Part 7 (2/2)

Back before ” If a person has ability, will not the world learn it?

”If aa h he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door”

That a personal experience storyis dener_ It was illustrated by a half-toneof one corner of the burlap room

A BEDROOM IN BURLAP

THE MOST SATISFACTORY ROOM IN OUR BUNGALOW

BY KATHERINE VAN DORN

Our burlap rooh the living-roo-porch and kitchen, and allowed to express their delight and satisfaction while ith bated breath for the grand surprise to be given them

Then, when they have concluded, we say:

”But you should see our burlap rooain stand and wait We knohat is co, and, as we revel in the expressions of adain declaim with enormous pride: ”We made it all ourselves!”

There is a solid satisfaction ina room, especially for an a as a profession

We regard our rooenius, not likely to be duplicated in our personal experience It grew in this wise:

When we ca the family numbered three instead of the two of the year before Now nu wo-in” maid if her parents were ever to be able to detach the-in alow before and the problem of where to put her was a serious one We well knew that no self-respecting servant would condescend to sleep in an attic, although the attic was cool, airy and coht despise us if we gave her the bedroom and took up our quarters under the rafters It would be an easy enough matter for carpenters and plasterers to put a room in the attic, but we lacked the money necessary for such a venture And so we puzzled At first we thought of curtains, but the high winds which visit usthe curtains top and bottom, and from this the idea evolved The carpenter e consulted proved to be areed to put us up a framework in a day We helped

We outlined the room on the floor This took two strips of wood about one and a half by two inches The other two sides of the roo place of the roof and floor--that is, there was in reality no fourth wall; the room simply ended where floor and roof met Two strips were nailed to the rafters in positions siht strip was inserted and nailed fast at intervals of every three feet This distance was decided by the fact that curtain materials usually come a yard wide For a door we used a discarded screen-door, which, having been denuded of the bits of wire clinging to it, answered the purpose very well The door completed the skeleton

We used a beautiful soft blue burlap Tacking on proved ato the fact that our carpenter had used cypress for the framework We stretched the e-headed brass tacks, and while inserting these we measured carefully the distances between the tacks in order to keep this tri uniform The talls supplied by the frah wall of the attic necessitated sohts and these had not been placed with yard-wide material in view Above the screen-door fra up into the peak

The carpenter had thoughtfully run two strips up to the roof and this enabled us to fill in by cutting and turning in the cloth A corresponding space above thereceived similar treatment

Then we covered the inner surface of the screen door and we had a room

But ere far froht a can of dark-oak stain and gave the floor a coat and this improved matters so much that we stained the wood visible on the door fra finished this,the need of doing so was merely the inner surface of the roof The builders had h and splintery and there were h everywhere It looked a hopeless task But we boughtwe covered our precious blue walls with newspapers, donned our oldest clothes and spread papers well over the floor It ell that we did The staining was not difficult work but the nails made it splashy and ere pretty well spotted e finished

But e did finish we felt compensated The nails had becoht brass tri, the soft brown floor and the stained, raftered roof made the rooh the hour was late and ere both tired, until we had furnished it We put in a couple of s two pictures securely upon the uprights of the skeleton We added a couple of chairs and a rack for clothing, put up a white arded the effect with the utmost satisfaction The rooh to act as a screen It was possible to see h it, but not form It insured privacy and still perh for ventilation As a finishi+ng touch we screwed a knob on the outside of the door, put a brass hook on the inside and went downstairs to count the cost

As a quick and inexpensiveto the nu of a burlap room is without an equal The idea is not patented, and ho deem ourselves its creators, are only too happy to send it on, in the hope that it may be of service to so where to put an added family member

THE CONFESSION STORY Closely akin to the personal experience article is the so-called ”confession story” Usually published anonymously, confession stories may reveal more personal and intiive in a signed article

Needless to say, most readers are keenly interested in such revelations, even though they are made anonymously Like personal experience stories, they are told in the first person with a liberal use of the pronoun ”I”

A writer need not confine himself to his own experiences for confession stories; he may obtain valuable material for them from others Not infrequently his name is attached to these articles accompanied by the statement that the confession was ”transcribed,” ”taken down,” or ”recorded” by the writer

Conditions of life in classes of society hich the reader is not fah the medium of the confession story Itinterest in questions about which the average reader cares little The average man or woman, for example, is probably little concerned with the problee professor, but hundreds of thousands doubtless read with interest the leading article in an issue of the _Saturday Evening Post_ entitled, ”The Pressure on the Professor” This was a confession story, which did not give the author's own experiences but appeared as ”Transcribed by Walter E Weyl” This article was obviously written with the purpose, skillfully concealed, of calling attention to the hard lot of the underpaid professor