The first object in furnishing a bare room is to make it habitable,—­that is useful.  Take the kitchen, for example, and usefulness is practically the sole object in fitting it up.  And the curious thing about it all is that it cannot help being beautiful in a homely, motherly way, for it exemplifies one of the strongest elements of all beauty and that is service.  The kitchen may be a very humble place but if more women would make a study of their kitchens and then take thought, it is likely that the rest of their houses would be in much better taste.  A thing that is useful, even as with some well-worn homely old woman who has led a good and helpful life, always acquires a beauty of its own.  It may be hard for girls to see this but it is there, and in time it will be seen.  Just as it is essentially more beautiful to have a clean, strong body rather than a pretty face and a body that is not what it ought to be, so is it more truly beautiful to have articles of furnishing in our rooms, in study or kitchen, that are of indispensable genuine use.

Take the gaudy ambitious study one girl has made for herself.  It is defaced by the presence of articles of no value at all in the world of needs; there is nothing in it that is genuinely beautiful and nothing that is substantially useful.  The furniture is almost too cheap to stand on its own legs, and the colours would certainly never wash and not even wear.  This room is a junk-shop of new, useless, unattractive objects of no virtue,—­in short, a most unpleasant place in which to live.  Have you ever considered what gives even the simplest clothes for distinctive occasions a beauty of their own?  It is fitness.  And it is this same fitness which tells so much in furnishing a room.  It might be said of certain dresses that they “go together,” that is, they are harmonious, they belong together, they have, like some people, the beauty of agreeing with themselves, and a very desirable sort of beauty it is.  Just as clothes are an expression of the people who wear them, so are rooms an expression of the people who live in them.  No well-bred girl cares for tawdry, cheap, over-ornamented clothes.  She is made uncomfortable even at the very thought of having to wear such things.  She should suffer just as much discomfort on the score of a cheaply furnished (and by “cheap” here I do not mean inexpensive—­whitewash and deal intelligently used may create a beautiful room), overcrowded and over-ornamented study.

What is the meaning of the room which is your school centre for the time being?  It is an intimate place where a girl may have her friends and good times; it is a retreat and it is a workshop.  It is the girl’s home centre away from home, the place from which she will lead her life, in its expression attractive or unattractive, like her or unlike her.  To intend that this room in beauty, in cleanliness, in order, shall be the best expression possible of the girl’s best self is the ideal to set for the school study.