There should be as little furniture as possible in the ordinary suburban hall or passage. The really necessary furniture has been described as placed in the vestibule; but, if we have room we should undoubtedly have a tall palm on a stand, a grandfather clock in one corner, a couple of chairs: tall, high-backed ones for choice: and, if possible, between the dining and drawing-room doors, which are often close together, or at anyrate close to the latter door, have a nice plain walnut table. This would hold the necessary bowl for cards left during the afternoon, and taken away every day, because keeping them seems like parading the amount and quality of one’s friends; and, if we visit much a book is of course kept in which visits and addresses are entered. Beside this, have only a small vase of flowers and maybe a couple of books placed across each other at one corner. These give an air of life even to the smallest hall somehow; and on little touches like these, absurd as it may seem to mention them, depend the artistic completeness of the whole house. One word more, hats, cloaks and umbrellas must be put out of sight somewhere; while all should recollect that it is extremely easy to over-furnish any place, but especially so to over-furnish a hall, and that in a narrow passage and in small quarters, one had far better have too few impedimenta than too many. The former state of affairs can always be remedied as we come to understand the capabilities of our new abode; the latter can only draw down upon us the objurgations of our friends, the while we collect dirt and dust, and can’t comprehend why we are as uncomfortable as we most undoubtedly are. CHAPTER III KITCHEN AND BASEMENTS If the conquest of the hall be difficult, the siege of the kitchen and servants’ quarters generally is one that will carry dread even to the stoutest heart. For as a rule the suburban builder sinks to his lowest depths of villainy here, and either gives a damp and wandering basement wherein no servant will remain more than her month, or a regular cupboard where the stove leaves scarcely room for anything else, and where the heat from that, and the draughts from the doors and windows, are enough to ruin the constitution of any ordinary woman. The basement kitchen is the worst of all, because it marks a class of house that has seen better days, and is rapidly deteriorating. Therefore if one has to choose between two houses, one of which has no basement, and another which has, one should at once select the basementless one. There are sure to be cellars below the house, which will keep it dry. One doesn’t even in the suburbs _often_ come across a house, the boards of which are pushed out of place by enterprising mushrooms growing in the soil beneath, and ambitious of appearing in fresh air and among the haunts of men.