Too often, here in America, the most comfortable room in the house is
given up to a sort of bastard collection of gilt chairs and tables,
over-elaborate draperies shutting out both light and air, and huge and
frightful paintings. This style of room, with its museum-like
furnishings, has been dubbed "Marie Antoinette," _why_, no one but the
American decorator can say. Heaven knows poor Marie Antoinette had
enough follies to atone for, but certainly she has never been treated
more shabbily than when they dub these mausoleums "Marie Antoinette
rooms."

I remember taking a clever Englishwoman of much taste to see a woman who
was very proud of her new house. We had seen most of the house when the
hostess, who had evidently reserved what she considered the best for
the last, threw open the doors of a large and gorgeous apartment and
said, "This is my Louis XVI ballroom." My friend, who had been very
patient up to that moment, said very quietly, "What makes you think so?"

Louis XVI thought a salon well furnished with a few fine chairs and a
table. He wished to be of supreme importance. In the immense salons of
the Italian palaces there were a few benches and chairs. People then
wished spaces about them.

Nowadays, people are swamped by their furniture. Too many centuries, too
many races, crowd one another in a small room. The owner seems
insignificant among his collections of historical furniture. Whether he
collects all sorts of things of all periods in one heterogeneous mass,
or whether he fills his house with the furniture of some one epoch, he
is not at home in his surroundings.

The furniture of every epoch records its history. Our ancestors of the