Page:Bedroom and Boudoir.djvu/20

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5
AN IDEAL BEDROOM.
[chap. I.

they understand a great deal more than they once did, how the emanations from the human body are attracted to the sides of the room and stick there. It is not a pretty or poetical idea, but it is unhappily a fact. So the only thing to be done is to provide ourselves with walls which will either wash or clean in some way, or are made originally of some material which neither attracts nor retains these minute particles. Nothing can be at once cleaner or more wholesome than the beautiful wainscotted walls we sometimes see in the fine old country houses built in Queen Anne's reign. A bedroom of that date, if we except the bed itself, and the probable absence of all bathing conveniences, presented a nearly perfect combination of fresh air, spotless cleanliness, and stately and harmonious beauty to the eyes of an artist or the nose of a sanitary inspector. The lofty walls of panelled oak, dark and lustrous from age and the rubbing of many generations of strong-armed old-fashioned housemaids, were walls which could neither attract nor retain objectionable atoms, and ventilation was unconsciously secured by means of high narrow windows, three in a row, looking probably due south, and an open chimney-place, innocent of "register stoves" or any other contrivance for blocking up its wide throat. Such a room