In most houses, too, the door opens confidingly on the only place where the bed can stand, and then a screen is invaluable; it hides the bed itself, and does not leave it exposed as it would were curtains used as a substitute. Curtains, too, are things I always disapprove of. I do not even like Mr. Arthur Smee’s most excellent arrangement of wing-like brackets, to which curtains are attached, as I think people should have as much air as possible, and I see no more reason for curtaining a bed than there would be for curtaining one’s chair or sofa. A screen insures privacy; curtains hide one’s head only, and cannot possibly avoid being stuffy; if, however, the bare appearance of an uncurtained bed is objected to, the draped alcove sketched on the previous page will be found easy to arrange and very pretty indeed. This alcove is one of Messrs. Collinson and Lock’s designs. I have been very sorry to notice a very strong attempt made by those who ought to know better to revive that truly unhealthy and impossible thing in a properly managed house--the wooden bedstead. I hear that these detestable things are considered artistic--that to have a heap of feathers sunk into a carved oak box in the height of luxuriance and æstheticism, so I must beg my readers to carefully consider what a wooden bedstead means and used to mean. It meant immense trouble with certain small animals that came there mysteriously with the clothes. It meant a taking to pieces, a scrubbing, and a putting together again continually; and, above all, it meant a bonfire were any person with an infectious disease to sleep upon it; and, in fact, I do not know one single thing in its favour, and yet folks in their craving after a false sensation of antiquity are actually thinking of going back to the wooden bedstead.