RURAL ARCHITECTURE. 



station in society was of the highest. Yet, with all this claim to pretension, his house 

 did not cost him eight thousand dollars — and he built it by " days-work," too, so as to 

 have it faithfully done: and the furniture in it aside from library, paintings, and statuary, 

 never cost him three thousand. Every room it. it was a plain one, not more highly finish- 

 ed than many a farmer's house can afford. The furniture of every kind was plain, saving, 

 perhaps, the old family plate, and such as he had added to it, which was all substantial 

 and made for use. The younger children — and of these, younger and older, he had seve- 

 ral — we found happy, healthy, cheerful, and frolicking on the carpets; and their worthy 

 mother, in the plainest, yet altogether appropriate garb, was sitting among them, at her 

 family sewing, and kindly welcomed us as we took our seats in front of the open, glowing 

 fireplace. "Why, sir," we exclaimed, rubbing our hands in the comfortable glow of 

 warmth which the fire had given — for it was a cold December day — " you are quite plain, 

 as well as wonderfully comfortable, in your country house — quite diiferent from your 

 former city residence!" " To be sure we are," was the reply; " we stood it as long as 



we could, amid the starch and the gimcracks of street, where we rarely had a day 



to ourselves, and the children could never go into the streets but they must be tagged and 

 tasselled, in their dress, into all sorts of discomfort, merely for the sake of appearance. 

 So, after standing it as long as we could, my wife and I determined we would try the 

 country, for a while, and see what we could make of it. We kept our town-house, into 

 which we returned for a winter or two; but gave it up for a permanent residence here, 

 with which we are perfectly content. We see here all the friends we want to see; we all 

 enjoy ourselves, and the children are healthy and happy." And this is but a specimen 

 of thousands of families in the enjoyment of country life, including the families of men 

 in the hishest station, and possessed of sufficient wealth. 



" Why, then, should the farmer ape the fashion, and the frivolity of the butterflies of 

 town life, or permit his fimily to do it? It is the sheerest possible folly in him to do so. 

 Yet, it is a folly into which many are imperceptibly gliding, and which, if not reformed, 

 will ultimately lead to great discomfort to themselves, and rain to their families. Let 

 thoughtless people do as they choose. Pay no attention to their extravagance; but watch 

 them for a dozen years, and see how they come out in their fiishionable career; and ob- 

 serve the fate of their families, as they get " established" in the like kind of life. He 

 who keeps aloof from such temptation, will then have no cause to regret that he has main- 

 tained his own steady course of living, and taught his sons and daughters that a due at- 

 tention to their own comfort, with economical habits in everything relating to house-keep- 

 ing, will be to their lasting benefit in future." 



Another point in which we join hands entirely with the author, is his dislike of close 

 stoves, which seem to have crept into farmer's houses, even of the best description, to steal 

 away both health and cheerfulness from the family circle. We have but little respect for 

 those housewives or their daughters, who tell us it " is so much less trouble" to use a 

 close stove, when we know that this grudgery of trouble lays the foundation of innume- 

 rable diseases, and costs ten times its value in doctor's bills. Though we observe that in 

 compliance with the building fashion of the day, Mr. Allen has omitted all open fire-pla- 

 ces in his bed-rooms, and only shown flues for stove-pipes, he protests against the stove 

 poison in the following frank and straight forward manner: 



" The general introduction of cooking stoves, and other stoves and apparatus for warm- 

 ing houses, within the last twenty years, which we acknowledge to be a great acquisition 

 in comfort as well as in convenience and economy, has been carried to an extrem 

 only in shutting up and shutting out the time honored open fireplace and its broad h 



