Its appearance is a little unfamiliar, of course, but all the muddle of dust-collecting hangings and witless ornament that cover the earthly bedroom, the valances, the curtains to check the draft from the ill-fitting windows, the worthless irrelevant pictures, usually a little askew, the dusty carpets, and all the paraphernalia about the dirty black-leaded fireplace are gone.

The faintly tinted walls are framed with just one clear colored line, as finely placed as the member of a Greek capital; the door-handles and the lines of the panels of the door, the two chairs, the framework of the bed, the writing-table, have all that exquisite finish of contour that is begotten of sustained artistic effort.
The graciously shaped windows each frame a picture--since they are draughtless the window-seats are no mere mockeries as are the window-seats of earth--and on the sill the sole thing to need attention in the room is one little bowl of blue Alpine flowers." The true office of the house is not only to be useful, but to be aesthetically a background for the dwellers therein, subordinate to them, not obtrusive.

In most of our modern building and furnishing the people are relegated to the background as insignificant figures.

This is largely why the home feeling is absent, why children do not form an affection for the rooms they live in.
Let there be nothing in the room because some other person has it; this shows poverty of ideas.

Let there be nothing in the room which does not satisfy some need, spiritual or physical, of some member of the family.
How bare our rooms would become! Let the skeptical reader try an experiment.