Of course one may use colour as one can speak a language, purely by imitation and memory, but it is not absolutely reliable practice; and just here comes in the necessity for professional advice.

There are many difficulties in the accomplishment of a perfect house-interior which few householders have had the time or experience to cope with, and yet the fact remains that each mistress of a house believes that unless she vanquishes all difficulties and comes out triumphantly with colours flying at the housetop and enjoyment and admiration following her efforts, she has failed in something which she should have been perfectly able to accomplish.  But the obligation is certainly a forced one.  It is the result of the modern awakening to the effect of many heretofore unrecognized influences in our lives and the lives and characters of our children.  A beautiful home is undoubtedly a great means of education, and of that best of all education which is unconscious.  To grow up in such a one means a much more complete and perfect man or woman than would be possible without that particular influence.

But a perfect home is never created all at once and by one person, and let the anxious house-mistress take comfort in the thought.  She should also remember that it is in the nature of beauty to grow, and that a well-rounded and beautiful family life adds its quota day by day.  Every book, every sketch or picture—­every carefully selected or characteristic object brought into the home adds to and makes a part of a beautiful whole, and no house can be absolutely perfect without all these evidences of family life.

It can be made ready for them, completely and perfectly ready, by professional skill and knowledge; but if it remained just where the interior artist or decorator left it, it would have no more of the sentiment of domesticity than a statue.

CHAPTER II

CHARACTER IN HOUSES

“For the created still doth shadow forth the mind and will which made it.

“Thou art the very mould of thy creator.”

It needs the combined personality of the family to make the character of the house.  No one could say of a house which has family character, “It is one of ——­’s houses” (naming one or another successful decorator), because the decorator would have done only what it was his business to do—­used technical and artistic knowledge in preparing a proper and correct background for family life.  Even in doing that, he must consult family tastes and idiosyncracies if he has the reverence for individuality which belongs to the true artist.

A domestic interior is a thing to which he should give knowledge and not personality, and the puzzled home-maker, who understands that her world expects correct use of means of beauty, as well as character and originality in her home, need not feel that to secure the one she must sacrifice the other.