with trees and vines, awnings and blinds denying access to that which
would make the house wholesome. When possible, every room in the house
should have its daily ray bath, and our apartments should utilize the
light of the sun as early and as late as may be.

Perhaps nature intended all creatures to sleep through the hours of
darkness. If we had followed that custom we might be a race of
Methuselahs; who knows? Why some one has not established a cult of
sleepers from sunset to dawn is really inexplicable. But mankind in
general has persisted in holding to a different notion, and since the
sun declines to shine upon us during all the hours of the twenty-four,
and we insist upon cutting the night short at one end, we have had to
devise substitutes for the sunlight.

Of course the sunlight does not always leave us in unbroken darkness.
Few of us are so far departed from the days of mellow youth as to
forget certain summer evenings, linked in memory with verandas or
bowered walks, when moonlight--and even that in a modified form--was
the ideal illumination. But even if we could employ the good fairies
to dip them up for us, we should find the soft moongleams of the summer
evening a rather doubtful aid in searching for the cat in the dark
corners of the basement.

Omitting pine knots, which are rather out of vogue, modern home
lighting includes four forms--candles, oil lamps, gas, and electricity.
The first-named are not, it is true, used to any extent for what may be
called the practical purposes of lighting; but in many ways their light
is most beautiful of all. Some charming candelabra suited to the
dining table are found in the better shops, and an investment in a
choice design is a very justifiable extravagance. Candle illumination