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THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
for talk, or warmth and reading; when you can see the
fire from the bed in your sleeping-room, and dress near
your bath; if this sort of sense of your rights is acknowl-
edged in your rearrangement, your rooms will always
have meaning, in the end. If you like only the things
in a chair that have meaning, and grow to hate the rest
you will, without any other instruction, prefer-the
next time you are buying-a good Louis XVI fauteuil
to a stuffed velvet chair. You will never again be
guilty of the errors of meaningless magnificence.
To most of us in America who must perforce lead
workaday lives, the absence of beauty is a very distinct
lack. I think, indeed, that the present awakening has
come to stay, and that before very long, we shall have
simple houses with fire-places that draw, electric lights
in the proper places, comfortable and sensible furniture,
and not a gilt-legged spindle-shanked table or chair
anywhere. This may be a decorator's optimistic
dream, but let us all hope that it may come true.
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