THE greatest art work the individual has to do is the building of a home. "A small and inexpensive house may be the House Beautiful," says Edmund Russell. A famous architect once wrote that he could furnish a plan for a house of a given size and cost without knowing whether the owner was a millionaire or a day laborer. But if he wanted a home the case was different. "I desire then to know his antecedents, how he made his money, the size of his family, the number of his servants, and how his daughters spend their time: whether they are domestic, musical, literary or stylish. I want to know the number and quality of his guests, whether he drinks wine with his dinner, and his views on sanitary questions; for this home-building is not mere spending, it is the shaping of human destiny."
In a home things must be beautiful and true and good, and as a celebrated art critic says, "related to us, belonging to us, expressing us at our best; our taste and culture, our personal likings, our comforts and needs, and not merely the high-tide mark of our purses."
Fireplaces and Windows.
We are all of us by nature fire worshipers and the altar of every home is, or should be, the glowing, open fire. Next to this are the great, clear windows meant to admit the glorious glances of the fire worshiper's sun.
As to the first, "if you can have but one, the house or the fireplace, give up the house and keep the fire. If you wish to test the soundness of this advice, build a house, furnish it extravagantly and supply furnace heat to all but one room, and in that room build upon an ample hearth a glowing fire of hickory logs, and in the presence of that genial blaze, upon the bare floor of that unfurnished room, will gather the united household." The broader this family hearth the better. The old English baronial halls with their mighty fireplaces and their great stone hearths had more of light and beauty than all our modern improvements.
ARTISTIC FIREPLACE.
Next come the broad, open windows. Better one window five feet wide than two of two and a half feet. Better for light, warmth or interior furnishing, and better for the illuminating effect, upon the whole apartment.