My dear architect:  We will let the sliding-doors slide, but hold on to the bay-windows.  I’ve acted upon your suggestion, and called on Miss Jane to help me through the kitchen.  She is studying the matter and will report to you soon.  Meantime, will you give directions about other inside work?  I want it to be ornamental and modern in style.  Shall finish mostly in hard wood,—­oak, walnut, or chestnut, perhaps mahogany and maple.  Please give me your opinion on that point.  What do you think of graining where hard wood is not used?  Shall probably carpet throughout, and hope you will not change dimensions of rooms to spoil the fit of them.  What about wainscoting halls or any of the rooms?  Suppose common floors will answer, and common plastering for the walls, if I paper; but shall I,—­or do you recommend frescoing; and what do you say to cornices and other stucco-work?

I’ve no time to go over all the points in your last.  Some of them seem well put, others a little wild.  But I give them a fair hearing and suppose you won’t insist upon my adopting them.  Am beginning to think I’ve a good deal to learn, and ought, I suppose, to be well satisfied to learn, in some other school than that of experience.

Truly,

Fred.

LETTER XXVII.

From the Architect.

Fashion and ornament, hard wood and paint.

Dear Fred:  The tone of your last, just received, is hopeful.  Conviction of ignorance is the only foundation on which Wisdom, or any other man, ever builded a house.  But it must be a genuine agony, as I’m sure it is in your case; so you are forgiven for asking more questions in half a dozen lines than I can answer fully in a score of pages.  Instead of taking them up separately, I might give you a chapter of first principles, hoping you would then need no special directions; but I find the value of most general observations lies, like Bunsby’s, in the application of ’em.  It’s not enough to say, “Be honest and upright.”  Each particular falsehood and folly must be summoned, tried, and condemned.

You ask for a style of finish that must be ornamental and modern.  But I don’t understand your meaning; shall need more definite instruction.  Is your house intended for ornamental purposes, as summer-houses, dove-cots, bird-cages, and the like, often are?  Is it to be a museum, art-gallery, or memorial hall?  Diamonds and pearls are commonly thought ornamental to those who can afford them; from pink plaster images and china vases to bronze dragons and Florentine mosaics, there is an endless variety of ornaments for domestic apartments.  I’ve heard of a woman who was an ornament to her husband, and of a man who ornamented a whole town; but when you ask me to furnish you an ornamental style of finishing your house, I’m obliged to ask for particulars.