The art of furnishing is a very large part of the art of home-making. It is, therefore, of the first importance and of well-nigh universal application. After analysing the characteristics of the several period styles in detail, it seems eminently fitting to make some practical application of what has gone before, so we shall, accordingly, conclude this volume with a few suggestions anent furnishing and arrangement.

There is a certain strongly vital quality that inheres in most old furniture, because it was well designed and honestly made so that its fitness in every respect is of a nature enduring far beyond the limits of the particular epoch when each succeeding manifestation was le dernier cri of every changing fashion. When discreetly chosen and placed in a proper setting, its natural charm is intensified tenfold. Good reproductions share much of this charm and vital quality that cause the several period styles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the golden age of furniture making, to be in such constant demand for adorning our homes, whether those styles be used singly with punctilious care for historic accuracy or in judicious combination based upon essential affinities.

In connexion with the larger articles of furniture - chairs, tables, sideboards, chests, bedsteads and the like - that compose the bulk of household gear, there are numerous smaller furnishing accessories, pertaining to the several periods, that we usually make too little account of, overlooking them oftentimes because, perhaps, of their insignificant size or what we mistakenly fancy their comparative unimportance. These generally unheeded objects, for which we might advantageously cultivate a sincerer taste and appreciation, include tea-caddies, cellarettes, knife-boxes or urns, caskets and small boxes for laces and other trifles, inlaid work-boxes or the tiny cabinets that our fore-mothers delighted in, pole-screens, lamp-shades and all the rest of the minor adjuncts of house equipment or personal convenience down to even snuff-boxes and sand-shakers. When used in their proper places and for the purposes for which they were originally intended, they impart a tone of genuineness to the furnishings and seem to preserve the true savour of bygone days in peculiarly vital form.

Beside giving an air of completeness, refinement and continuity, which can never be quite fully achieved without them, they are the visible connecting links with a fascinating and intimate side of the home life of former times and throw not a little light upon the domestic habits of our forefathers. Furthermore, these same minor accessories contribute to the precious note of consistency which be-fittingly concerns itself with details all the way to the hardware on doors and windows.

Not a few of these neglected furnishings, apart from the antiquarian interest attaching to them and the tone of historic continuity they add wherever employed, have a distinct decorative value that ought not to be underrated. This is particularly true of some of the small chests and screens which can be put to manifold uses.

In gathering old furniture together from this source or that, it is well to bear in mind that many of the lesser objects, that were originally contrived for one purpose, we may very aptly adapt to another more suited to our convenience and that without doing any violence to their fabric or form. An old brass spice-box, for example, may be converted into a most engaging desk set with places for inks, pens, rubber bands, postage stamps and so forth, and all without altering the structure of it in the least. Or again, a lace-box such as used to have a place on top of seventeenth century chests of drawers, may do duty on a library table as a receptacle for the smokables that the master of the house sets before his friends. Ingenuity will suggest numerous other readily effected adaptations, but reverence for the past will absolutely forbid all distortions and crude, ruthless alterations, such as making a spinnet or harpsichord into a secretary or an early piano into a library table.

In assembling pieces of old furniture for equipping a house, always have an eye to quality rather than quantity. Be content with a little that is thoroughly good rather than eager for much that is but indifferent. Do not crowd your things, even though the collecting instinct prompts and your purse permits you to accumulate more than a sufficiency of articles. If you have not enough room for this or that object, refrain from buying it (no matter how alluring the thought of owning it may be) or you will surely make your house look like an antique shop, cluttered up with things that can neither be used nor seen to advantage. Buy nothing that you cannot use and be sure that you do use whatever you get, for, after all, one of the chief delights in acquiring really good old pieces is the feeling that one can use them as they ought to be used and so perpetuate the intent of their makers.

Be patient in collecting your furniture. The really wise man or woman is willing to wait to find some well chosen piece to fill exactly a certain place that seems to have been made on purpose for it. There is a satisfaction in not hastening too much to have things of this sort completed, and a gradual growth is always more healthy. Patience in furnishing is a virtue often well rewarded, for, sooner or later, you are almost sure of finding just what you are looking for. Then, too, there is a pleasant stimulus in the mental attitude of quest for some specially desired object. It makes people alert, puts them on their mettle and induces them to keep their eyes wide open so that, if they be at all observant by disposition, they are learning some new thing about the subject all the time.

Another element that must be given due consideration in furnishing is colour and the possibility of its effective introduction. In certain of the periods it was a most important furnishing factor and without its liberal employment a scheme of seventeenth or early eighteenth century modes cannot be successfully carried out. "No epoch was ever more gorgeously chromatic with regard to upholstery stuffs, hangings and the methods of decoration applied to furniture itself" than the period covered by the Carolean, William and Mary, Queen Anne and Early Georgian styles. "It seems a thousand pities that more avail has not heretofore been made of this opportunity and one cannot but feel grateful that such worthy modes are now winning more esteem than was for many years their lot." It was not till a more purely classic influence became paramount in matters mobiliary towards the middle of the eighteenth century that colours took a lower key, and then these quieter tones were in turn superseded by the crude, vulgar hues to be found in much of the Empire upholstery goods. Colour virile and lively and, at the same time, refined is by no means inconsistent with the genius of later eighteenth century modes and may be most effectively and pleasingly resorted to.