64 Constructing the Country Dwelling 



strange to say, the father seemed to blame the boys 

 and their mother for having conspired against the 

 interests of the farm home and plotted to get away. 

 In the course of his conversation he made it somewhat 

 evident that he would have sold out and left sooner 

 had the other members of the family not been so 

 urgent about the matter, and that he was now holding 

 on partly to indulge his spite and feeling of stub- 

 bornness in reference to them. 



The cheap novels one may pick up depict many a 

 fictitious tragedy. But in the place just described 

 lies the typical scene of thousands of real tragedies 

 during the course of which numberless lives of boys 

 and girls have been wrecked forever, lives latent 

 with possibilities of goodness and beauty, of mental 

 and moral strength. And then, the bitterness and 

 anguish of soul of the mothers of these lost members 

 of a high humanity what of that ? The silent 

 walls of an untimely grave in many cases closed them 

 in, while much of the memory of their secret suffering 

 lies buried with them. 



THE CHILDREN'S ROOM 



Even though the means available will not allow 

 for more than the humblest sort of cottage, there 

 should be definite thought of providing therein 

 some room or niche or corner to be considered as 

 the private property of the children. In a three- 

 room dwelling on the Kansas prairie in which lives a 



