If you are inclined to a hasty temper, for instance, you should not live in a room in which the prevailing note is red.  On the other hand, a timid, delicate nature could often gain courage and poise by living in surroundings of rich red tones, the tones of the old Italian damasks in which the primitive colors of the Middle Ages have been handed down to us.  No half shades, no blending of tender tones are needed in an age of iron nerves.  People worked hard, and they got downright blues and reds and greens—­primitive colors, all.  Nowadays, we must consider the effect of color on our nerves, our eyes, our moods, everything.

Love of color is an emotional matter, just as much as love of music.  The strongest, the most intense, feeling I have about decoration is my love of color.  I have felt as intimate a satisfaction at St. Mark’s at twilight as I ever felt at any opera, though I love music.

Color!  The very word would suggest warm and agreeable arrangement of tones, a pleasing and encouraging atmosphere which is full of life.  We say that one woman is “so full of color,” when she is alert and happy and vividly alive.  We say another woman is “colorless,” because she is bleak and chilling and unfriendly.  We demand that certain music shall be full of color, and we always seek color in the pages of our favorite books.  One poet has color and to spare, another is cynical and hard and—­gray.  We think and criticize from the standpoint of an appreciation of color, although often we have not that appreciation.

There is all the difference in the world between the person who appreciates color and the person who “likes colors.”  The child, playing with his broken toys and bits of gay china and glass, the American Indian with his gorgeous blankets and baskets and beads—­all these primitive minds enjoy the combination of vivid tones, but they have no more feeling for color than a blind man.  The appreciation of color is a subtle and intellectual quality.

Sparrow, the Englishman who has written so many books on housefurnishing, says:  “Colors are like musical notes and chords, while color is a pleasing result of their artistic use in a combined way.  So colors are means to an end, while color is the end itself.  The first are tools, while the other is a distinctive harmony in art composed of many lines and shades.”

We are aware that some people are “color-blind,” but we do not take the trouble to ascertain whether the majority of people see colors crudely.  I suppose there are as many color-blind people as there are people who have a deep feeling for color, and the great masses of people in between, while they know colors one from another, have no appreciation of hue.  Just as surely, there are some people who cannot tell one tune from another and some people who have a deep and passionate feeling for music, while the rest—­the great majority of people—­can follow a tune and sing a hymn, but they can go no deeper into music than that.