Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 December 1900 — Mistake of American Women. [ARTICLE]

Mistake of American Women.

“In furnishing our chambers, perhaps, we commit the grossest violations of laws of good taste and of good health at the same time,” writes Edward Bok, in the Ladies’ Home Journal, in a plea for the simpler and better furnishing of our homes. “Instead of keeping a sleeping apartment perfectly simple, putting Into It only such articles as are absolutely necessary, we load Into It a confusing mass of all manner of useless things which have no place there. Then we call such a littered-up room dainty. Truthfully speaking, the average sleeping-room is a mess of trifles never brought into use, which have absolutely no business nor place there. Whereas a sleeping apartment should have the freest circulation of air, It is almost impossible for a current of air to work its way through. We need not'seek to have tlie iiarrenness of the sleeping-rooms of monasteries or hospitals, and yet 1 there Is a lesson in them by which many might richly profit. Here health comes in even before good taste. We can scarcely keep a sleeping-room too airy and devoid of articles of furniture. Only what is absolutely needed for actual use should be in an apartment where we spend one-third of our lives. The private chamber is, really, an unerring reflection of either wisdom or folly, of good taste or bad.”