Fortunately there has been a great deal of attention paid to good cabinet work within the last few years, and although the method of its making lacks the human motive and the human interest of former days—­it is still a good expression of the art of to-day, and at its best, worthy to be carried down with the generations as one of the steps in the evolutions of time.  What we have to do, is to learn to discriminate between good and bad, to appreciate the best in design and workmanship, even although we cannot afford to buy it.  In this case we should learn to do with less.  As a rule our houses are crowded.  If we are able to buy a few good things, we are apt instead to buy many only moderately good, for lavish possession seems to be a sort of passion, or birthright, of Americans.  It follows that we fill our houses with heterogeneous collections of furniture, new and old, good and bad, appropriate or inappropriate, as the case may be, with a result of living in seeming luxury, but a luxury without proper selection or true value.  To have less would in many cases be to have more—­more tranquillity of life, more ease of mind, more knowledge and more real enjoyment.

There is another principle which can be brought into play in this case, and that is the one of buying—­not a costly kind of thing, but the best of its kind.  If it is a choice in chairs, for instance, let it be the best cane-seated, or rush-bottomed chair that is made, instead of the second or third best upholstered or leather-covered one.  If it is a question of tables, buy the simplest form made of flawless wood and with best finish, instead of a bargain in elaborately turned or scantily carved material.  If it is in bedsteads, a plain brass, or good enamelled iron or a simple form in black walnut, instead of a cheap inlaid wood—­and so on through the whole category.  A good chintz or cotton is better for draperies, than flimsy silk or brocade; and when all is done the very spirit of truth will sit enthroned in the household, and we shall find that all things have been brought into harmony by her laws.

[Illustration:  SOFA DESIGNED BY MRS. CANDACE WHEELER FOR NEW LIBRARY IN “WOMAN’S BUILDING,” COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION]

Although the furnishing of a house should be one of the most painstaking and studied of pursuits, there is certainly nothing which is at the same time so fascinating and so flattering in its promise of future enjoyment.  It is like the making of a picture as far as possibility of beauty is concerned, but a picture within and against which one’s life, and the life of the family, is to be lived.  It is a bit of creative art in itself, and one which concerns us so closely as to be a very part of us.  We enjoy every separate thing we may find or select or procure—­not only for the beauty and goodness which is in it, but for its contribution to the general whole.  And in knowledge of applied and manufactured art, the furnishing of a house is truly “the beginning of wisdom.”  One learns to appreciate what is excellent in the new, from study and appreciation of quality in the old.