and in one corner is the umbrella-ring, which one can get at Shoolbred’s for about 18s. 9d., and that is all. There is no room for the P. T. C. here, and the waterproofs are taken at once into the servants’ room to be hung up and dried, but it would be much better were there a corner wardrobe, only, alas! one can’t make space where one doesn’t possess it. The screen is made somewhat like this. The top and side panels are all of leaded glass, as far as the brackets which hold pots for palms. The tops of the doors are more leaded glass, and all the base is wood painted on the vestibule side, the soft grey-blue spoken of before, and on the other a specially soft and deep ‘real ivory.’ The dado is of ivory, gold, and black Japanese leather paper, and the paper above is one of Smee & Cobay’s, and is a cunning blend of green and red, managed in such a way that the whole effect is a pinky red, which harmonises with the grey-blue, and is as original as it is undoubtedly most pleasant to contemplate. The stairs and all doors are curtained off with yellow diamond serge, and the passage--_i.e._ hall--is covered with plain green cork carpet, on which are laid rugs in which the grey-blue colour aforesaid predominates. Of course the ceiling is papered in yellow and white, and equally, of course, all the paint is one even surface of colour. Nothing can excuse picked out or striped and embellished paint: nothing! Genius is better employed on better work, and even genius is out of place in making ornamental that which after all is only going to be part of a harmonious whole, and merely a background to ourselves and our possessions. Therefore must there be plain paint everywhere, and no cornice should be more than a moulded band, merely coloured a plain cream or ivory colour. If the front door and the doors in the vestibule screen are not above suspicion of draughts, they should be at once surrounded with Slater’s patent draught-excluders, which can be procured anywhere almost, but surely at Shoolbred’s or Whiteley’s; for nothing is more trying than a draught. Have as much air and proper ventilation as possible. Have a vestibule window open for some time of the day in winter and all day long in summer, and have the staircase window open as well: a house that can’t have a thorough current of air cannot be a healthy one. But do not allow the insidious draught, and the cold and unwarmed halls and passages, which are ubiquitous save in a large house possessing a big, square hall, where one usually finds a good fireplace. However, one should manage somehow to make a fireplace there, ay, even if one can have nothing better than the small, round, moveable stove called the ‘Ideal,’ which burns patent fuel, and can be taken away at any moment. It should be placed on an iron corner bracket rather raised above the floor, and a guard should be round it, so that dresses could not come in contact with it. But one should never be tempted from the paths of virtue by the