to which reference has been made, is at right angles to the main street entrance. When closed, as for evening entertainments, and banked with flowering shrubs or palms, it not only shuts off the draught, but transforms the hall into a sumptuous and secluded interior, where a hostess may receive, or her guests may move freely about. This particular hall is of marble. with a heavy gold ceiling. The marble balustrade runs up the marble steps, and skirts the hall above, the two being lighted by the dome. From this second hall open the library, den, breakfast and bedrooms. Over the balustrade are hung rugs and rich embroideries. In both halls great dignity is preserved. The walls of the lower hall are finished by a sculptured frieze, under which are hung old cathedral stuffs. The big cathedral chairs arranged against the wall proclaim an appropriate formality. The undraped tables are left unencumbered. Stable objects alone are placed thererare but large bronzes and carvings, adding dignity and proportion, but no sense of confusion or distraction. The walls of the upper hall are lined with tapestries, while over the doors are charmingly designed oval frames in high relief, enclosing some enchanting Tiepolos. In houses of lesser note the same general construction has been followed in the lower hall-that is, there are dressing-rooms on the street level and the stairs lead to the salons above. Charming as some of these halls are, and full of dignity, they necessarily lack the more alluring quality of halls built of marble and set out with trickling fountains. Where the walls have to be covered with paper and the floor and staircase carpeted, one runs the risk of a bad color sense in the householder. The fault lies most, however, with the architect who has not known how to make his decoration a part of his construction, as when the walls are panelled and arched. The temptation to the housekeeper is to introduce too many stuffs and extraneous belongings, till the hall becomes like an overdressed woman jarring on the senses. Stuffs for the entrance hall of country houses, supposedly left open for every breeze, are an affliction. Nothing is gained by them, and everything is lost, yet in sumptuous and sometimes famous houses, they are only too often discovered. The loveliest country hall I know is of old English oak, with panelled walls perfect in their proportion and repose. The floor is of wood, the ceiling carved. The doors, too, are rich in carving and the windows leaded, the green of outside growing things gleaming through. A strip of plain green filling runs the length of the hall intowhich are set old oak chests and high-back chairs, the crimson note furnished by some of the coverings, adding an irresistible touch of cheerfulness. The tact of the householder is proved by the self-restraint everywhere exercised and the introduction only of that which delights like a flower, but does not distract like a stuff. Lower halls, then, having been treated with formality, one is left free to introduce the more familiar note in the upper hall, excluded by every law from the approach of the messenger. Fireplaces become possible, and the familiar sofa, though never to my mind the reading - lamp. All pro vision for the interchange of civilities should still take on a casual character. But this, as has been said before, is a point sometimes difficult to urge upon the American. We seem to have an instinctive national fear of privacy, a doubtful questioning about closed doors. Fences too, we abhor, and a protecting iron gate to our gardens sets a whole community aflame. We think we have done well by our guests when in certain houses we set apart for their exclusive benefit a corner of an upper hall, being afraid, perhaps, to supply doors, or diffident about doing so. With all our wealth we have not yet attained to the surety and magnificence of certain European methods, where money is not so new, and ways of doing things have been long enough established to necessitate no temerity. In some houses, for instance, besides the conventional suite of variously assorted bedrooms and baths, a separate salon is provided for each lady of the party, a liveried footman, appointed for her exclusive benefit, taking up his daily station before her closed door. The beauty and sumptuousness of some of our upper halls prove incontestibly how surely both the knowledge and taste of certain people among us has progressed. A flight of stairs ushers us from a region of tempered formality, into one of a warm magnificence. The doorways are framed by tapestries or embossed velvets, the velvets of the curtains themselves having borrowed from antiquity a lustre delicate and entrancing as that of moonlight on dew. Yet even here, where the wealth of magnificent appointments abounds, the individuality of the householder sounds the last compelling note. She may make or mar it all by the introduction of the inappropriate, or the lack of that self-restraint which impels her to use some material, however rich, with thoughtless disregard of the surroundings, as when brocades or cloths of gold are tossed over tables which, by reason of their very construction, should be left bare, except perhaps of a mat. One recognizes, insensibly too, where not only knowledge but love has entered in-love of the beautiful for its own sake, and because beauty is a contribution to life. You feel that tender, almost reverential, hands. have placed certain objects in certain places, not that they may "fill up" an empty space, but because the empty space has been provided to hold something treasured above all else. Throughout all the halls of a house, a harmony of design and treatment (of quality, perhaps, as the better word), should prevail. This, unhappily, is not always insisted upon, and one in consequence experiences many a rude. awakening on ascending still another flight of stairs. One feels that perhaps the money may have given out before the third story was reached; or that the imagination of the householder, exhausted with the tax made upon it by the enforced splendors of the lower halls, had failed her when left by herself, like a half-educated person with no tradition to fall back upon. The real equipment is proved by the treatment of places more or less hidden from the general eye: the test of excellence by the application of detail throughout. One beautiful third-story hall is made of a rich dark carved oak, its panels filled with a rare crimson damask. In another, as beautiful, the hall on the bedroom floor is of old carved oak throughout, lighted by leaded window panes, and set out with formal chairs and carved oak chests and bare tables. The plain surfaces of the beautiful panels refresh and delight you, the subdued color of the old oak soothing the senses. In still another bedroom hall, protected by its balustrades, over which one can look down on the stairs (not the halls) below, pictures are hung, armories are set out, and a sofa placed for a word by the way. In this hall, too, is an antique velvet trunk holding laces, a perfectly legitimate object in such an environment, but a note that would be absolutely false in a drawingroom, where the inconsequential collector, liking to have his possessions in view, has been sometimes tempted to place one of its kind. In some of the smaller city houses of ordinary dimensions, several interesting departures have been made in the treatment of conventional halls. These being necessarily dark, except as they are lighted from the street door, have been covered with white woodwork running up to the roof. In one most beautiful example, the wall surface has been broken by a series of charmingly designed arches panelled to produce a receding effect. Into some of these arches mirrors have been fitted, adding light and cheerfulness and suggesting greater space, the whole architectural arrangement being made to conceal the flight of stairs to the basement. In another instance, |