It is like the making of a picture as far as possibility of beauty is concerned, but a picture within and against which one's life, and the life of the family, is to be lived.

It is a bit of creative art in itself, and one which concerns us so closely as to be a very part of us.

We enjoy every separate thing we may find or select or procure--not only for the beauty and goodness which is in it, but for its contribution to the general whole.

And in knowledge of applied and manufactured art, the furnishing of a house is truly "the beginning of wisdom." One learns to appreciate what is excellent in the new, from study and appreciation of quality in the old.
It is the fascination of this study which has made a multiplication of shops and collections of "antiques" in every quarter of the city.

Many a woman begins from the shop-keeper's point of view of the value of mere age, and learns by experience that age, considered by itself, is a disqualification, and that it gives value only when the art which created the antique has been lost or greatly deteriorated.