I always make provision for writing in dressing-rooms—­a sliding shelf in the dressing-table, and a shallow drawer for pencils and paper—­and I have adequate writing facilities in the servants’ quarters, so that there may be no excuse for forgetting orders or messages.  This seems to me absolutely necessary in our modern domestic routine:  it is part of the business principle we borrow from the efficient office routine of our men folk.  The dining-room and the bathrooms are the only places where the writing-table, in one form or another, isn’t required.

I like the long flat tables or small desks much better than the huge roll-top affairs or the heavy desks built after the fashion of the old armoire.  If the room is large enough, a secretary after an Eighteenth Century model will be a beautiful and distinguished piece of furniture.  I have such a secretary in my own sitting-room, a chest of drawers surmounted by a cabinet of shelves with glass doors, but I do not use it as a desk.  I use the shelves for my old china and porcelains, and the drawers for pamphlets and the thousand and one things that are too flimsily bound for bookshelves.  Of course, if one has a large correspondence and uses one’s home as an office, it is better to have a large desk with a top which closes.  I prefer tables, and I have them made big enough to hold all my papers, big enough to spread out on.

There are dozens of enchanting small desks that are exactly right for guest-rooms, the extremely feminine desks that come from old France.  One of the most fascinating ones is copied from a bureau de toilette that belonged to Marie Antoinette.  In those days the writing of letters and the making of a toilet went together.  This old desk has a drawer filled with compartments for toilet things, powders and perfumes and patches, and above this vanity-drawer there is the usual shelf for writing, and compartments for paper and letters.  The desk itself suggests brocade flounces and powdered hair, so exquisitely is it constructed of tulipwood and inlaid with other woods of many colors.

Then there are the small desks made by modern furniture-makers, just large enough to hold a blotting-pad, a paper rack, and a pair of candlesticks.  There is always a shallow drawer for writing materials.  Such a desk may be decorated to match the chintzes of any small bedroom.

If it isn’t possible for you to have a desk in each guest-room, there should be a little writing-room somewhere apart from the family living-room.  If you live in one of those old-fashioned houses intersected by great halls with much wasted space on the upper floors, you may make a little writing-room of one of the hall-ends, and screen it from the rest of the hall with a high standing screen.  If you have a house of the other extreme type, a city house with little hall bedrooms, use one of these little rooms for a writing-room.  You will require a desk well stocked with stationery, and all the things the writer will need; a shelf of address books and reference books—­with a dictionary, of course; many pens and pencils and fresh blotters, and so forth.  Of course, you may have ever so many more things, but it isn’t necessary.  Better a quiet corner with one chair and a desk, than the elaborate library with its superb fittings where people come and go.