FASHION AND ORNAMENT, HARD WOOD AND PAINT.


DEAR FRED: The tone of your last, just received, is hopeful.
Conviction of ignorance is the only foundation on which Wisdom, or any
other man, ever builded a house. But it must be a genuine agony, as
I'm sure it is in your case; so you are forgiven for asking more
questions in half a dozen lines than I can answer fully in a score of
pages. Instead of taking them up separately, I might give you a
chapter of first principles, hoping you would then need no special
directions; but I find the value of most general observations lies,
like Bunsby's, in the application of 'em. It's not enough to say, "Be
honest and upright." Each particular falsehood and folly must be
summoned, tried, and condemned.

You ask for a style of finish that must be ornamental and modern. But
I don't understand your meaning; shall need more definite instruction.
Is your house intended for ornamental purposes, as summer-houses,
dove-cots, bird-cages, and the like, often are? Is it to be a museum,
art-gallery, or memorial hall? Diamonds and pearls are commonly
thought ornamental to those who can afford them; from pink plaster
images and china vases to bronze dragons and Florentine mosaics, there
is an endless variety of ornaments for domestic apartments. I've heard
of a woman who was an ornament to her husband, and of a man who
ornamented a whole town; but when you ask me to furnish you an
ornamental style of finishing your house, I'm obliged to ask for
particulars. You may have curious carvings in the woodwork about the
doors and windows and on the base-boards; paint pictures, or set
bright-colored tile, grotesque and classic, on the flat surfaces; cut
a row of "scallops and points" around the edge of the casings in