CHAPTER IV.

Color and Light.

F you have ever studied the matter at all you have been convinced that color plays an important part in the comfort, as well as in the luxury of life. There are great differences in the degree of appreciation of color which people have, and these differences are determined largely by association and by training. Of the colorblind we are not just now thinking, but of those who misuse color. For instance, you observe in the dress of the Italian peasants who immigrate to our country, a lavish use of what may be called crude and violent color. They wear intense and brilliant purples, scarlets and greens. Very often there is no attempt at harmony or at blending; but the colors, strong in themselves, are just in that sort of extreme contrast which sets one's very teeth on edge, if she prefers harmony and a gentle gradation of tint and hue.

We have learned in these days to value soft shadings of color in our houses; the melting of one dim tint in another, so that our rooms rest us, rather than weary our eyes. Persons who go to Italy to reside tell us that in engaging a furnished apartment in Rome or Florence they find, as a rule, the use of strong primitive colors, which almost swear at one another in walls and curtains. In Germany, there is apt to be less of the startling in combination; but the effect is often bare and cold. The same may be said of Holland. In England and Scotland, a homely comfort prevails; but it is only where people in any country have made a study of color that they are able to show good effects in its use.

An artist tells us that there are colors which are warm and others which are cold. All colors that approach yellow in their tone, are warm. The coldest of all the colors is blue. Red is colder than yellow and warmer than blue. If we mix a little yellow with blue, thus making a somewhat greenish blue, it is a warm blue; mixed with a little red, it approaches purple, but is still a cold blue, but not so cold as pure cold blue that has no suggestion of green. A little yellow mixed with red makes the red warmer; a little blue mixed with red imparts a cold tint. Yellow mixed with red becomes warmer; mixed with blue it becomes a colder yellow. Pure white mixed with pure yellow makes a golden yellow. The purples are cold as they approach blue and warm as they approach red; the greens are cold as they approach blue and warm as they approach yellow. White

may be cold or warm; a warm white is yellowish; a cold white is blueish. Lavender is a cold color, being a purple that is much mixed with cold white and blue. Violet is a warm color in comparison, being a purple much mixed with red and a little warm white.

These hints given by an artist may help one in determining the color she will have on her rooms. For instance, a woman is considering of what tone she will have her walls and ceiling. She must think whether the room faces the sun and will be flooded with pleasant sunshine, or whether it has a northern exposure and will therefore be cold and dim. In the latter case, she will do well to have plenty of yellow in the tint she chooses for her papering or her kalsomining, and, if possible, she will hang curtains of yellow silk or cretonne of some thinner yellow fabric in her windows. A great deal of yellow in a room which has little sunlight somehow produces an effect of the sun. In such a room, one may to advantage have wall paper of a warm soft red and a carpet of wood brown, with a glimmer of red in it here and there.

I know of a house in New York City which stands on the shady side of a very closely built street. It has windows only in front; none whatever in the rear, and no sunshine ever gets into the house; yet the whole effect of the furnishing is singularly cheerful. The coloring of the rooms and furniture throughout is white and yellow. All the woodwork is white; the walls are white; the draperies are yellow; the window seats are cushioned with yellow and there is nothing dark or heavy anywhere in the furnishing of the house. All sombre tints and tones are avoided, so that it comes to one as a surprise that the house should be really one which gets no sunlight. The reason that there are no back windows is that the house is built straight up against the side wall of another house on another street. People who live where they have ample room to have windows on every side of the house, and God's free air and sunlight coming at every turn, should not envy those whose lot is cast in the midst of towns. Necessarily, many people in a city like New York have to live, or at least sleep, in dark rooms to which the sunlight never penetrates, and this is a great disadvantage.

In choosing a color of paint or a papering for one's wall, it is well to remember that we have to live a long time with a house dressed in one sort of paint and paper. The papering which looks beautiful in a roll on the counter of the man who sells it, may become terribly trying to you when you are obliged to see it by daylight and candle light for ten or twelve years; and if you are to have a fit of sickness or a period of weakness and nervous depression, it is well to think whether you could then endure it in a room which might be trying to your senses during days when you were shut in from out of doors. It is a good plan to let every member of the family give advice on so important a subject as the furnishing of a house. One person should not force his or her ideas on the rest; but

where it is possible all should have a voice in deciding. A home is a composite affair in which, from the least to the greatest all have a stake.

