Few apartments have fireplaces, and if you are fortunate enough to find one with a real fireplace and a simple mantel shelf you will be far on the way toward making a home of your group of rooms.  Of course your apartment is heated by steam, or hot air, or something, but an open fire of coal or wood will be very pleasant on chilly days, and more important still your home will have a point of departure—­the Hearth.

If the mantel shelf is surmounted by one of those dreadful monstrosities made up of gingerbread woodwork and distressing bits of mirrors, convince your landlord that it will not be injured in the removing, and store it during your residence here.  Have the space above the mantel papered like the rest of the walls, and hang one good picture, or a good mirror, or some such thing above your mantel shelf, and you will have offered up your homage to the Spirit of the Hearth.

When you do begin to buy furniture, buy compactly, buy carefully.  Remember that you will not require the furniture your mother had in a sixteen-room house.  You will have no hall or piazza furnishings to buy, for instance, and therefore you many put a little more into your living-room things.  The living-room is the nucleus of the modern apartment.  Sometimes it is studio, living-room and dining-room in one.  Sometimes living-room, library and guest-room, by the grace of a comfortable sleeping-couch and a certain amount of drawer or closet space.  At any rate, it will be more surely a living-room than a similar room in a large house, and therefore everything in it should count for something.  Do not admit an unnecessary rug, or chair, or picture, lest you lose the spaciousness, the dignity of the room.  An over-stuffed chair will fill a room more obviously than a grand piano—­if the piano is properly, and the chair improperly placed.

In one of the illustrations of this chapter you will observe a small sitting-room in which there are dozens of things, and yet the effect is quiet and uncrowded.  The secretary against the plain wall serves as a cabinet for the display of a small collection of fine old china, and the drawers serve the chance guest—­for while this is library and sitting-room, it has a most comfortable couch bed, and may be used as a guest-room as well.

[Illustration:  A CORNER OF MY OWN BOUDOIR]

The bookshelves are built high on each side of the mantel and between the windows, thus giving shelf room to a goodly collection of books, with no appearance of heaviness.  The writing-table is placed at right angles to the windows, so that the light may fall on the writer’s left shoulder.  There is a couch bed—­over three feet wide, in this room, with frame and mattress and pillows covered in a dark brocaded stuff, and a fireside chair, a small chair at the head of the couch and a low stool all covered with the same fabric.  It really isn’t a large room, and yet it abundantly fills a dozen needs.