color, but in its more positive char- said of this management of reds holds acter. In country or small houses, where the ceilings are low, a frieze detracts so much from the apparent height of the wall that it may well be omitted, and a simple moulding, as a picture rail, substituted. equally with these tints. With both of these, browns, olives, and creams with or without gold may mingle. The only important thing is to preserve the various color relations of the tints chosen, whether paint, paper, or stuffs be used. American women are too capable of acting upon suggestions to require that the subject should be further elaborated. Another color consideration comes If the cornice takes the place of the frieze certain definite instructions may be easily followed in applying color. Each moulding must be treated in a different tint, growing lighter toward' from stained glass. Every one must the ceiling. These mouldings introduce admit that the inner hall door should the tints of the ground and ceiling. be half glass and have side lights, If the cornice presents any broad, flat these, not only as an agreeable framesurface, it may receive a conventional work to the door but as a means of adflower or geometrical design in sten- mitting light. If they are fitted with cil. This should not be too prominent. stained glass, the hall has at once a Frequently there is only a little enrich- valuable decorative opportunity. ment with the stencil at the corners. The ceiling may be in a reddish cream. Useful in the Hall. Nothing so enchants the eye as the unreal land of color that lies without and the light within as it is filtered through this beautiful medium. These are but joys in passing. But they have power to uplift the wearied mind and to revive the sated senses. Where stained glass would obscure the more-to-be-prized daylight there are the delicate flowing forms in which the old Carthusians in their monasteries, when forbidden to use color, used to enrich clear glass, and thus satisfy their sense of beauty. So valuable is stained glass in a hall that, whenever possible, windows are introduced above the landings or following the turn of the stairs. These windows at different elevations are used as architectural features, and in some of the show houses are the occasions of magnificent effects in stained A stencilled border next the cornice glass. In a prominent show house the has a good effect. If the hall on the other hand has a southern exposure, the color will be chosen to temper the warm light. Such are soft, deep blues, the bronze-greens, which produce a cool shadowy effect without being cold. All that has been Field of the Cloth of Gold is pictured in a blaze of color. They are fortunate indeed who can make of the hall not a passage, but a place of rendezvous. What cheer is conveyed to the eye by the capacious fireplace with burning logs or ruddy coals in Decorative and Social Possibilities of the Hall. III winter, or filled with flowers and foliage in summer. In front of the fireplace is a rug on which child or dog may lie. In the window, which is most likely recessed, is a window-seat filled with pillows. The window has a half sheet of plate-glass through which is seen the panorama of the street, or the beauty of the lawn. The upper part is filled with stained glass. On one side of the fireplace arch are shelves for books. Above is a closed receptacle for convenient wraps and head-coverings. On the other is perhaps a guncase, a place for toys, a few pieces of china, and the service for impromptu cups of tea. What graceful hospitality we would all dispense but for the trouble. To the over-burdened woman every step counts. Yet if everything is at hand how pleasing are these simple rites. The mantel breast affords fine opportunity as a decorative panel, and here there is an opportunity for personal expression. If the master of the household is or has been a military man here is a place to group his arms and trophies of war. Col. Gouraud, Mr. Edison's partner in England, has a country place outside of London. Here he has hall and music-room combined. The hall is vaulted and is decorated with shields on which are painted the badges of ten different army corps of the Civil War in which Col. Gouraud was an officer. On the mantel board, pistols, daggers, swords, bugles, and various accoutrements are grouped. The poker is a dragoon's sword, a steel scabbard is the handle of the shovel, and the peaceful hearth-brush is attached to a Toledo blade. However small the hall is it should always contain in addition to the hatrack or hooks for outer wraps and umbrella-stand at least one seat. If it is only a servant or messenger-boy he should have the chance to rest in waiting. Hall chairs, often truly astonishing in their pretentious stateliness, are provided by furniture dealers. A highbacked baronial chair, or bishop's seat, looks very uncomfortable among surroundings that plainly do not mean to live up to it. The most suitable hall seat for one of our American homes is a settee. It should correspond in the main with the style of the hall. This it may do in color at least, if it is but one of the plain pine ironing-tables which it is the fashion to use as a hall seat disguised under an Indian rug or Bagdad curtain. The old-fashioned, straight-legged, rush-bottomed settees are well adapted for hall seats. It is interesting also to find one of those old-fashioned settee-rockers, in which the baby at one end and the mother with her sewing at the other-doubtless familiar to many women- now transferred to the hall where it serves small people gloriously. In the larger halls we are now considering there are also easy chairs, usually a large square centre - table for books and papers, and, where there is room enough, a piano or organ is frequently found. In one hall that comes to mind, in the end which looked out on a water view, the hall floor was raised |