42 The Landscape Gardening Book 



it is not too much to say that more places are ruiiied by badly 

 located driveways and walks than by any other one thing. 

 No absolute rule can be formulated for laying out a walk or 

 a drive. Generalities for certain circumstances may be de- 

 veloped, but no certainties for general application reward even 

 the most earnest study — excepting this: Walks and driveways 

 should always be direct — as direct as the line that a tired man 

 or a lazy man or a hurried man, coming into the house or driving 

 to the stable, would naturally follow. 



I am perfectly sure that no one can go wrong in placing a 

 gateway, or mapping a walk or drive, who understands this one 

 truth, and acts upon it intelligently. 



Let us take a glance into the realm of psychology for a moment 

 — after premising that the location of the house and all other 

 buildings, being governed by the formation of the land and other 

 local conditions, has been decided upon before the question of 

 entrances comes up at all. It should be ; the very choicest site 

 which the land affords should be selected, regardless of how the 

 drive or walk is to reach it, or where the gate is to be. There 

 is never any kind of path, anywhere in the world, that does not 

 lead to something that was there before it. 



Given, then, a house situated where you want it on the land; 

 fronting in whichever direction is to the greatest advantage, 

 according to the arrangement of its rooms; with its doors and 

 windows placed where they are tuider the twin considerations 

 of convenience and beauty; locating the gateway and mapping 

 the walks and drives become problems of psychology, pure and 

 simple. 



Lives there a man who does not want to cut across the lawn ? 

 Even though it may save him less than half a dozen steps to do 

 so, the impulse is nearly always there. Why is it ? Why does 



