Simple Homes.

Progress, Volume V, Issue 6, 1 April 1910, Page 205

Simple Homes.

(Concluded.) On aesthetic grounds it is necessary that the ceiling should enter into the picture as Avell as the floor, just as in nature we always see the sky as well as the earth. There is a gaiety about white roughcast and white distemper that does much to cheer the playgoing spirit, but

our white rooms must not be mere boxes. They must have something of the true romance, the spirit of reality, so that we feel at once that here people may live and die as they really are. The cosy ingle fireplace glows with comfort ; the broad seat in the window is not too dainty to be sat upon. In' an article like this it is only possible to touch the merest fringe of this wide sub-

ject, but I hope enough has been said to show that our "Simple Home" will tolerate no shams, will be satisfied with no poverty of ideas, no "dry bones of antiquity." "We may be very sure there is nothing expensive about good, sound materials such as wood, stone, or brick. It is the rubbish that is dear. We are much richer to-day than the old builders, yet their work still stands. It is not that we cannot afford the

good, it is that we do not appreciate it. We are sudents, not thinkers. The old craftsmen were not students. We should call them uneducated, but their work, thought out with loving care, is to us a counsel of perfection. The good and beautiful are as necessary for the welfare of our minds as good plumbing is for ou^ bodies, and we all demand good plumbing.' The beautiful requires

no more material than the ugly, but it does require the best and highest thought of which we are capable, that and nothing more.