Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men

[164] cities, there is absolutely no arrangement to supply this demand — no one who can give to a young couple setting up their house-keeping more than that amount of information possessed by the average furniture dealer, which is very little. For want of this, many a young pair, as their wedding-day approaches, sit down and ponder helplessly over some book on “The house beautiful,” or “In-door decoration,” until their souls are filled with despair. Where are they to find these charming portieres, these aesthetic wall-papers, these delightful Russian wash-bowls that are lighter and prettier and cheaper and more durable than any china? And the dealers receive unavailing letters from a thousand miles away, asking for the wrong things or under the wrong names, and ending in failure? What is the remedy?

The remedy is for a few women first, and then a good many women, after training themselves properly, to take up decoration as a profession. Let any two bright and capable girls who have wearied themselves in painting water-colors that people do not want, or Christmas-cards for which the market is waning, try another experiment. Let them, after studying in the art schools of New York or Boston or Cincinnati, make also a careful study of the markets and workshops of those cities, so far as they relate to decoration; and then go, armed with circulars,