The bedrooms of a house are a pretty sure test of the liberality of mind and understanding of character of the mother or house-ruler.  As each room is in a certain sense the home of the individual occupant, almost the shell of his or her mind, there will be something narrow and despotic in the house-rules if this is not allowed.  Yet, even individuality of taste and expression must scrupulously follow sanitary laws in the furnishing of the bedroom.  “Stuffy things” of any sort should be avoided.  The study should be to make it beautiful without such things, and a liberal use of washable textiles in curtains, portieres, bed and table covers, will give quite as much sense of luxury as heavily papered walls and costly upholstery.  In fact, one may run through all the variations from the daintiest and most befrilled and elegant of guests’ bedrooms, to the “boys’ room,” which includes all or any of the various implements of sport or the hobbies of the boy collector, and yet keep inviolate the principles of harmony, colour, and appropriateness to use, and so accomplish beauty.

The absolute ruling of light, air, and cleanliness are quite compatible with individual expression.

It is this characteristic aspect of the different rooms which makes up the beauty of the house as a whole.  If the purpose of each is left to develop itself through good conditions, the whole will make that most delightful of earthly things, a beautiful home.

CHAPTER VI

KITCHENS

The kitchen is an important part of the perfect house and should be a recognised sharer in its quality of beauty; not alone the beauty which consists of a successful adaptation of means to ends, but the kind which is independently and positively attractive to the eye.

In costly houses it is not hard to attain this quality or the rarer one of a union of beauty, with perfect adaptation to use; but where it must be reached by comparatively inexpensive methods, the difficulty is greater.

Tiled walls, impervious to moisture, and repellent of fumes, are ideal boundaries of a kitchen, and may be beautiful in colour, as well as virtuous in conduct.  They may even be laid with gradations of alluring mineral tints, but, of course, this is out of the question in cheap buildings; and in demonstrating the possibility of beauty and intrinsic merit in small and comparatively inexpensive houses, tiles and marbles must be ruled out of the scheme of kitchen perfection.  Plaster, painted in agreeable tints of oil colour is commendable, but one can do better by covering the walls with the highly enamelled oil-cloth commonly used for kitchen tables and shelves.  This material is quite marvellous in its combination of use and effect.  Its possibilities were discovered by a young housewife whose small kitchen formed part of a city apartment, and whose practical sense was joined to a discursive imagination.