Really it is very much like a lustre plate, this little ell-chamber of mine. I mean, it has the same gay, whimsical brightness, and it is so cheerfully unpretentious, so pleasantly naive, that I can't help making the comparison. The architecture is analogous, also. Have you ever heard the jingling description of pink lustre done by some old-time Salem lady?

Its decoration chiefly shows House, tree, and fence all tinted rose; Where walls stand on a crooked slant, And roofs are at a dangerous cant.

Well, that's the way this room is. You can stand upright by the door wall, in the window nooks, and in the middle of the room, and that's all. Otherwise, beware how you raise your head suddenly, for the roof slants so that, for the most part, it is abrupt angles. Briefly, the room measures twelve and a half by nine and three fourths feet; add to that two recessed windows set about three feet back, and you have an idea of the floor-space. Of course, this room was an afterthought; it did n't belong to the original structure of my house, and in the wide and pleasant early days, no doubt, a rambling attic took its place. And then, when the old ell was torn down, and my small and unimaginative kitchen built on, this little, angled room was the logical upper story.

When I look at it I recall Rudder Grange, and the requisites of that floating mansion for a maid; my establishment has the same limitations: she must be small! But maids, big or little, you know, are difficult to get nowadays; and when my friends, considering all my writing and all my letters, say, "My dear, you ought to have a good secretary," I always answer meekly,"Oh, please, I'd so much rather have a good cook." Still, since I am sure that somewhere in the world there is a not impossible She who shall command my stove and me, I made up my mind that I must prepare for her: give her such a pleasant room that she would live with me long, long years, like Felicite, of the simple heart and beloved memory.

My first problem, of course, was space: where to put the few pieces so necessary to even the most elementary existence. A good-sized, single couch would fit agreeably along the low wall at the back; a table to hold books, a candlestick, and a glass, could be placed at the couch's head; against the opposite wall, a large shirt-waist box. On the right of the door there was just room enough for a small side-chair; while on the left was my one really respectable wall-space, the only place where a bureau could be put, and an accompanying mirror hung. And now I am come to the crux of my difficulty, to my real problem. If I had a bureau there was, literally, no room to write; and I have found that my maids, almost without exception, transient as they were, wanted a place for their correspondence. Also, since the domestic situation in a college town is frequently met by employing a student, who thereby earns his way through school, and acquires certain culinary facts which will, later on, make him invaluable to some woman, I simply had to have a desk, on the off-chance of that not impossible He. But, if I used the ordinary desk of commerce, there would be room for writing, but none for clothes. And thus I cut the Gordian knot: I bought a slant-top desk, - new, of course, but built along the old lines, - and so had two pieces in one. Desks, in the middle years of the eighteenth century, were called "bureaus," you know; and I really am proud of my consistent solution, because it so completely economizes space. -I commend it to all dwellers in small houses and apartments, for the slanting top lets down, and there, directly at hand, are your writing accommodations in shallow drawers and pigeonholes, while below is your ample drawer-room.

And now I was ready for the glad adventure of color, always a pleasing occupation. First, I had to consider the seasons: a white, interminable winter, an autumn which comes early, a spring lingering late, and a sudden summer, which can be almost tropically hot. That room, if I painted it in grays, would be vastly depressing in bleak weather; a yellow might be oversultry for summer; blues would be charming in June, or rose-pink in January, but neither would make you happy the whole year through. Those painted walls - too slanting for any paper hangings to stay on them - closed so tightly overhead that you could n't take any color risk. Then, as I was puzzling, I fell in love with a glazed English chintz, warm and cool all at once, and sweetly patterned with butterflies and roses. The surface color lingers between brown and gray, the hovering butterflies are very blue, and the roses deep-pink, with daring little dashes of yellow. Here, then, was my color-scheme! I had the walls painted the same gray-brown, and the floor a slightly darker tone. The chintz I used in roller-curtains at the windows - a method which, as they were small, would give decorative color, and exclude less air than any other. Alas, that I cannot show them to you; but to do so was a photographic impossibility, and, instead, I display a strip of the flowered chintz for your attention.

On the floor I put the other half of my rag carpet, - leaving a broad border of painted board, - and that part of my harmony was complete: rose-red, blue, ecru, black, and yellow; all the chintz colors were woven in those homemade strips. For the couch-cover I used an old woven coverlet, picked up for four dollars at the same wayside auction where I bought my rag carpet. Or rather R------ picked it up, and then, wailing at his extravagance, besought me to take it off his hands. Which I did, and I have never regretted my kindness. It is a homely, butternut-dyed fabric, and its primitive pattern, by name "Sunrise," is the mother of a number of more intricate leaf-designs: "Muscadine Hulls" and "Hickory Leaf," for example. Its colors - brownish-ecru, buff, and quite a bit of black - agree excellently with the rest of the room; and, for cushions, I have two of bright medium-blue poplin, and one of coarsely woven light-brown burlap - a cloth that conveys, as a finer piece could not, the feeling of the coverlet texture.

