THE IDEAL HOME. How It Is Obtained—Some Valuable Suggestions.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 232, 10 December 1887, Page 8

THE IDEAL HOME. How It Is Obtained— Some Valuable Suggestions.

Tiil ideal home beautiful is attained rather by ay I'dino 1 errors of tasto than by the adoption ot v. 1 •_ 'as of art. For my own pait, if I have aii} dogmas to preach they may fairly be condensed in this rule : " Avoid shams and affectations of all kinds." Don't mi&take some prettiness for beauty ; millinery, for instance, is out of place in the home beautiful. Don't attach to your chairs and sofa-cus-hions meaningless bows of ribbon which tie nothing. Don't dre^s your toilet-table in muslin petticoats stiffened with crinoline or coloured calico. Don't scatter startling white " tidies " about chairs and sofas, as on so many bushes, as> if you were hanging out the wash to dry. Don't display on your walls china plates and dishes. They were never meant to go there. An exception may be made now in favour of a piece of fine colour to help light up the room or where a delicate china painting is worthy of careful examination. But hang up ordinary china ! Don't ! Don't hang small pictures so that their beauty is lost to any one under eight feet high. If a picture is not seen from the same position that tho artist saw it when he painted it, the drawing will appear foreshoitened and the general effect consequently falsified. Do not hang any picture in the home which has not the impress of elegance, purity and cheerfulness. Some things I would relegate to the bedroom —out of the way somewhere— in locked dvawera for instance. I mean mementos of seaweed and dried ferns or flowers, and wretched daubs on china, canvas or paper, the crude efforts of youthful members of the family. No true lover of the home beautiful will inflict these on his family and friends, and compel them ta violate truth by pretending: to like them. Don't admit into the home beautiful any piece of furniture or implement of every-day life which does not honestly serve its purpose — no light, flimsy chair, which an ablebodied man dare not sit upon ; no puffy, debilitated sofas, all wind and springs ; no burnished, brass-sheeted fireirons, bought only to be looked at, and give place to the ugly little black poker and shovel when coal is to be broken or ashes are to be removed.