November, 19 21 
41 
possibility of a prying 
world. 
In the house, which was 
used as a community sum¬ 
mer home by a delightful 
group of women, many of 
whom are great in worldly 
fame but unpretentious in 
their everyday living, in 
this house it seemed to me 
there were countless bed¬ 
rooms, and I find I still 
have a warm spot in my 
heart for anything akin to 
The Lilac Room, The Yel¬ 
low Room, The Blue Room, 
and The Rose Room, which 
were some of the quaint 
names they called them. 
The Lilac Room stands 
out particularly in my mem¬ 
ory, for I “shopped” for the 
chintz that boasted flower¬ 
ing lilacs and delicious 
gray-green leaves on a white 
background. We papered 
the walls in a soft green and 
painted the furniture and 
woodwork white, while the 
floor was dull green. Such 
a delightfully summery 
place as it was! The dining room was a 
long and narrow room, with quaint win¬ 
dows touching the low ceiling, windows set 
generously into the two ends and one long 
side; there was a friendly fireplace, and a 
very narrow trestle table that ran quite the 
length of the room, with slat back chairs 
that pulled up to it comfortably. As I 
remember, blue gingham curtains were 
simply hung at the windows, and the 
(Continued on page 74) 
A bit of an 
Italian ruin is 
set down in a 
city backyard 
as a place for 
peace 
pressionably young and 
quite fresh from art school, 
perhaps when the door of 
the house was quickly 
opened to me, in stepping 
across that threshold, the 
twig was bent the way the 
tree would grow’, for the 
quaintness of the place was 
wellnigh indescribable. In 
responding to the welcoming 
of my hostesses, I caught 
only a fleeting impression 
of low ceiled rooms, a fire 
crackling on the hearth, 
mull curtains, dull yellow 
walls, and something in fine 
illumined lettering on a 
beam of the living room fac¬ 
ing the door. 
Soon I was to learn to 
love the lettered rafter, with 
its “Peace Be Unto This 
House And All Who Dwell 
In It,” the dignified yellow 
and cream of the Common 
Room as they called it, and 
the dear people who had 
worked to make it all so 
charming; but that night I 
was lost in exploring the 
fascinations of my own room that they 
had given me: the w 7 alls covered with a 
William Morris rose-flowered paper, the 
rose-sprigged screen and bedspread, the 
pink-posied washbowl and pitcher, the 
ponderous white woodwork dating well 
back to Seventeen-something, the paneled 
white wooden window blinds that slid 
miraculously from the wall into place be¬ 
fore the deeply recessed windows, thus 
hiding the bobbing candle flames from all 
The living 
room of “The 
A r k,” t h e 
ab andoned 
canal-side cot¬ 
tage 
In the “Box Stall” the sliding barn doors were removed and a 
Colonial door put in one half, the other half being curtained in 
blue as a background for the sofa in figured linen. Lampshades are 
old rose and the pillows gold, jade green, old blue, flame, sand and 
orange colored. In its original state the “Box Stall” accommodated 
two horses. Renovated, it now makes an artist’s home 
