Repose is a second feeling which must come without conscious effort. This is perhaps in part because of the analogy between the arrangement and the law of gravitation, as it may be seen in the use of the ordinary weighing scales. When both pans of the weighing scales are empty the bar is horizontal and the scales are at rest. Throw into the scale a cube of iron weighing one pound, and the scales are in motion, a diagonal position is created and rest is destroyed. Put into the other pan an iron cube of equal weight and size, and the weighing bar becomes again horizontal and the feeling of formal and dignified position returns, while the mental sensation of harmony with the law of gravitation is a natural sequence.

The side wall arrangement described works in precisely the same manner. Because of our associations with things in these relative positions they produce the sensations described. We are at once more or less affected, according to our sensitiveness, by such an arrangement, and more or less require this form to produce the desired result.

There are so many applications of this bisymmetric arrangement in all phases of expression that no exhaustive treatment of them can be made. It may be suggested, however, that one's appreciation of the bisymmetric balance may be cultivated by searching the facades of buildings and their gable ends for the perfect bisymmetric arrangement. One may also arrange mantels or bureau and dresser tops in bisymmetric form, placing furniture and decorative objects simply in these positions, creating vertical centre lines on which they may appear as balanced attractions.

It will be seen in all applications of the principle that this, the simplest arrangement, requires the least subtle treatment, is a matter of intelligence rather than imagination, that it is formal enough for any condition and restful enough for any scheme. It is the easiest way out of ordinary problems of unrest in arrangement.

It must be admitted, however, that the constant use of bisymmetric treatment may result in a stiff effect and be a bit too formal, since it is rather monotonous and lacks in some ways the large imaginative opportunity of the more involved arrangement.

The second kind of balance is known as the occult balance. This means simply a balance which is felt rather than one methodically or scientifically deter-82 mined. The occult balance may, it is true, be proven to be a balanced arrangement if one knows how to estimate the attractive force of the elements used in the scheme. It is, however, in general, a matter of aesthetic sense, acute feeling, or feeling and judgment combined, which is a matter of psychologic conclusion rather than of a material calculation.

With the Japanese the sense for occult balance as a national asset has been so strongly cultivated by education and environment that their compositions, whether in books, vases of flowers, architectural or detail arrangements, unconsciously present the most subtle and charming occult balance known to modern life.

Those who are sufficiently familiar with the period of Louis XV to understand the arrangement of ornament used in wall panels, or the application of this ornament to articles of furniture following the same structural lines, will perceive the same refined sense for occult arrangement in which there is a feeling of perfect balance on either side the vertical line. In no case is there a bisymmetric arrangement where forms, sizes, colours and textures are unlike on either side this balance line.

There are many other interesting national expressions in which the occult arrangement is the only one evolved through highly organized artistic skill in composition.

If the problem of a single wall arrangement is one of occult balance and one has the same cabinet, two chairs, two candlesticks and two or three pictures to place upon the wall, and must use them all while he may not use anything else, his problem becomes one of equalizing these attractions on either side the same vertical line. Naturally the cabinet will not balance one chair - perhaps not two. As soon as the cabinet is increased in attractiveness by two candlesticks, it is less apt to balance two chairs, or one, all other things being equal. The pictures evidently must be so arranged as to assist in this equalization of attractions, or else the other walls of the room must be taken into consideration with this one, and the problem become more involved.

For people who are not thoroughly practised, and not sure when a balance is perfectly arranged, nothing is more helpful when arranging side walls and single surfaces than to return to the weighing scale.

In the old-fashioned steelyard there is a chance to illustrate the occult balance idea. The horizontal bar, with its movable weight from right to left, forms a lever, with the fulcrum at the point where a hook is fastened, to which articles of various gravity are adjusted for weighing purposes. An iron weight is moved right and left along this bar until it exactly balances an object which is hung on the aforesaid hook. The heavier the package attached to the hook, the farther away from the fulcrum point the iron weight is moved. This weight increases in distance from the central balancing line as the attractive power of the parcel attached to the hook increases.

