England is facing the prevailing housing shortage and hundreds of big houses in London are and now being turned into flats, with more or less taste and ingenuity. The principal advantage fox inhabitant of these converted onses is that the living rooms are generally far larger than ho would be allowed in a legitimate flat. Ho has, however, to put up with disadvantages. His front door is too often a narrow mean thing, which barely allows room to stand at the bottom of his stairs; or, if he has the lower flat, a piece is taken out of his drawing-room to make a passage. There is the other type, which frankly makes the staircase a common one, and turns each floor into a small tenement. This always means ai bare and unattractive approach to one's home, and inside the door a cramped hall; while the kitchen and bath arrangements are often dingy and uncomfortable, being carved out of a passage, or the angle of a wall. Yet the pleasure of big rooms is a real compensation, and the two top floors of a fair-sized house sometimes make an ideal home.
It is a surprising thing that this system has not been' more adopted by families for themselves and it would seem many of Shanghai's houses might be remodeled.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.