Two night pillows to a bed are the usual allowance.  Good live-goose feather pillows sell for from $3 to $7, depending on the size, and should be provided with extra cotton slips, buttoning on, to protect the tick.  The feather bolster has had its day.  Its descendant, the bedroll of hair, paste-board, or papier mache, is for ornament only, and is used as a finish at the head of the bed with fancy draperies or coverings, which it matches.  Shams, too, are going out, with other things which are not what they seem.  The thought of untidiness always underlies their freshness, and so we prefer to put the night pillows in the closet during the day and let the bedroll or the day pillows take their place.  If there is a shortage of pillows, the night cases can be exchanged for pretty ruffled ones of lawn, muslin, dimity, or linen.  If one still clings to shams, corresponding sheet shams should also be used.

BED DECORATION

There remains yet to be found anything more airily, chastely dainty than the all-white bed with its plain or fringed Marseilles spread and its ruffled pillows.  Though drapery has a picturesque effect, it interferes to a certain extent with the free circulation of air, and affords a lurking place for our insidious enemy—­the microbe.  If used at all, it should only be in a large, well-ventilated room, and sparingly, for a fussy, overloaded bed looks anything but restful.  If considerable color has already been introduced into the room, the bed drapery, cover, and valance should be of some thin white washable material—­dimity, Swiss, and the like.  But with plain papers, flowered cretonne, chintz, etc., are appropriate.  The canopy top is covered with the material, stretched smooth, and either plain or plaited, and the drapery gathered about the back, sides, and front of this, from which it hangs in soft folds to within two or three inches of the floor.  It should be simply tied back.  The canopy projects not more than half a yard beyond the head of the bed, and may be either oblong or semicircular.  Very thin white material is used over a color.  Whatever the material, it must, of course, be washable and kept immaculate.  The newest bed, all enameled and with a bent bar of iron at head and foot, lends itself to a pretty style of drapery, which is simply a plain, fitted white slip-over case for head and foot, finished with a valance of the same depth as that of the counterpane, which leaves no metal visible anywhere about the bed.  Pretty Marseilles spreads may be had for $3; cheaper ones in honeycomb follow the same designs.  The white spread, with a colored thread introduced, may answer for the maid’s room—­never for the mistress’s.

SIMPLICITY

When two persons occupy a room, twin beds furnished exactly alike are preferable to the double bed.  An exclusively man’s room demands somewhat different treatment, though the general principles of furnishing apply to all bedrooms.  A man abhors drapery, and usually prefers an ascetic simplicity to what he is pleased to term “flub-dubs.”  His notions of art are liable to express themselves in pipes, steins, and other masculine bric-a-brac; but whatever his wills and wonts on the furnishing question, his room must show care and attention.