Another familiar illustration of this idea in the law of gravitation is seen in the see-saw board. If a board, alike throughout its length, is placed across a fence as a fulcrum point, so that just half of it is on each side the fence, it rests in a horizontal position and is balanced. If I place a twenty-five-pound boy on one, and fail to adjust the boy or to place a weight upon the other end, the board at once loses its balanced effect and one end is thrown to the ground. If, on the other hand, I place at the same time a twenty-five-pound boy on each end, my board remains in perfect equilibrium as truly as if nothing were placed upon the board at all.

ELEVATION SKETCH FOR YOUNG GIRL'S BEDROOM, EXPRESSING QUALITIES OF SUBTLETY, GRACE, YOUTH AM) CHARM THROUGH AN OCCULT ARRANGEMENT OF FURNISHINGS. OCCULT ARRANGEMENT IS AN ARRANGEMENT WHERE A BALANCE IS OBTAINED THROUGH FEELING.

My problem becomes complicated when I have a boy weighing fifty pounds and one that weighs twenty-five pounds to be placed upon this board, and still I desire the board to remain in a horizontal position and at rest. If I move the board so that there is twice as much length or distance on one side the fence as on the other, and place the boy weighing fifty pounds on the shorter end, and the one weighing twenty-five pounds on the longer end, I shall find my board resumes its normal rest position and will so remain.

From these two illustrations three very important statements are derived.

First. Equal attractions balance each other at an equal distance from the centre.

Second. Unequal attractions balance each other at unequal distances from the centre.

Third. Unequal attractions balance each other at distances which are in inverse ratio to their power of attraction.

Applied to the side wall, this means that the stronger the object is in its power to attract, the more it tends to gravitate toward the centre or balancing line; the less attractive the object, the more it tends to recede from the centre; that two objects, one of which is much more attractive than the other, to balance on a single wall must be so placed that the more attractive of the two is nearer the centre than the less attractive one, and the less attractive is nearer the corner than the more attractive one, the exact difference apart depending upon the attractive power. This establishes a balance, as has been shown in the case of the use of two boys of unequal weight and the see-saw board across the fence.

The wall problem usually involves more than two objects and sometimes many. One must begin by placing the largest, strongest or most attractive nearest the centre; then the next, the next, and the next, back and forth from one side to the other of the central line, until a feeling of rest or equal attraction on either side is obtained. This arrangement, when it has reached a balanced condition, is the occult balance so often seen and so little understood.

In furnishing a room, however, one side wall is but a small part of the entire problem, and were one to take each side wall separately there would be the problem of putting the four walls together so that the entire room is a balance as well as each separate wall.

The central axis of the room is the place in which to stand when judging the balanced arrangement. If I face north and my north wall is well balanced, I turn to the northwest corner, and must feel a balance between the north wall and west wall as a whole; turn to the northeast corner, the same feeling of rest should obtain as between north and east walls. If this is right, the west wall and the east wall will also balance. The same process, facing south, will show at once whether the room is well balanced or not.

By well balanced, I do not mean the wall or the things that are a part of it or are attached to it, but those things in the room, whether they touch the wall or not, that seem to use that wall naturally as a background.

Sometimes a small picture hung over an article of furniture or a very dark contrasting value in some material, although in small quantity, will restore the balance where the opposite wall has a larger picture over a cabinet or piano, or where a tapestry gives a wall sufficient strength to demand a strong opposite attractive force. This prevents a feeling of tipping in the room.

Some of the very bad arrangement of pianos, especially black ones, across room corners, and the adjustment of bureaus, dressers and cabinets in the same diagonal positions are attempts to restore a balanced arrangement in the room and to connect one wall with the other. This linking by an unnatural line of one wall to the other does not as a rule restore the balance but it does destroy the structural effect of the room, creating another motif entirely foreign to the original idea, and it often makes the grouping of other articles of furniture quite impossible.