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In several of these there exists a degree of luxury not to be found even in New York, for here there is not the space for it. There are huge galleries of marble, with floors and staircases of Travertine, looking out upon landscapes through clear glass panels recessed slightly behind a border of small stained glass .panels, so that the landscape becomes like a center stained glass effect into which one feels one could walk without hindrance, since the clear glass before it scarcely seems to exist. There are huge drawing rooms with monumental organs, magnificent chandeliers and mirrors and petit point sofas, sun rooms of costly silken fabrics, dining rooms hung with many tapestries and set with massive pieces of wrought iron and marble. And below the grandeur of this, I have been escorted through the various domains of the pastry cook, with his separate oven in its separate boudoir, the little preserving kitchen, the three chief ice chambers, one for meats, another for dairy products and still another for agricultural produce, each with a huge glass swinging door
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so that one could view the forty bottles of milk and the vast gobs of butter from the outside. And joyful tidings to all long-suffering general house workers: there was the laundry equipped with hot electric dryers, electric wringers and washers, machines which did everything but speak and which apparently changed clothes-washing from drudgery into a pleasurable dream. And finally on the floor above, near the owner's bedchamber, was the indoor marble swimming pool, warmed and cooled winter and summer, as regards both its atmospheric temperature and its aquatic, by mechanical devices. Adjoining this, again, was the dressing cabinet, a hallway of some twenty feet in length lined on one side with glass-fronted closets, one containing dressing gowns, another robes, another suits, etc., and on the other with tray cabinets each labelled to indicate its contents, such as " tan stockings", " black stockings", "colored stockings", etc. But I hesitate to proceed further into this domain of the exterior decoration of the human body: I am reminded that our theme is the interior decoration of the human abode.
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