Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

[If staircases or passages are white-washed, a dado, about a yard deep up the side of the staircase and along the passage, of frilled cretonne, twilled red calico, or anything cheap, is an excellent way of protecting the wall from all the many injuries that happen to it. If you like, you can have one such dado for winter and one for summer, and they can be washed or cleaned. They look best frilled onto a thin lath of wood which pulls out. Rings are sewn on the back for hanging the curtain onto nails or hooks screwed into the wall at intervals.] If the wall is soft, another thin lath of wood must be nailed to it to hold the screws. In a white room a small piece of good drapery or old leather hung on the wall looks well, or even a few yards of very superior paper may be put in one place — between windows, over a chimney-piece, behind a picture, above a table, or under a bookcase. This form of decoration was the common one in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and was, in fact, the way in which tapestry came to be used. In the old French chdteaux of Touraine the 284 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN hooks that held these draperies, silks from Italy, and no doubt many other things, are still to be seen in the walls. As the French Court moved from chateau to chateau, all this material moved with them. If bookcases can be made to order, they are much better raised a certain height on the wall. This is more convenient, as grubbing on the floor for the book one wants is very tiresome. Besides, in this way you can have the large books at the top, with a wide shelf above them, and the small ones below, the shelves gradually diminishing both in height and depth from the wall. Mr. Morris advocates, in his lectures, the painting of deal ; the only other way of treating it is simply to oil it. Mr. Morris, I think, says nothing about painting the floors. But that seems to me the best solution ; at any rate, for three feet round the room — red, green, black, and above all white as often as you like, especially for bed- rooms. Nothing is so clean, the paint wants no scrub- bing and no soda ; tepid water and a cloth make every- thing as clean as new. Staining, though a little cheaper? wears less well, will not wash, and looks common. Indian matting and felt look well in the country, but are not so clean in London. Both collect the black dust, and the former cannot be taken up. You want to be really rich to have polished floors of oak or teak. English housemaids cannot clean them, abroad it is always done by men. In London it has to be done by an upholsterer two or three times a year. If economy is an object in furnishing, one of the best ways of reducing the outlay in bed-rooms is by dispensing with the modern washing-stands. The old-fashioned ones are often too small for comfort ; our ancestors cleaned themselves with little room and less water. A large unvarnished deal table with the legs painted to suit the room is what I recommend. For cheapness it can be FURNISHING 285