Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

proof that a house is kept sweet and aired, and therefore healthy, than the fact that no room ever smells of tobacco. After many years' experience in all sorts of houses, small and large, country and town, I can vouch for it that no house ever does smell of smoke, if cigarettes, cigars, and pipes are allowed everywhere, provided only that a thorough draught can be got through the rooms. I well know how sensitive some people are about tobacco, but it is wonderful how much this dislike can be overcome by custom and a desire to do so. A smoking-room other- wise than as a man's general room, where he can read and write, is, I think, a very objectionable thing, and con- ducive to a great waste of time. Let a man smoke during his employments, and not look upon smoking as an occupation in itself. People should guard against the sentiment of the cheerful country hostess who received her guest with ' This is Liberty Hall ; you can smoke in the garden.' Another book, called ' How to be Happy though Married ' (Fisher Unwin), has had an immense sale, and is a much cleverer, better-written book than its rather flippant title might lead one to suppose. I strongly re- commend it to young housewives. It has a short chapter on furnishing, with which I cordially agree, and much in the book is well worth reading and remembering. Mr. William Morris's ' Lectures on Art,' published in 1881, helped me more than any other book I know ; it cultivated my ideas and refined my taste. The first time I went to Mr. Morris's old shop in Queen's Square, quite as a girl, it was indeed a revelation. It had the effect of a sudden opening of a window in a dark room. All was revealed — the beauty of simplicity, the usefulness of form, the fascination of design, and the charm of delicate colour. Added to this, came the appreciation of the things that had gone before, and which in my time had been hidden 278 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN away. I came back to the various houses to which I had been accustomed with a sigh of despair ; but the first step towards progress must always be discontent with what one has and with one's own ignorance. It has sometimes been a sorrow to me to see, in the Oxford Street shop, that even Mr. Morris did not keep up entirely the high and simple standard of his early years. He has some golden rules in the lecture called ' The Beauty of Life,' perhaps the truest and most concise of which is one that none of us really act up to : ' Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.' What would happen to the great mass of modern wedding-presents if we really carried out this rule ? Mr. Morris preaches the sternest simplicity, and I must say, as a mental effort, I think we ought to try and agree with him ; though rooms, to my mind, should look warm and comfortable, and simplicity had better consist in an absence of rubbish than in a diminution of comfort. Mr. Morris goes on to explain what he means by a simple sitting-room : ' First, a bookcase with a great many books in it; next, a table that will keep steady when you write or work at it ; then several chairs that you can move, and a bench that you can sit or lie upon ; next, a cupboard with drawers; next, unless the book- case or the cupboard be very beautiful with painting or carving, you will want pictures or