The happiest arrangement of one of these rooms, when smaller, was accomplished with the aid of a carpenter, who filled one of the windows with a low shelf to form a seat, and running it in an unbroken line down the wall from that window to the door. This seat was covered with a velours of a low tone. On the opposite wall, between the other window and the fireplace, the space was filled with a low bookcase, divided half-way its length by a seat large enough to hold two persons. This seat was also formed by a pine shelf. Like that on the opposite wall, it was covered with velours, which ran from the floor, over the seat, and up the wall to a level with the top shelf of the bookcase, where it was finished with a flat gimp nailed with invisible tacks. At right angles to the fireplace and facing windows was a small sofa with a tall lamp at one end. Back of the sofa by a bay window (this house was on a corner) there was a desk. The opposite corner, a bookcase, following the right angle of the wall; in front of it a carved table with lamps, flowers, and books. Three or four chairs to be drawn about, completed the appointments. The walls of the room had been treated with burlaps washed with gold. The wood-work was buff. The splitting of a line of book-shelves with a seat will always be found advisable when space is required, especially in the little front rooms of English-basement houses, or in the hall rooms of dwelling-houses made over into apartments, or in conventional parlors like those described, which are often but twelve or fourteen feet wide. The window - for when such a parlor is small there is never but the one window - the window then is left without masses of drapery, but is filled with rubber trees, palms, and Boston ferns. I saw this once, and I have never forgotten the room. In front of the window, which was opposite the door leading to the hall, ran a small high-backed sofa of good design, only large enough to hold two. Behind the sofa there was space for the maid to get at the plants and the window-shades. To the left of the sofa a row of book-shelves were built, divided to make a small seat, the wall forming its back. This enabled three persons to talk comfortably together, while a fourth could be seated in a large chair by the door leading into an adjoining room. The rest of the little parlor was filled with books and pictures, one big cathedral chair at the other end flat against the wall, beside a table holding a lamp. The walls were green, the wood-work white, the chairs covered with soft silks and old tapestries.

While the breaking up of lines in a room should always be made an object of special study, a small interior must always have its important or essential pieces arranged with all the compactness possible. A foolish sacrifice of space is made when a small room is filled with large pieces of furniture, especially with lounging-chairs standing out from the wall, or with sofas having projecting backs. The furniture chosen or made for small parlors should fit against the walls, the lines of the room being broken up afterwards by tables or chairs. This may be more clearly understood, perhaps, after examining one of the illustrations accompanying this chapter.

This room just off" the parlor is used as a study by its owner, and considered with it in choice of color. It is only seven feet by eight. Many an old-fashioned bed was larger. Yet the study has a long divan (made narrow enough to serve as a sofa, and with a box underneath for dresses), a large desk, a chair, a folding table, a dozen pictures, and several hundred books on shelves at the head and foot of the divan, and again under the mirror at the side of the door. The room is in greens and yellows. A green burlaps covers the wall, green corduroy the divans. The curtain over the door opening into a closet filled with books and papers, is of green silk embroidered with dull yellow. A yellow leaded glass fills the window. The ceiling has a dull yellow paper. The lines are broken by plants and by hanging-lamps suspended overhead.

Enough has been said, perhaps, to prove that in spite of like proportions and construction no one room need look like another; but to emphasize the fact more strongly, two illustrations have been introduced, giving different views of two parlors in an apartment-house, alike in size except as regards the height of the ceiling.

One parlor has been treated in greens and whites. The walls are covered with the green cartridge paper; the wood-work, ceiling, and thin curtains are white; the over-curtains are green looped over big gilt disks. Yellows are introduced in brass sconces, hanging candelabra, picture frames, andirons, and firearms.

In the other parlor, greens and yellows alone are permitted, except on the divan, where the cover takes up the colors of a Cashmere rug. The woodwork is green. The walls are covered with green burlaps, the curtains and furniture are of green corduroy. Thin yellow Verona silk curtains hang over the white muslin on the panes. The yellow of these curtains is repeated everywhere, - in brass milk-cans, hanging-lamps, andirons, and bird cages. Both parlors, then, have been furnished in green and brass, and yet they bear not the slightest resemblance to each other.

The wall-space running from the window, filled in one instance by a carved mahogany sofa and in another by a bookcase and divan, might have been treated in still other ways. A piano might have been placed there, or book-shelves running up to the ceiling. Again, low shelves might have been divided by one of the seats to which reference has already been made.

"ONE PARLOR HAS BEEN TREATED IN GREEN AND WHITE".