IN planning and furnishing a house, young people too often sacrifice true taste and their own conscience for _style_; forgetting that they should arrange a home for _comfort_, not for a temple of fashion. So large a portion of the money set apart for the whole outlay is expended in adorning their parlors,--the only part of a house which is, in a measure, public property,--that they are compelled to cheat themselves out of much comfort and convenience, when they come to the furnishing of the real home, or family rooms, unless possessed of wealth so abundant that expense becomes a secondary consideration. We think the family sitting and dining rooms should receive more thought and care than any other part of the house. Neatness, of course, should be preserved everywhere, and the parlors be furnished with as much of style and fashion as your means will warrant your expending to meet your own desires, or in deference to public opinion, if you are at all inclined to cater to its gratification. In your chambers study neatness and convenience, and also in the kitchen; but when you turn to the sitting and dining rooms, give yourself abundance of time to deliberate over everything connected with these apartments, and, after due consideration, begin the work, which, if rightly understood, will be a toil of pleasure,--a labor of love, never ending; because every week some pretty device or fanciful change or addition will occur to you, by which you can add to its simple attractions, thereby giving yourself great pleasure, and filling your heart with happy thoughts. From the tone of the letter and question prompting this chapter, we should not class its writer with those who desire a position among the “fashionables,” whose greatest pleasure lies in parties, balls, and theaters, or a ceaseless round of “calls,” and who would be made perfectly miserable if compelled by any circumstance to pass a quiet evening at home, with _nobody but their husband_. For such there is no _home_. That word belongs to an unknown tongue, which their hearts can never interpret.