NATURE is unerring in her choice and use of color. She is the mistress of color, always in good taste and the greatest respecter of the fitness of things. In the main, her dress is green and brown and grey in a frame of blue and white. To relieve the monotony, she punctuates her work with spots of brightness that stand out in harmonious contrasts.
From earliest Spring days she operates a kaleidoscope which brings changes to the eye and keeps it interested and unwearied of the transitions which gain in attractiveness as she touches time with her wand and carries us unwittingly through a maze of hueful glory.
In her scheme of things, she uses gold and pink, lilac and amethyst, crimson and green, blue and purple, yellow and brown, orange, buff and neutral silvers and drab. Go where you will in the flower months and you cannot get away from her combinations of colors.
In March she brings the trailing arbutus into blossom with its delicate pink flowers nestling in a bed of green. April comes with her lap filled with wild honeysuckle, with its red spurs that seem to be a reception committee to balmy days and renewed life. So it goes as the season advances. Nature is never violent in her selections of color. From the departure of snow to the turning of the leaves in Autumn, she teaches us the use of color, and never once going wrong. With May comes the beautiful wild lady’s slipper, followed in June by the grass-pink. The spring season is a pink and green season, and with the warmer days, meadow and roadside, woods and swamps become dotted with stronger colors until in September the golden-rod and Jo Pye weed vie with each other in the carnival of beauty.
So, if we would put harmony in the surroundings which make home, we will do well to follow the order and the skill of this scheme of universal decoration.
Let us consider, if you please, the spirit of home-making as nature herself and the home and the rooms within it as nature and the seasons passing in review. It is the purpose of this book to treat of the home in its entirety and of all the elements that go to make it. For inasmuch as all things are relative, it becomes imperative to consider the details as well as the project of general requirements.
Let us picture and see the home from the outside and the inside points of view. Let us see the physical structure and its uses. Let us not only make walls but a place to live, ready for its owner to walk into, sink into an easy-chair and meet eye rest and mental satisfaction, called comfort.