And now, walking around the room, we have come to my greatest problem: my irrepressible radiator - an unbeautiful part of a most necessary heating system. At first, we lived with shy, self-effacing, and quite inefficient registers; and, candidly, we welcomed the change; but what to do with these colossal metal things, which straddled conspicuously across a valuable wall-space, and could n't be scrapped, we really did n't know. And then, in a clever friend's charm-ing apartment, I found just the solution of my problem. She had capitalized her disabilities by using her radiators as the basis for bookshelves and for heating closets. Asbestos paper, plus a water-tin on the radiator, will prevent an unpleasant overheating and drying of the books; and when both shelves and radiator are painted to match the rest of the woodwork, and friendly, delightful volumes ranged in colored rows, you are really not conscious of your Frankenstein monster any longer. Rather, you have added to the agreeable warmth of your scheme by the tones of your bindings; and, besides, a room without books is a dead thing, don't you think? For further concealment, I have a large snake-foot tip-table, - birch, but stained mahogany, - which I picked up at a secondhand shop for eight dollars; and, since I refinished it myself, that is all it cost, unless you add the price of my immortal soul, which it very nearly exacted. It is completely useful; it not only hides the radiator, but is an excellent table on which to serve afternoon tea. The small Dutch chair beside it is another trophy from my "butter-and-eggs man's" barn, and cost just what the slat-back did. It has been cut off at the bottom - a fate that many of these old chairs endured; but since it is still a pleasant height, especially for children, I have not had it built up.

My piano I do not count as a piece of furniture, because a piano never should be so regarded. If I could but destroy the popular belief that a piano is essential just because it marks social advancement, I should feel as if I had accomplished a nation-wide service. "There's an organ in the parlour to give the place a tone"; I can't keep the words of that old street-song out of my mind! So often pianos are never really used; seldom-opened, draped pinnacles of respectability they are; eminences on which to place statues or flower-vases, both inimical to music's existence. Everard Wemyss, who had red baize cloths specially constructed, who raved about the loss of a protecting button, is an extreme and awful instance of this type of mind, which actually does exist. An unused piano is a decorative vulgarity! Ours is an upright, as plain as plain can be, the merest hint of a carved capital at the top of the legs, and is finished in mahogany, of course, to go with the rest of the room. I have no doubt that a mellow eighteenth-century scrutoire, restrained in line and blooming with all the patina that worthy age gives, would better become my wall; but I am forgiving the piano because the Littlest Daughter is beginning to play. In fancy, I can see the years going by, and 0------and I growing older and sitting there in the rosy dusk, listening, listening to melodies we love: Grieg and Chopin, and, because we are romantic, old Jacobite airs. Candlelight, candlelight and shadows, and that Brahms Intermezzo in B Flat! Can anything in the world be lovelier?

Perhaps you will think me meticulous, but I don't like piano-benches or stools, either, though I should adore having one like that dolphin-carved treasure in the music-room at Mount Vernon. Instead, I use one of my Empire chairs - an easy, comfortable seat, and one well adapted to the height of the piano. And the chair just back of that - but maybe I'd better describe my centre-table first. It's a little cherry piece, a Pembroke, with two small side-leaves that lift and are prettily cut off at the corners. There is a slight inlay of ebony and holly at the ends, and on each leg, about an inch up, is a narrow band of ebony outlined with holly. When I first saw it, it was standing modestly in a corner, holding the cheese and crackers that we who had come to the auction were later to eat. I don't believe its owners had thought it worth anything at all, - of course it was old and dimmed by time; nobody, apparently, had polished it for fifty years, - and I know the auctioneer was astonished when I asked him to put it up for sale. And then, when the bidding began, somebody said fifty cents, and I said seventy-five, and my enemy went a quarter higher, and by little, climbing fractions, it was soon mine for a dollar and seventyfive cents. Again my theory of buying by line had been justified; besides which, it was in such excellent condition that three dollars more refinished it.

On the right-hand side, facing the fireplace, is my bannister-back armchair; a big chair for a big man, and easy enough for any reasonable person. I found it when I was looking for pewter at a farmhouse a few miles beyond us, and bought it for ten dollars. Then it was painted black, but since it is quite consistent to finish such chairs in mahogany, I had it done. The finest bannister-back chair, and one of the oldest that I know, was finished just this way. Renovation, which included a new rush-seat, - for the old splint-bottom was too shabby, - brought the chair's price to fifteen dollars, not an unreasonable one when you consider all that it means. You see, it's a country cousin of the stately Restoration chair, and a type that persisted long after the House of Hanover came to rule England. I don't suppose that the rustic joiner who carved the crested top had any idea he was saying in furniture language that King Charles had come to his own again; but so he was. I have seen better crests, of course; this one is quite crude; but the bulbous-turned brace is so unusually fine that I can honestly commend it.

The side-chair at the left is even better. It is what is known as a Transition type, which means that it borrowed its back from the Dutch motifs which William of Orange brought with him to England, but retained the baluster-and-pear turning and Spanish feet which characterized the later Jacobean period. Theoretically, these two opposing types of straight and bending line should not be combined; but here they come together in perfect harmony, because the splat, while keeping its shape, has abandoned its curve. My chair is one of the best balanced I have seen, worthy of the old city it came from, - Portsmouth, - where it started life, in the early seventeen hundreds, as one of a set of six. Alas, that so much beauty should perish from the earth! All those others were chopped up and burned for firewood. I bought mine from its noble rescuer for ten dollars, and, as the rush-seat was small, the whole chair cost me just fourteen.