AND WHERE TO FIND ONE. 321 



convenience or ostentation. &quot;We all see how families 

 scatter ; but this is one chief cause of the scattering 

 that men buy houses, or build them about as a 

 soldier builds his tent, for a night. Houses, farms, 

 and furniture, are bought on credit, kept on mort 

 gage, and sold at a loss or gain, as the case may be, 

 at five minutes notice, because it was a part of the 

 purchaser s original plan to hold the property only 

 for an advantageous opportunity of disposing of it.&quot; 

 The same writer thinks that, in &quot; nine cases out 

 of ten, it is cheaper to buy than to build, because 

 dealing in houses and lands requires a skill and a 

 capital which the majority of men do not possess. 

 It is, moreover, far more comfortable, because it is 

 free from the cares and annoyances of being en 

 gaged in matters very complicated, aside from a 

 man s regular business, and because he can gener 

 ally select such a residence as suits his wants, and 

 means, and convenience. In Europe, the happiest 

 homes are those which, having been built for the 

 present convenience of the father, have been merely 

 altered so as to make them correspond with the 

 present condition of the son or grandson, or more 

 remote descendant, as the case may be greatly 

 changed by time, and mellowed and softened by its 

 graver tints, or decayed and nibbled into by its old 

 tooth, or enlarged piece by piece, and generation 

 by generation, irregularly it may be, but with a 

 strict eye to comfort and convenience, and corres 

 ponding with the growing wealth of an accumulat 

 ing and prudent family. In this country, we live 

 too fast in the first generation to have many such 



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