rooms are lighted from brass sconces in the side panels of the walls, after the fashion of the candles formerly used in the old eighteenth century houses. Diffused lighting is not only more agreeable but more becoming. These are considerations that will always obtain, It is for this reason that lamps are frequently preferred to any other mode of lighting. The beauty of the modern lamp, and the way in which it lends itself to decorative effects, increase its popularity. Its subdued light, however, is too per The dining-room is the temple of the family. However its members may dispose themselves-so many times a day, like the Jews' yearly journey to Jerusalem, they repair to the diningroom and gather around the table, where the smoke of the food like incense is on the air. It must be admitted that the family temple does not always correspond to its ideal significance. The phrase solid comfort is responsible somewhat for this. By some mental mischance of association it has been allied with ponderous furniture, dark colors, heavy curtains, and a general air of stuffiness. This came about in the days of barons of beef, and the heavy days of wining and dining, of which Thackeray wrote. Course dinners and the Russian method of serving have continued to mitigate the labor of dining. The old man is dead whom his neighbor tried to engage in conversation over his soup. At last he spoke : "That there piece of green has gone down without my knowing it," and spoke no more. We take our food now more sparingly and with greater gayety. It is this change the dining-room, in its decoration and its furnishing, has begun to reflect. For the reason that it is the family rendezvous, it should be the most cheerful and most enjoyable room in the house. With this the architect has something to do. If the dining-room can open on to a lawn or garden, or on to a view of the sea, valley, or mountain, it has an immense chance at the start. There is in mind now the dining-room of a great lawyer at Stockbridge, Mass., in the side of which is a great bow-window almost spanning the room that looks out on the far-reaching view of the Berkshire Hills. To the memory comes another of waves tipped with sunlight, and in the ear the music of the ever-sounding sea; again, of dinners, with the shadows lengthening on emerald lawns. But in town it becomes as necessary to shut out unsightly views. For this end are cunningly devised picture windows which admit the light filtered through enchanting forms and colors. Nothing in stained glass has carried further the possibilities of its art. One remembered is a Japanese motive in which a rose blooms on a lonely slope in a setting of blue jewelled glass. Another is a. Velasquez picture of mel warm light of an afternoon sun. These which takes the place of a decorative picture windows of stained glass, that panel. have become a feature of house decoration, may be introduced elsewhere. But in a town house it is the diningroom that is assigned to the indignity of the rear view, and it is the diningroom that is thus happily indemnified. The propriety of wood wainscoting appears in a room in which it is desirable that there shall be nothing to absorb the odors of many dinners. It is for this reason that tapestries, stuffs, and heavy curtains are out of place in It is well that a dining-room should the dining-room. Whether the wood have a dado, with its protecting rail to be mahogany, oak, walnut, cherry, or guard the wall from injury from the painted pine, is indifferent. It is, howdining-room chairs. It is desirable ever, important that it should exhibit that it should be wainscoted. If the superior carpentry, not only for the wainscoting be carried up to a wide virtue that lies in good workmanship, frieze, making an unbroken line with but that it shall furnish no lodgement the sideboard or dresser, the archi- to any form of animal life. The tectural effect is better preserved. amount of labor entailed in city houses, The next best arrangement is a wood by reason of the prosperous colodado, a field carried up to a frieze two nies of water-bugs that dwell in the feet deep, always assuming that the cracks of wainscoting, can scarcely be ceilings are not low, making still a comprehended by the housewife who line with the top of the sideboard, is without the modern conveniences, The Sideboard a Factor in Decoration. 125 as they are sometimes, I fear, mis- a cove, as is done in chimney-pieces. named. In almost all of the newly built houses In modern houses the sideboard is and apartments to rent, sideboards are and form on the æsthetic side yield to gewgaws, balustrades, applied ornaments and mirrors, in order to rival the show sideboards of commerce. Carving furnishes receptacles for dirt, and so valuable an adviser as Robert Edis suggests using instead flat polished, painted panels as appropriate ornament. But panels of wood with nature's graining, made lustrous by man, will satisfy the most fastidious eye. The three color schemes that seem to appeal to the greatest number of people are red and gold, green and blue, yellow and brown. Three diningrooms thus carried out may be described, and will furnish suggestions at least that may be carried out modified by different opportunities and different needs. The wainscoting may be mahogany, cherry brought by treatment to that richness of tint which makes it one of the most beautiful of woods, or plain pine, painted that polished matte red which is seen in Japanese lacquer. Above this is the gold field, which may be merely the plaster overlaid with gold, left free or stencilled in some all over-design with red, red and gold leather paper, or red and white flock paper. Any one of these forms a fine background for those pictures and ornaments that are considdered as appropriately belonging to a dining-room. The frieze above may be of plain gold with a stencilled design, or applied work in papier-mâché tinted in red and gold. If there is no frieze, a deep cornice with flat surfaces leads on to the ceiling in irregular panels of wood edged with moulding; such a cornice. seems to frame in the ceiling, which is overlaid perhaps with those light applied decorations that are produced in composition, or with parchment papers which have slight relief. A suitable frieze for such a room may be described rather from an actual frieze executed by the mistress of the house. This was composed of panels. of jute bagging on stretchers. groundwork was overlaid with gold, and the texture, it may be premised, as seen from the floor, was most admirable. On this gold ground various arrangements of fruits had been laid in with bold broad touch. Over the mantel, for example, the composition was more elaborate. This distinction was effected in those parts of the room that were more prominent. The less important were left with an agreeable blurring of red and gold. It seems that the decorative skill which women in every part of the country have been acquiring might be very usefully put to some such service as this. A decorative frieze, painted by Dora Wheeler Keith, is given in illustration, although not intending to imply that so elaborate a work could be undertaken except by a thoroughly equipped artist. If a brown and blue color scheme |