In an all-the-year country house a vestibule is a necessity as much as in a town house, and the hall should be treated with the dignity a hall deserves, and not as a second living-room. In many English houses of Tudor days the stairs were behind a carved screen, or concealed in some manner, which made it possible to use the hall as a gathering place. Our modern hall is not a descendant of this old hall of a past day (the living-room is much more so), but is really only a passage, often raised to the _n_th power, connecting the different rooms of the house, and should be treated as such. The stairs and landing and vista should be beautiful, and the furnishing should be dignified and in perfect scale with the rest of the house. Marble stairs and tapestry and old carved furniture and beautiful rugs, or the simplest possible furniture, may be used, but the hall should have an impersonally hospitable air, one which gives the keynote of the house, but reserves its full expression until the privacy of the living-rooms is reached. [Illustration: A very rare block-front chest of drawers with the original brasses.] The average country house is neither very magnificent nor very simple, but strikes the happy medium and achieves a most delightful home-like charm, which at the very outset makes life seem well worth living. It is rarely furnished in a period style throughout, but has the modern air of comfort which good taste and correct feeling give. For instance, the hall may have paneling and Chippendale mirror, a table, and chairs; the living-room furnished in a general Colonial manner mixed with some comfortable stuffed furniture, but not over-stuffed, lovely chintz or silk hangings, and a wide fireplace; the morning-room on something the same plan, but a little less formal; and the drawing-room a little more so, say in Adam or simple Louis XVI furniture. The library should have plenty of comfortable sofas and chairs, and a large table (it is hard to get one too large), some of the bookcases should be built in to form part of the architectural plan of the room, and personally I think it is a better idea to have all the space intended for bookcases built in in the first place, as this insures harmony of plan. Another important thing in a library is to have the lights precisely right, and the window-seats and the fireplace should be all that their names imply in the way of added charm and comfort to the room. The dining-room should be bright and cheerful and in harmony with the near-by rooms. A breakfast-room done in lacquer is very charming.