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The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure by E. C. (Eugene Clarence) Gardner
page 56 of 193 (29%)
significant of your own taste and feeling. Instead of many separate
apartments for general family use, here are drawing-room, sitting-room,
library and parlor, all in one. This is the domestic sanctuary, the
essential family home into which outsiders come only by special
invitation. From the central hall runs the staircase that leads to the
still more personal and private apartments above, one of which belongs
to each member of the family. At the right of the hall is the
dining-room, near enough to make its contribution to physical comfort
and enjoyment at the proper time, but easily excluded when its inferior
service is not required.'

"I don't understand that," said Jill.

"I do," said Jack. "It means that the meat that perisheth ought not to
be set above the feast of reason and flow of soul; that the dining-room
ought to be convenient but subordinate, not the most conspicuously
elegant part of the establishment, unless we keep a boarding-house and
reckon eating the chief end of man. Where do you say the library is?"

"Included in the drawing-room. Probably the corner marked 'Boudoir'
contains a writing desk with more or less books and other literary
appliances. It has a fireplace of its own and portières would give it
complete seclusion."

[Illustration: FIRST FLOOR OF WILL'S MASTERPIECE.]

"Where is the smoking-room?"

"I don't know. She didn't send the plans for the stable."

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