they are "new" and "different" and "pretty"? She selects a "rich" paper
for her hall and an "elegant" paper for her drawing-room--the chances
are it is a nile green moire paper! For her library she thinks a paper
imitating an Oriental fabric is the proper thing, and as likely as not
she buys gold paper for her dining-room. She finds so many charming
bedroom papers that she has no trouble in selecting a dozen of them for
insipid blue rooms and pink rooms and lilac rooms.

She forgets that while she wears only one gown at a time she will live
with all her wall papers all the time. She decides to use a red paper of
large figures in one room, and a green paper with snaky stripes in the
adjoining room, but she doesn't try the papers out; she doesn't give
them the fair test of living with them a few days.

You can always buy, or borrow, a roll of the paper you like and take it
home and live with it awhile. The dealer will credit the roll when you
make the final decisions. You should assemble all the papers that are to
be used in the house, and all the fabrics, and rugs, and see what the
effect of the various compositions will be, one with another. You can't
consider one room alone, unless it be a bedroom, for in our modern
houses we believe too thoroughly in spaciousness to separate our living
rooms by ante-chambers and formal approaches. We must preserve a certain
amount of privacy, and have doors that may be closed when need be, but
we must also consider the effect of things when those doors are open,
when the color of one room melts into the color of another.

[Illustration: A PAINTED WALL BROKEN INTO PANELS BY NARROW MOLDINGS]

To me, the most beautiful wall is the plain and dignified painted
wall, broken into graceful panels by the use of narrow moldings, with