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cheap and plentiful, the basket for coals may be done away with and the fuel kept in its place by sturdy "dogs," for which many charming hints have been handed down to us by our grandfathers. Over the modern fireplace, even in a bedroom, a mirror is generally placed, but I would not advise it unless the room chanced to be so dingy that every speck of light must be procured by any means. Still less would I have recourse to the usual stereotyped gilt-framed bit of looking glass. In such a private den as we are talking about, all sorts of little eccentricities might be permitted to the decorator. I have seen a looking-glass with a flat, narrow frame, beyond which projected a sort of outer frame also flat, wherein were mounted a series of pretty little water-colour sketches, and another done in the same way with photographs—only these were much more difficult to manage artistically, and needed to be mounted with a back-ground of greyish paper. For a thoroughly modern room, small oval mirrors are pretty, mounted on a wide margin of velvet with sundry diminutive brackets and knobs and hooks for the safe bestowal of pet little odds and ends of china and glass, with here and there a quaint old miniature or brooch among them. In old, real old rooms anything of this sort would, however, be an impossibility, for the mantelshelf would