And where in the hall can hangings and stuffs be used to best advantage? Enter any house and look about for yourself. If the ground glass of the vestibule door be exposed and staring, the hall floor bare and cold, the hall chair hard and stiff, the doors to the reception or sitting-room all closed, rising black and grim before you, and the hall itself so dark that you can not see even where to lay down your companionable umbrella, does there not come over you a chill, as if you were being repelled by the spirit of inhospitality? The entrance hall gives you no hearty cheer of welcome. But warm up the floor with a rug, lay a restful and inviting cushion on the chair; open the door that leads to the room where the household gathers, or where your hostess is to receive you, or take it off the hinges bodily and lay it away, and hang instead a curtain that shall give a glimpse of the warmth and light within, while still shutting out the draught. Let soft silk or Madras muslin hang in full folds over the window in the door, and the stranger who enters no longer feels like a prisoner in Doubting Castle, whom Giant Despair has cast into a dungeon for trespassing on his grounds, but rather shall I not say, as if he had fallen upon the House Beautiful, built on purpose for the entertainment of pilgrims, where only the fair virgins Prudence, Piety and Charity would be his companions? Just so inviting was the entrance to my wise woman’s house when I last visited her. It was a house with a door in the middle, the hall running through the entire depth. Midway, an arch curtained with Mexican blankets half screened the back hall, which served for the family music room. Facing the piano was a long, old-fashioned sofa, where the weary head of the house could lie and be rested by music from his daughter’s fingers or the voices of his children. This happy man, who had his quiver full of them, had one of those charming houses that grows with the household. Near the side entrance, what used to be a dining-room is now known as _the coat room_. I saw one side of the room literally lined with coats and wraps, hats and bonnets, depending from some hat rack arrangement of domestic manufacture. Boots, shoes, and galoches of all shapes and sizes stood in a suitable rack beneath. Guns and hunting gear, fishing rods and tackles, bows and arrows, grace hoops, battle-doors and shuttle-cocks, tennis rackets and croquet mallets and balls all found their appointed places here. Water and towels awaited the convenience of those who must make a partial toilet in haste. Even the shoe-blacking had its own corner. A book case on the wall held well thumbed grammars and geographies side by side with dictionaries, college text-books and a cook book or two; while before the fireplace that “filled the room on one side,” you might see a young Nimrod greasing his boots or polishing his gun; and later, the little folks popping corn, making caramels, or boiling taffy.