The stools I like best for the drawing-room are the fine old ones, covered with needlework or brocade, but there are many simpler ones of plain wood with cane insets that are very good for other rooms.  Then there are the long banquettes, or benches, which are so nice in drawing-rooms and hallways and nicest of all in a ballroom.  Indeed, a ballroom needs no other movable furniture; given plenty of these long benches.  They may be of the very simplest description, but when used in a fine room should be covered with a good damask or velvet or some rich fabric.

I have a fine Eighteenth Century banquette in my drawing-room, the frame being carved and gilded and the seat covered with Venetian red velvet.  You will find these gilded stools all over England.  There are a number at Hampton Court Palace.  At Hardwick there are both long and short stools, carved with the dolphin’s scroll and covered with elaborate stuffs.  The older the English house, the more stools are in evidence.  In the early Sixteenth Century joint stools were used in every room.  In the bedrooms they served the purposes of small tables and chairs as well.  There are ever so many fine old walnut stools and the lower stools used for bed-steps to be bought in London shops that make a specialty of old English furniture, and reproductions of them may be bought in the better American shops.  I often wonder why we do not see more bedside stools.  They are so convenient, even though the bed be only moderately high from the floor.  Many of mine are only six inches high, about the height of a fat floor cushion.

[Illustration:  A CREAM-COLORED PORCELAIN STOVE IN A NEW YORK HOUSE]

Which reminds me:  the floor cushion, made of the same velvet made for carpeting, is a modern luxury we can’t afford to ignore.  Lately I have seen such beautiful ones, about three feet long and one foot wide, covered with tapestry, with great gold tassels at the corners.  The possibilities of the floor cushion idea are limitless.  They take the place of the usual footstool in front of the boudoir easy chair, or beside the day bed or chaise-longue, or beside the large bed, for that matter.  They are no longer unsanitary, because with vacuum cleaners they may be kept as clean as chair cushions.  They may be made to fit into almost any room.  I saw a half dozen of them in a dining-room, recently, small square hard ones, covered with the gold colored velvet of the carpet.  They were not more than four or five inches thick, but that is the ideal height for an under-the-table cushion.  Try it.

PORCELAIN STOVES.