When, therefore, we have duly circumvented the draughts and dangers which await us in the ordinary suburban house, the next thing we have to consider is either how to paint and paper and furnish, or how to decorate to suit the goods we may already possess. If we have already got our furniture, the paint and paper must be bought with an eye to those. Yet as a rule it is so easy to re-cover dining-room furniture that no one should be debarred from having a pretty room because they have ugly seats to their chairs, or own perchance a set of frightful curtains. I am no advocate for cheap materials, which appeal to a ‘threepenny public,’ and scarcely last until they are made up, such fleeting joys are they: but I unhesitatingly say that, given the choice between ruby velvet and Wallace’s old gold diamond serge, or pale blue ‘Tanjore cloth’ from Shoolbred, the ruby velvet may depart as far as I am concerned, and I should put up the other colour in the cheap material, knowing full well that the beautiful colour would always delight me, while the velvet would disgust me every time that I entered the room. The same remark applies to the carpet. If it be ‘handsome,’ generally another word for something too hideous for words, put it into the next sale that is handy. Somehow ‘handsome carpets,’ always fetch splendid prices at sales, where even good furniture is almost given away. Then buy one of the many charming carpets Smee & Cobay, or Wallace, or Hewetson sell, according to taste and means; remembering that all carpets are merely backgrounds to the furniture, and should never attract attention to themselves in any way. One very soon tires of a pattern, an obtrusive pattern that is to say, while one never can tire of soft shades of the same colour, or else of the excellent ‘drawing-room’ Turkey carpets or Bokhara carpets, sold by Bartholomew & Fletcher and Shoolbred, which suit almost any room, and fit in with any style of decoration. If, in removing to a new house, the mistress has to consider her furniture and curtains and carpet, she must look at them carefully before she begins her instructions to the decorator. Suppose for example she has a big sideboard, ten or twelve walnut or oak chairs, with shabby leather seats, an orthodox table, and perhaps a writing-table, she will, as a rule, come to the end of her impedimenta. Her first endeavour should be to get whoever may be coming into her house to take curtains and carpets at a valuation; her second to put them in a sale; then she can proceed joyfully, spending the proceeds on new ones, which may be much simpler, but will be much more artistic, and so much more satisfactory to live with in every way. If however she has a pretty carpet and curtains, and they will not quite adapt themselves to the room, what is she to do? In the first place if the carpet is too large it is best to return it, if possible, to the shop where it was bought to be re-made into a square, and edged with a nice woollen