In the matters pertaining to decoration within the house as well as beautifying its surroundings, the country-and the city-dweller meet on equal terms.  Their problems may differ in detail, but the principles to be studied are the same.  Here our art courses must be made to contribute their share to the homemaker’s training.  We must strike the keynote of simplicity, both within and without, and must teach girls especially the value of carefully thought-out color schemes and decorating plans, to be carried out by different people in the materials and workmanship suited to their purses.  They must learn that expense is not necessarily a synonym for beauty; they must know the characteristics of fabrics and other decorative materials; and they must be trained to recognize the qualities for which expenditure of money and effort are worth while.

In the designing of school buildings nowadays close attention is paid to beauty of architecture, symmetry of form, convenience of arrangement, and durable but artistic furnishings.  All unwittingly the child receives an aesthetic training through his daily life in the midst of attractive surroundings.

Many of our rural schools are doing excellent work in teaching children to beautify the school grounds.  Some, of them go farther and interest their pupils in attacking the problem of improving outside conditions at home.  Every child whose mind is thus turned in the direction of attractive home grounds has unconsciously taken a step toward one branch of efficient homemaking.  If it were possible to give pupils the foundation principles of landscape gardening, they might learn to see with a trained eye the problems they will otherwise attack blindly.

[Illustration:  An example of the newer architecture.  An artistic approach to a school has a daily effect on the mind of the child]

[Illustration:  Photograph by Brown Bros.  Rural school with flower bed.  Many of the rural schools are doing excellent work in teaching children to beautify the school grounds]

With the house built and ready for its furniture, the selection of the latter becomes both part of the scheme of decoration and part also of the domestic plans for securing comfort and inspiring surroundings.  The same principles of beauty and utility, restfulness, comfort, and suitability, are called into requisition.  The trained housewife will have an eye toward future dusting and will choose the less ornate articles.  The same person, in her capacity as the mother of citizens, will see that chairs are comfortable to sit in, that tables and desks are the right height for work, that book cases and cabinets are sufficient in number and size to take care of the family treasures.  She will use pictures sparingly and choose them to inspire.  Perhaps, most of all, the woman with the trained mind will know how to avoid a superfluity of furniture in her rooms.  She will be educated to the beauty of well-planned spaces and will not feel obliged to fill every nook and corner with chairs or tables or sofas or other pieces of furniture which merely “fill the space.”