verdure tapestries, and some of them have fine blues and greens suggestive of Gobelin.  These stuffs are very wide and comparatively inexpensive.  I thoroughly advise a stuff of this kind, but I heartily condemn the imitations of the old tapestries that are covered with large figures and intricate designs.  These old tapestries are as distinguished for their colors, their textures, and their very crudities as for their supreme beauty of coloring.  It would be foolish to imitate them.

As for windows and their curtains—­I could write a book about them!  A window is such a gay, animate thing.  By day it should be full of sunshine, and if it frames a view worth seeing, the view should be a part of it.  By night the window should be hidden by soft curtains that have been drawn to the side during the sunshiny hours.

In most houses there is somewhere a group of windows that calls for an especial kind of curtain.  If these windows look out over a pleasant garden, or upon a vista of fields and trees, or even upon a striking sky-line of housetops, you will be wise to use a thin, sheer glass curtain through which you can look out, but which protects you from the gaze of passers-by.  If your group of windows is so placed that there is no danger of people passing and looking in, then a short sash curtain of swiss muslin is all that you require, with inside curtains of some heavier fabric—­chintz or linen or silk—­that can be drawn at night.

If you are building a new house I strongly advise you to have at least one room with a group of deep windows, made up of small panes of leaded glass, and a broad window-seat built beneath them.  There is something so pleasant and mellow in leaded glass, particularly when the glass itself has an uneven, colorful quality.  When windows are treated thus architecturally they need no glass curtains.  They need only side curtains of some deep-toned fabric.

[Illustration:  By permission of the Butterick Publishing Co.  BLACK CHINTZ USED IN A DRESSING-ROOM]

As for your single windows, when you are planning them you will be wise to have the sashes so placed that a broad sill will be possible.  There is nothing pleasanter than a broad window sill at a convenient height from the floor.  The tendency of American builders nowadays is to use two large glass sashes instead of the small or medium-sized panes of older times.

This is very bad from the standpoint of the architect, because these huge squares of glass suggest holes in the wall, whereas the square or oblong panes with their straight frames and bars advertise their suitability.  The housewife’s objection to small panes is that they are harder to clean than the large ones, but this objection is not worthy of consideration.  If we really wish to make our houses look as if they were built for permanency we should consider everything that makes for beauty and harmony and hominess.  There is nothing more interesting than a cottage window sash of small square panes of glass unless it be the diamond-paned casement window of an old English house.  Such windows are obviously windows.  The huge sheets of plate glass that people are so proud of are all very well for shops, but they are seldom right in small houses.