Sometimes I wonder if I ought to cut down my syringa bushes - or, at least, trim them. I should hate to, they're such big, blossoming things, laden with white flowers twice a year - once in fragrant June, of course, and after heavy January snowfalls. And always they are lovely, tapping with intimate fingers against my old windows - but they do make my front rooms dark.

My parlour presented itself to me as a problem from the first; it is a moderately large room, sixteen feet square, with three doors and three windows, a fireplace, and a huge, intractable radiator; and the squareness of it all, and the lack of continued wall-space were, I own, baffling in the beginning; for I had been brought up on modern city apartment architecture, where walls jut out or angle in, and there are bay windows and cosy corners. I doubt if ever I could have managed at all, if I hadn't served my 'prentice-year in the oldest house in town. Built in 1773 that was, and I had consequently quite a feeling of modernity when we next moved into a house a whole seventeen years younger.

Frankly, it is only of late that we have solved our decorative equation. You have to live with a house to understand it; if it's the right sort, your soul will grow, and contentment abide with you; but if it's the wrong sort, move out as fast as you can, for it will do dreadful, unnamable things to your character. Why, I have seen rooms that made me realize that I was a potential murderess!

But will you not forgive my past mistakes, and let me tell you of the pleasant now? You remember that the hall was gray, with the merest hint of brown? Well, the parlour walls are a still lighter tint; faint, fernlike leaves against a soft background, and little, almost imperceptible, green dots. You really have to see it to understand how becoming it is; as soon as it was on the walls the room seemed to grow at once more spacious and sunny. (Just here may I say that I have never seen any suitable treatment of a Colonial room where the wall effect was solid and unbroken - with the exception of a painted interior, that is. Often it is not practical to use the noble landscape patterns of a hundred years ago, - large and generous spaces are needed to make this decoration valuable, - but it is always possible to avoid the density of cartridge paper.)

Next, the woodwork was painted a glossy cream-white, and the old pine floor a soft, smooth gray, to harmonize with the paper. Light had come into my room as if by magic; now I had to contrive color. At the windows I hung straight valanced curtains of pinky chintz, new, but printed from an old English design: roses climbing a lattice, and looking as if a Sussex summer had bloomed itself into my parlour. Fourteen yards of this chintz, at sixty-five cents a yard, - unbelievably cheap even for five years ago, and to its everlasting honor, lovely yet, - cost just nine dollars and ten cents; and for my floor, at a mark-down sale, I was lucky enough to find a domestic rug in a Persian pattern for thirty-five more. Of course I would rather have an authentic Oriental carpet - who would n't? But nevertheless, this rug of mine, deep rose for the most part, with little notes of blue and black and ecru and dull green, is very attractive. Moreover, it is suited to my circumstances. I recently heard that a well-known architect had expressed a horror at figured rugs; plain, restful carpets, and nothing else, should be used. Ah, my heart goes out to him, but I also realize that he has never looked at the world from my particular angle. I had to consider my three children's feet, and the geometric progression of their friends' footsteps, also the fact that there is a long Open Season for mud in Our Town. When I think what a discreet taupe would look like after a few weeks' wear; when I remember what my delicate rose-carpet did resemble, I am convinced of the wisdom of my later choice.

Well, when my curtains were up and my rug was down, my color-scheme was completed: gentle and soft, it still was radiant. All that the room needed now was the sheen of the brass and copper in my candlesticks and bowls, and the happy glint of my gold picture-frames - frames that hold glimpses of country gardens and vistas of blue sea; a street in distant Segovia, and two simple heads in red chalk done by an artist friend of mine. And there's a little engraving of Daniel Webster when he was young, enclosed in a frame of really old gilt. That is all - except my silhouettes, of course. (But if I had hung upon my walls sepia prints in fumed oak frames, I should have chilled and deadened my room beyond belief.)

The setting was ready; I could begin to think of the arrangement of my furniture. My parlour - you will see that I like and insist on the word; it lacks the artificiality of living-room, the pretentiousness of drawing-room, and really means the place where people sit and talk - is a mingling of styles, as it is a gathering of personalities. It is the one room where a combination of types and periods is not only right, but desirable. But, even then, you must be careful to have furniture as agreeable as you would have your guests. None of my pieces is later than eighteen twenty, and my earliest might date in the very early seventeen hundreds; but they all are similar: mahogany or mahogany-finished, and made by American joiners. They are like the members of a happy family - some older, some younger, but all akin. A Gothic oak chest or an Italian Renaissance table, completely beautiful in themselves, would destroy the harmony of the whole room.

That first chair, a modest type of Chippendale, is an especial favorite of mine. Incidentally, it's a favorite of my cat's, the one he loves to lie on. I got it for fourteen dollars at one of the shops in Boston where more magnificent dealers buy their wares. You see, the inconspicuous middlemen of the trade gather many treasures together; rather higgledy-piggledy, it is true, and it takes experience and taste to select from so much furniture flotsam. Still, if knowledge is money, it's a currency we all can afford to have. The wood of my chair is old black cherry, and it was in such good condition that only repolish-ing was needed - a matter of just a dollar more. But the upholstery was terrific; large and buoyant springs had been put in the old slip-seat, which then had been covered in violent figured plush. Now, reduced to normal flatness and decked in rosy damask, it is very engaging. The splat is vase-shaped, and the legs are straight and plain in the later Chippendale manner; altogether, a comfortable, dignified, self-respecting sort of chair.