Kalsomining is so soft and pleasing in the surface it presents, that no one need hesitate in choosing it for ceiling or walls.

A home does not shoot up like Jonah's garden in a night. It is the growth and development of months and years; and one beautiful thing about it is that it is never finished; one may always find something to improve, something to adorn, something to beautify. A home is the one thing on earth which keeps us young and glad, the one Eden left us here below.

In the hanging of pictures in a house, one must be guided a little by the height of the ceiling. As a rule, pictures should not be hung above the level of the eyes. They are better hung too low than too high. It is wise to avoid too much formality in their arrangement; they look better hung irregularly, and the framing may be as varied as the purse or the taste of the owner. One should always have pictures about a house, and they need not necessarily be costly in these days when every illustrated paper and magazine shows designs which lend themselves most beautifully to artistic effect. In a girl's room recently, I was interested to see a collection of extremely beautiful pictures taken from current periodicals and simply tacked up without frames here and there on the wall. With a few photographs, a vase or two, and her hanging shelves, where beautiful books abounded, her room was exceedingly tasteful and pretty, a fit and dainty setting for her sweet self.

What do you understand by the word picturesque? To one person it bears one, and to another a quite different meaning. We talk of a picturesque landscape, of a picturesque house, of a picturesque parlor. My idea of the picturesque is the harmonious, the soft, the restful, the tranquilizing. I do not like to see in any house a jumble of articles carelessly thrown together with no central idea around which they are grouped. The tendency lately has been to multiply objects simply because they are pretty in themselves, with no special relation of each to the other. Therefore, we find some rooms which are filled with a miscellaneous collection of bric-a-brac, rooms which suggest shops or museums much more than they resemble homes. A vase, a statuette, a lamp, should be a delightful thing in itself; then it should be placed where its position in the room shows it to advantage-the lamp on a table in a corner, conveying the idea that people will sit beside it to read or to talk; the vase or statuette against a little curtain or screen which will bring out the purity of its tone and the beauty of its shape.

Nothing is more beautiful in a room than a few plants in good condition, or a cluster of palms and rubber plants, forming a verdant spot on which the eye can rest. It is a good plan to sit down in different parts of your rooms and see how the grouping of the furniture pleases you. Try the effect of a different.

arrangement.

66

Say to yourself, How would I like this if I saw it in the house of a friend?" Avoid as far as you can all autumn leaves, crystallized grasses, feathery plumes, all Pampas and Japanese fans stuck here and there. All these things detract from the grace and dignity of a room, and usually give an impression of effort at ornamentation made in an unintelligent way.

gatherers of dust, and the lifelong struggle with "dust" is hard enough. without their adding to it.

Besides, they are great

One of the most beautiful houses in which I have ever been has very few rooms. One large room on the ground floor answers for a parlor, dining room and library, and at need is coverted at night into a bedroom for the lady of the house and her daughters. The color of this room, as to the walls, is a grayish blue; the floor is painted a sort of soft brown; rugs are laid here and there over the floor. One portion nearest the door which leads to the kitchen is used by the family for a dining room, and is simply divided from the rest of the room by an arrangement of movable screens. Another portion, furnished with a desk, some easy chairs, a divan and low bookcases, is also separated from the rest by screens, and is known as the library, where a great deal of pleasant conversation goes on, and where, when she chooses, the mistress of the domain writes, receives her friends, reads or enjoys her leisure. A low tea table with cups and saucers and a burnished copper kettle is ready here for sociable five o'clock tea. Every inch of available space in this room is filled appropriately, and a large family gather in the various parts of it and pursue their various occupations without in the least disturbing one another. Something similar to this will be remembered by visitors to Appledore in Celia Thaxter's day. No one who ever visited the Isles of Shoals will forget the island garden of Mrs. Thaxter's, nor the beautiful, long, low

"The lamp on the table in the corner."