How To Finish Rooms

Bayard ïaylor's opinión on this subject is thus expressed in the Independent : " For the finishing of the rooms, tlicre is nothing equal to the native wood, simply oilcd to develop tho beauty of the grain. Even the commonest piue, treated in this way, has a warrath and luster, beside which the dreary white paint, o comiuon even in the best of houses, looks dull and dead. Nothing gives a house such a cold, uneomfortablc air as white paint aud piaster. This color is fit onlj for the tropics. Our cheap, comiuon woods - pine, ash, chestnut, oak. maple, bcech, walnut, butternut - offer ns a variety of exquisite tiuts and fibrous patterns, which, until recently, have been wholly disregarded iu building. - Even in furniture we are just bcginning to discover how inuch more chaste aml clegaut are oak nnd walnut than rnahogany. The beauty of a room is as depen dfcüt on the hannouy of its coloring as that of a picture. Some of the ugliand most disagrecable apartments I have ever Been wcre just those which containcd tho most expensivc furniture and decorations. My oxperience shows that a room iinished with the best seasoncd oak or walnut, costs actually less than ono finislied with pine, paintcd and in imitation of those woods Two verandahs of yellow pine, treated to two of boiled oil, have a richness and beauty of color bcyoiul the reach of pigment; and rny only regret conncctcd with the house is, that I was persuaded by tho represen tations of mechauics, to use any paint at all."