How far things beautiful alone, are to be allowed place in our rooms I am not prepared to say. Thoreau, you will remember, threw away his fossil, the only ornament in his room, because it required dusting. While not suggesting that we should follow his example to such an extreme, I yet think that in retaining his spade and his axe he retained more of true decoration. And I believe in the main that the more adapted to its use anything is, the more graceful will it be in shape. The bent handle of the axe, more comfortable to hold, is also more beautiful than the straight, and in the degree the curve and form of the handle is adapted to its uses as an axe, by just so much the more beautiful it becomes.
The charm of the farmhouse kitchen, with everything in its place because of its usefulness, can of course be increased to an unlimited extent by making all the useful articles also beautiful in form, and harmonious in color. This is the line on which alone, I contend, a really beautiful room is to be got; and I would discourage all attempts at adornment by finding places for useless things.
I am glad to think that, owing to the great increase of education and employment among ladies, there will be less and less call for the old-fashioned drawing room; ladies will want a room to work in, not to dawdle in.
Pardon me if I seem to have dwelt over long on some of these difficulties in the way of designing really beautiful rooms. I have done so in the belief that they do not, as at first may appear, lie outside our province. For I believe, as professional men, we have just such power of influencing our clients by helping them towards a more natural life as the doctor has in such matters as diet; and particularly is this power evident in the domestic branch of the profession, with which we are dealing.
In building a man’s shell for him we certainly can influence very largely the life he will live within it; and while it is our duty to make that shell fit the life as well as possible, it is surely also our privilege to make it conduce to the realisation of the best of which he is capable.
In so far as we do this, we shall rise above the mere planner of houses and take our places in the work of planning and moulding the future life of the people.
BARRY PARKER.
THE DIGNITY OF ALL TRUE ART.
