decorative that no one ever enters my room without noticing them and asking me where they are to be procured. I have had mine some years now, but extremely nice ones are made by Mr. Smee, the prices beginning at 6l. 6s. in plain deal ready for painting any special hue to suit any room, to 10l. 10s. each in oak or walnut; and I very strongly recommend them to people who really wish their home to be artistic, and not a mere warehouse for necessary furniture, for while they answer the same purpose as a sideboard, they are pretty to look at, and would not be out of place in an ordinary sitting-room.
Up to this present moment I have said nothing about the colour or arrangement of the walls of the dining-room, and so, before proceeding to dilate on the rest of the furniture, I will here give my readers a few hints on this subject. In the first place, then, let all people about to furnish determine that their dining-room shall be cheerful somehow, and let them eschew anything like dark colours or dingy papers, refusing to listen to the voice of the charmer, who has his ‘appropriate’ designs to sell, and does not care in the least for your ideas on the subject; and, having mentally selected the colour that appeals to their taste, let them refuse manfully to be talked out of their purpose by a man who has no ideas beyond the conventional ones of dark colours for a dining and light ones for a drawing-room.
For those people who can afford it, I advise invariably a plain gold Japanese leather paper, with a bold red and gold leather paper as a dado. The plain paper is 4s. 6d. a piece of nine yards, French or narrow width; the dado paper is 1s. 6d. a yard. All the paint in the room should be the exact shade of the red of the ground of the paper, and the painter should be instructed to keep entirely to one shade of paint, to do no ‘picking out’ or embellishments at all, but to paint wainscot, shutters, dado rail, and doors alike in one uniform shade of a good red, mixing the last coat with varnish, or else giving one coat of Mr. Aspinall’s invaluable enamel paint, which gives a smooth and polished appearance, particularly suitable for this special tint of red. The dado rail is sold by Maple ready to put up at 2¼d. a foot; thus it would be easy for any one to calculate exactly how much such a scheme of decoration would cost. Then the ceiling should be papered in pale yellow and white. The cornice should in no case be outlined or ‘picked out’ with colours, but should be a uniform shade of cream, thus just shading into the paper without calling attention to itself.
Here let me pause for one moment to impress emphatically on my readers the great necessity of recollecting that paint and paper are after all only a background to oneself and one’s belongings, and therefore are not to be brought unduly forward. The paint must always be kept one shade of one colour; the cornice must always be coloured a deep cream, and the necessary