A Young Girl's Room

We know daffodil rooms in which a lovely yellow and stem green are combined. In fact one mother with half a dozen daughters, in the spring of their years, has taken a flower for each prom and the family always say, "You will find it in the Primrose Room," meaning Kath-erine's, or "It is in the Rose Room," meaning Belle's.

One modern girl ultra modern, whose room is much discussed, has used colors of a more sophisticated sort than those above. She goes in for crimson, royal purple, orange and emerald green, and shades her lamps with plain natural colored parchment paper, over which she drops squares of chiffon hole cut out in the center. These "veils" are of every rich Oriental shade and weighted with gold fringe or balls sewn to the corners. Her walls are covered with Japanese fiber paper in dull gold, and at her windows hang curtains of a very thin, rope color material found as theatrical gauze. This she has bound with emerald green satin ribbon. The valance at the top and the bands, which loop back, the curtains are of cretonne having a purple ground with birds as design, in most of the colors used over lampshades.

Every young girl likes a three-winged mirror on her dressing table. We think her very wise. The hair most carefully arranged is going to look the most attractive and the hat put on at an angle to accentuate the special charm of the girl who is inspecting herself, is the hat one will call a "winner." Your young girl knows!

As to the wood of which her furniture is made, that is a question of the style of the season. This sounds, and is, very expensive unless your young girl is the clever, up-to-date, self-helping sort who can do things herself. There are many girls of fifteen and sixteen who paint their own furniture and do it very well.

They get their brother or some friend, expert with the saw, to amputate unbeautiful knobs and other fancy excrescence, once the fashion, but compared with modern creations patterned after classic shapes, offensive to ^her eye. Any girl with a keen intelligence can educate her taste by studying the furniture displayed by the leading dealers.

The young girl's room must be what she, not your mature woman, calls attractive. So consult each girl in turn. Young girls as a rule like bright and spring like colors. One should feel on entering that some happy girl calls it her very own. Hangings and furniture covers can be of solid colors, pink, yellow or pale blue with dancing, frilly white sash curtains. If Preferred, lovely chintz and cretonne to suit each style of furniture come at all prices.

Dear to the heart of your young girl is a dressing table with a three-winged mirror. They sound an extravagance, but remember you can pay a great deal for one; a moderate sum or you can even make one yourself! If you are blessed with plenty of this world's goods and can satisfy your heart's desire we would suggest furniture of the Louis XVI style made in some light glossy wood or painted. This style with cane let into wood is very girlish and charming. But do not be discouraged; if you are possessed of more taste than money, use your wits. Buy what you can and make the rest!

We have in mind an ingenious woman who made for a young girl friend a fascinating three-winged mirror in fact the whole table by reconstructing an old-fashioned washstand that had one drawer and two doors below. The doors were removed and became the side wings of mirror. Sides and back of stand were also taken away and the back lifted to form back of center mirror. Mirror glass was then fastened to center and wings and framed with picture molding. Sides and back with doors having been removed, the four corner uprights figured as the four legs of a slender dressing table. The whole was painted and enameled white. A clever girl can make almost anything!

One young woman we know bought up many kinds of old tables, chairs, bureaus and beds at auctions in her town, and these she stored in her father's barn to make over on rainy afternoons after school hours. This resulted in her refurnishing their home, and then, that turned out so alluring; she drifted into decorating the homes of friends. To day, five years after she painted her first piece of furniture, she has become a full-fledged decorator, with her sign out!

She loves doing rooms for young girls and says "Give your girl, as well as your older woman, a sofa in her room and on the foot of each sofa a dainty, soft and warm coverlet to draw up over the feet and limbs if she wants to steal a nap after lunch or before dinner. Let this coverlet be one of the bright colors used for lampshades or sofa pillows. Give your young girl gay colors and graceful shapes; plenty of mirrors and windows, lots of windows! Youth would have light and life."

Your young girl needs a writing desk in her room and so placed that the light falls over her left shoulder. If it is comfortable to write, she will be far more apt to answer letters and not put off the "bread and butter" sort! Start her with a generous supply of paper, pens, ink, stamps and blotters. After that she is the one to see that her equipment is kept up so that the desk of some grown-up is not resorted to for necessities.

As much a necessity as her desk is her worktable. And when your young girl moves into her beautiful and complete new room, she is of tea so fascinated by the convenience of silks and cottons to match all her belongings that the task of repairing ceases to be a burden and things get done as a matter of course. It is all taken as one of the items "in the day's work" or program.

Those who live with young people of either sex know that half the battle of teaching order is won when a place has been provided for everything. By this method "house-keeping" is reduced to its simplest form and the actual cost of service kept down. All youth has its untidy moments not to be taken too seriously, but the chronic habit of untidiness, if not checked, gets into the character.