If we add this piece of carpeting to the estimates for our room, we still leave a margin for a picture, and make the programme equally adapted to summer and winter.
Besides the chromos, which, when well selected and of the best class, give the charm of color which belongs to expensive paintings, there are engravings which finely reproduce much of the real spirit and beauty of the celebrated pictures of the world. And even this does not exhaust the resources of economical art; for there are few of the renowned statues, whether of antiquity or of modern times, that have not been accurately copied in plaster casts; and a few statuettes, costing perhaps five or six dollars each, will give a really elegant finish to your rooms-providing always that they are selected with discrimination and taste.
The educating influence of these works of art can hardly be over- estimated. Surrounded by such suggestions of the beautiful, and such reminders of history and art, children are constantly trained to correctness of tote and refinement of thought, and stimulated—sometimes to efforts at artistic imitation, always to the eager and intelligent inquiry about the scenes, the places, the incidents represented. Just here, perhaps, we are met by some who grant all that we say on the subject of decoration by works of art, and who yet impatiently exclaim, "But I have no money to spare for any thing of this sort. I am condemned to an absolute bareness, and beauty in my case is not to be thought of."
Are you sure, my friend? If you live in the country, or can get into the country, and have your eyes opened and your wits about you, your house need not be condemned to an absolute bareness. Not so long as the woods are full of beautiful ferns and mosses, while every swamp shakes and nods with tremulous grasses, need you feel yourself an utterly disinherited child of nature, and deprived of its artistic use.
For example: Take an old tin pan condemned to the retired list by reason of holes in the bottom, get twenty-five cents' worth of green paint for this and other purposes, and paint it. The holes in the bottom are a recommendation for its new service. If there are no holes, you must drill two or three, as drainage is essential. Now put a layer one inch deep of broken charcoal and potsherds over the bottom, and then soil, in the following proportions:
Two fourths wood-soil, such as you find in forests, under trees.
One fourth clean sand.
One fourth meadow-soil, taken from under fresh turf. Mix with this some charcoal dust.
In this soil plant all sorts of ferns, together with some few swamp-grasses; and around the edge put a border of money-plant or periwinkle to hang over. This will need to be watered once or twice a week, and it will grow and thrive all summer long in a corner of your room. Should you prefer, you can suspend it by wires and make a hanging-basket.—Ferns and wood-grasses need not have sunshine—they grow well in shadowy places.
On this same principle you can convert a salt-box or an old drum of figs into a hanging-basket. Tack bark and pine-cones and moss upon the outside of it, drill holes and pass wires through it, and you have a woodland hanging-basket, which will hang and grow in any corner of your house.