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CHAPTER II THE LARGER APARTMENT
FAMILIES of size and wealth suggest homes of generous dimensions, and these in turn create new problems by bringing forth the possibility of a number of rooms that are not thought of in the economically organized manage. Many of these are very useful, some are delightful without being essential, a few are mere extravagances for the very rich. I shall not attempt to separate the classes, but merely to mention as examples of one or another of them ^ the library, the drawing room, the man's den or private sanctuary, the billiard room, the boudoir, the day nursery, the guest rooms, the picture gallery, the breakfast room, the large dining hall and the various rooms allotted to the help. It may seem unlikely that all of these can be present in anything less than a mansion, but I know of one married couple who together occupy no less than twenty rooms and nine baths situated in a regular New York apartment house, and there are no doubt a hundred others living under similar conditions.
But one need not engage such quarters in order to require and appreciate so almost essential a room as the library. Any bookish man or woman craves a domicile for treasured volumes apart from the ordinary living room a place of many shelves, of comfortable chairs, a huge table desk, and perhaps, if one is me-
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58INTERIOR DECORATING
thodical, of tabulating files. Such a room, I conceive, should be in dull, warm colors, and dark woods such as oak or walnut, and its period, if it has one, should be one of the massive type such as Gothic, or Italian or English Renaissance. Open bookcases should line the lower part of the walls and above these there may be tapestries or etchings or old prints.
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