The element of surprise is as precious to 
the collector as the joy of finding things 
sought for. Certainly I never could 
have imagined or anticipated the posses¬ 
sion of my now most coveted belong¬ 
ings, and therefore I must believe that 
my love for them, like a magnet, drew 
them to me. As they revealed their 
existences to me I made them mine, 
which was much more amusing than 
seeking definite things. When I found 
an old pair of white kid gloves of the 
Directoire period, with naive pictures 
and Spanish verses printed on them in 
black ink, with their edges minutely 
scalloped and yellowed white ribbons 
laced through the wrists, I had a much 
greater thrill than if I’d found a snuff 
box or a fan or a bandbox. My lovely 
pair of old gloves were kept in a box 
for a long time, but now they have a 
proper place in my bedroom, beneath 
the long sheet of glass that covers my 
pink and white brocade-hung dressing 
table. Their cost, I think, was five 
shillings, but their charm is priceless. 
Indeed, most of my white finds re¬ 
present so much fun and so little money 
that I feel my passion must be an in¬ 
spired one. And when I find irresistible 
white things that I cannot possibly af¬ 
ford, I buy them for some more for¬ 
tunate one who may have the right 
room and the adequate dollars and the 
proper appreciation. When I found a 
quilted petticoat of white satin, of the 
Louis Seize period, I could not possibly 
afford it myself, but I bought it and 
covered a small old sofa frame with it 
and used it in a drawing room, just 
beneath an old flower painting, in which 
white flowers shone against a dark 
ground. When I found a fragile tri¬ 
angular white lace shawl for fifteen 
dollars I kept it for myself, and made 
a hanging for the head of my bed, a 
perfect hanging, and yet utterly un¬ 
dreamed of. This bed is a lovely, grace¬ 
ful white and gold one, Louis XVI in 
feeling, with a slight additional sug¬ 
gestion of the Directoire. Its four very 
thin white columns terminate in gilt 
swans. . The swans at the headboard 
hold this old lace shawl in their beaks. 
I have planned a festoon of old ribbons 
and strings of lace for the two lower 
posts, but that has not come to pass. 
The bedspread-to-be also is a thing of 
dreams—it must be of yellowed white 
satin, faintly painted. But at present a 
perfectly plain length of pink moire 
serves as bedspread. 
My bedroom is full of white, but each 
white spot is so separated from another 
as to count fully. The room is like a 
huge box of yellow-pink, with walls and 
ceiling and trim all the same tone. The 
dark polished floor is covered with the 
Aubusson rug of the white stars. The 
windows are hung first with glass cur¬ 
tains of a thin pineapple tissue of cream 
white, patterned with butterflies and 
bound with narrow white satin rib¬ 
bons, and then there are large full cur¬ 
tains of a silvery gauze, with valances 
of Directoire brocade, old gray-blue silk 
with yellowish white flowers over them. 
Between the two windows, on top of 
a narrow walnut bookcase, is my ivory 
tower, which delights me none the less 
because it is actually of bone, and not 
of ivory.. The illustration which shows 
this tower and the white and gold bed 
also shows a lot of lesser white things 
which are special treasures; a water 
color, supposed to be by Blake, of a 
youth and maiden making an offering 
of a great basket of white fruits to 
Pan; a small Chinese procelain lady sit¬ 
ting beneath a mirrored jar of white 
stocks; an old black and white vase on 
the dressing table; a white figure with 
convenient cups for matches and cig¬ 
arettes, and a pair of red glass bottles, 
covered with gold stars, in ivory coast¬ 
ers. In the same London basement 
shop where I found my star carpet I 
found the Louis XV chairs, one of which 
sits at the foot of the bed. The white 
frame of the chair has become so worn 
that it takes a true lover of the shabby 
to forgive it, but the wine colored 
Aubusson covering, with its great pink 
and white lilies, is brilliant still. 
The dressing table (simply a wooden 
shelf fixed on the wall, exactly opposite 
the mantel, with a huge mirror inset 
above it) is hung with pink brocade 
flowered in white and red, a beautiful 
old stuff that I dreaded to cut, but felt 
I must enjoy. 
The white panel which hangs over 
my mantel is an old Louis XVI carving, 
so worn that it can only be called white 
by courtesy. Its original white paint is 
almost gone, and placed against a clear 
white wall it would be a mass of gray 
and tan, but against the deep yellow- 
pink of my room it is a marvelous ar¬ 
rangement of whites. Some day, when 
I have a little house, I shall build it 
into a little dining room. The ivory box 
beneath the panel is another proof of 
collector’s luck, for it is of the same 
Indian design as the coasters which hold 
my star bottles. I found it in a Boston 
junk shop, at a ridiculous price. 
The furniture grouped about the 
mantel is of all sorts and colors, but 
all of it is relieved by white. One 
bergere is covered with mauve linen 
checked in white, the other in brown 
(Continued on page 84) 
