The rugs which harmonize best with Georgian furniture are Orientals of different weaves and colors, or plain domestic carpet rugs.  The floor should be the darkest of the three divisions of a room—­the floor, the walls, the ceiling, but it should be an even gradation of color value, the walls half-way in tone between the other two.  This is a safe general plan, to be varied when necessity demands.  In drawing-rooms light and soft colors are usually in better harmony than dark ones, and a wide and beautiful choice can be made among Kermanshah, Kirman, Khorasan, Tabriz, Chinese, Oman rugs, and many others.  It is more restful in effect if the greater part of the floor is covered with a large rug, but if one has beautiful small rugs they may be used if they are enough alike in general tone to escape the appearance of being spotty.  One should try them in different positions until the best arrangement is found.

[Illustration:  A pleasing design of the old field bed.  The chairs here are samples of some eighteenth century manufacture that are to-day reproduced in admirable consistency.  The patch work quilt is interesting and the bed hanging are exceptionally good.]

Living-rooms and libraries are usually more solid in color than drawing-rooms and so need deeper tones in the rugs.  The choice is wide, and the color scheme can be the deciding note if one is buying new rugs.  If one already has rugs they must be the foundation for the color scheme of the room.

Furnishing With French Furniture

“This is my Louis XVI drawing-room,” said a lady, proudly displaying her house.

“What makes you think so?” asked her well informed friend.

To guard against the possibility of such biting humor one must be ever on the alert in furnishing a period room.  It is not a bow-knot and a rococo curve or two that will turn a modern room, fresh from the builder’s hands, into a Louis XV drawing-room.

French furniture is not appropriate to all kinds of houses, and it is often difficult to adapt it to circumstances over which one has no control.  The leisurely and pleasant custom of our ancestors of building a house as they wished it, and what is more, living in it for generations, is more or less a thing of the past.  Nowadays a house is built, and is complete and beautiful in every way, but almost before the house-warming is over, business is sitting on the doorstep, and so the family moves on.  We, as a nation, have not the comfortable point of view of the English who consider their home, their home, no matter how the outside world may be behaving.  Their front doors are the protection which insures their cherished privacy, and the feeling that they are as settled as the everlasting hills gives a calmness to their attitude toward life which is often missing from ours.  How many times have we heard people say when talking over plans—­“Have it thus and so, for it would be much better in case we ever care to sell.”  This attitude, to which of course there are hundreds of exceptions, is an outgrowth of our busy life and our tremendous country.  The larger part of the home ideal is the one which Americans so firmly believe in and act upon—­that it is the spirit and atmosphere which makes a home, and not only the bricks and mortar.