But nothing in my cheerful room gives me the pleasure which my decorated furniture does. For I did n't think I could do it, - paint not being my natural method of expression, - and when I found I could, I knew all the blessed joy of an artist blending his hues for some masterpiece. You see, I trustfully bought the paint from a color-card, assuming its veracity; but, when I applied the first coat, O------ complimented me upon my pretty lavender chairs. Which was n't at all what I intended; so I took that paint, and I shook that paint, and I added blues and a suspicion of yellow, and stirred vigorously, and painted samples of wood, until I got just the soft brown-gray of the chintz. My little chairs are the spindle-back sort that you must remember seeing at your grandmother's; very Victorian they are, and virtuous; sitting on them, you could n't think anything but blameless thoughts. The frames I painted to match the walls and chintz surface, but the spindles I colored blue, to consort with those bright butterflies. And, that the rose-pink might not be lost, I adorned either side of the top-rail with little gay "button roses."Shall I tell you how to do them, how to get just that quaint and artless effect? I borrowed a thought from my old lady's rug-making memories. She had contrived her roses in the "cup and saucer" fashion, tracing around the saucer, making scallops with the cup. I took two sizes of buttons and did precisely the same thing (first studying the roses on a pink-lustre ancestral plate), painted them a bright rose outlined with blue - and, do you know, the result is most engaging. My desk I decorated in similar fashion, the wooden knobs adding the bright blue note; and my naive, good little table has a gray body and blue spindle-legs. On the piazza I did my work - an ideal way to paint, for it was mid-April, and I rose every morning very early, before either the wind or my neighbors were awake. I had the whole empty world to myself ! I could almost see the daffodils pushing their green spears up through the turf, and I learned that the crows in my tall trees talked very differently in those matinal hours, saying not "Caw," but "Ca-aw!" most emphatically. Ah, I loved everything then, for mine was the joy of creating!

May I confide to you how much my little lustre-plate room cost? I think I'11 itemize it for you, excluding, of course, the expense of painting the floor and walls, for this had to be done anyway, and, besides, I do not consider it a logical furnishing item. Well, to begin with, my rag carpet, as you know, was two dollars and sixty-five cents. Perhaps, even, you could count it a trifle less, since I still have some usable strips left. My little chairs I got at an auction in Our Town; and, as they were put up at different times for bidding, one was fifty cents, the other sixty. The small, spindle-legged table, found at a secondhand shop, was seventy-five cents more, and my desk I bought for sixteen dollars and seventy-five cents, from an enormous emporium where you may purchase anything from a pound of prunes to an incubator: and, all told, the paint could not have amounted to more than a dollar. The chintz I paid a dollar and ninety-five cents a yard for, - a modest price for such posied prettiness, - and three yards made my roller-curtains. Let me see, that's five dollars and eighty-five cents, isn't it? Eight yards of blue poplin for covering the shirt-waist box, making the large pillow-covers, and the small, tufted chair-cushions, came to only four dollars more; the burlap was forty-seven cents, and the three pillows averaged a dollar apiece. Oh, yes, and I must n't forget my little brass candlesticks, - five dollars for the pair, - nor my other touch of gilt, the chaste oval mirror which actually started life as a picture-frame; it was the gift of a collecting friend, and I followed her example and put in, not a bygone picture, but a looking-glass, which cost but a dollar and a quarter. As to my silhouette and old French print, they were moderation itself: framing and all, they were less than five dollars - four and sixty cents to be absolutely accurate. And as for my coverlet, that, as I told you, was four dollars.

I have just added up a long column of figures: fifty dollars and forty-two cents is the result. You must not think I am urging you to impossible economies. The desk you may buy at the same price that I did; as to the chairs and the table, they are not unusual finds; I would guarantee to start out, and come back with a round dozen at the end of any perfect collecting-day; in spite of their domestic prettiness they are still unsought. The carpet and the coverlet might present more difficulties; still, all large department stores are selling machine-made rag carpets which are inexpensive, durable, and, oftentimes, quite agreeably colored. And the woven coverlet might appropriately be replaced by one made of burlap, denim, or, even, unbleached cotton, banded with the window-chintz. In a little room of this sort it is a matter of harmony rather than expenditure; it is a gentle simplicity, not luxury, that you want.

And now that I have satisfied your curiosity, can you gratify mine? Do you happen to know of a brisk and willing maidservant (small), who likes rustic retirement, and is fond of children and cats and old furniture? If you do, such an one will meet with good encouragement, I assure you!