fabric--somewhere else, and trying that out. You will soon find that
your joy in your home is growing, and that you have a source of
happiness within yourself that you had not suspected. I believe that
good taste can be developed in any woman, just as surely as good manners
are possible to anyone. And good taste is as necessary as good manners.

We may take our first lessons in color from Nature, on whose storehouse
we can draw limitlessly. Nature, when she plans a wondrous splash of
color, prepares a proper background for it. She gives us color plans for
all the needs we can conceive. White and gray clouds on a blue sky--what
more could she use in such a composition? A bit of gray green moss upon
a black rock, a field of yellow dandelions, a pink and white spike of
hollyhocks, an orange-colored butterfly poised on a stalk of
larkspur--what color-plans are these!

[Illustration: A LOUIS SEIZE BEDROOM IN ROSE AND BLUE AND CREAM]

I think that the first consideration after you have settled your
building-site should be to place your house so that its windows may
frame Nature's own pictures. With windows facing north and south, where
all the fluctuating and wayward charm of the season unrolls before your
eyes, your windows become the finest pictures that you can have. When
this has been arranged, it is time to consider the color-scheme for the
interior of the house, the colors that shall be in harmony with the
window-framed vistas, the colors that shall be backgrounds for the
intimate personal furnishings of your daily life. You must think of your
walls as backgrounds for the colors you wish to bring into your rooms.
And by colors I do not mean merely the primary colors, red and blue and
yellow, or the secondary colors, green and orange and violet, I mean the
white spaces, the black shadows, the gray halftones, the suave creams,