The Household

A treiter in the Rochester Rural Home makes the following sensible suggestions, which architects and house-builders should take into serious consideration : One of the worst faults of our verv faulty modern architecture, as applied to houses, ia found in the faet that our architects do not take into their plans the possibilities of sickness in the f aniily. Now, bo house is properly constructed that has not in it a room or rooms expressly designed for the accommodation of the sick and infirm. This room should, in the first place, have a warm, sunny exposure. The window light shouíd be ampie, and eommand the widest possible view. The first essential in a sick room is a good, liberal fire place. Through it, and by means of the warmth which it generates, the whole room is kept, in its atmospheric conditions, wholesome and pure. Not only so, but a slow, burning fire, with its lights and shades, its rising sparks and glowing brands, its curling and many colored smoke, and its changeful embers, furnishes ceaseless diversion to the sick one who lies watching it. Nothing is more BOOthing and quieting than the influence which subtly steals into the senses of hiin who gazes dreamily into the gentle llame. It is companionship itself. The walls, too, sheuld have their proper adoraments. Pictures that suggest quiet and peace, and the f ree, f resh life of nature outside, should be on thein. A bracket, with its vases of ilowers ; a green clambering vine, clingingambitiously to the ceiling; alibrary ■ise lilled with familiar books; curtains that soften the light while admitting it- all these are helpful to one who hes in weakness, and can take no more of life than what the little room reveals. Better still, if just outside of the window stand a tree with the branches so placed that the leaves of some almost sweep the pane. IIow much the sight of twigs, buds and leaves, stirred by the wind and flecked with bnght gleams of the sun, can cheer the mind of one who lies upon the pillow idly looking at them ! The central thought expressed in a well constructed sick room is - diversion. The object of its construction and location sliould be to give perfect accommodation and protection to the invalid, while at the same time it suggests the beauty and the freedom of being unconfmed- the life and animation of the i great out-door world beyond.