If a room is badly proportioned it can often be improved by the simple expedient of using a correct paper.  If the room is too high for its size the ceiling color may be brought down on the side wall for eighteen inches or so and finished with a moulding.  This stops the eye before it reaches the ceiling and so makes the room seem lower.  If the room is too low a striped paper may be used which will make the room seem higher by carrying the eye up to the ceiling where the paper is finished with a moulding.  Vertical lines give the appearance of height, horizontal lines of width.  Striped paper should not be used in narrow halls, for it makes them seem narrower and gives one the feeling of being in a cage.  Two-toned striped papers of nearly the same color value, such as gray and white, yellow and cream-white, and white and cream color, are better to use than those of more marked contrast, although some of the green and white and blue and white are charming and fresh looking for bedrooms.  Black and white is too eccentric for the average house; one should beware of all eccentric papers.  There are a few kinds of paper which should be left severely alone, for they will spoil any room.  One of them has a plain general tone but a suggestion of other colors which give it a blurred and mottled appearance which is singularly disagreeable.  Another is plain in color but has a lumpy effect like a toad’s back, and is really quite awful.  Others are metallic papers, and there is a heavy paper embossed in self color with a conventional design which is apt to have a shining surface.  Papers with dashes and little flecks of gold should be avoided, for the gold gives the wall an unstable and cheap appearance.  Papers with small single figures repeated all over the surface are apt to look as if a plague of flies or beetles had arrived and are quite impossible to live with.  Borders and cut out borders have a commonplace appearance and are not in the best of taste.  And then there are papers with vulgarity of design.  This quality is hard to define clearly, for it may be only a slightly redundant curve or other lack of true feeling for the beauty of line, or a bit too much, or too little, color, or a bad combination of color, or a lack of knowledge of the laws of balance and harmony and ornament, or a wrong surface of texture to the paper.  But whatever the cause, a vulgar paper will vulgarize any room, no matter what is done in the way of furniture.  It will assert itself like an ill-bred person.  Luckily both are easily recognized.

But the picture is not all dark by any means, for some of the American made papers, as well as the imported papers, are very beautiful.  The makers are taking great pains to have fine designs and beautiful colors which will appeal to people of knowledge and taste.  The situation is much better than it was a few years ago.  Some of the copies of old figured and scenic papers are exceptionally fine, and can be used with