:144 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



Ionic columns leads to a stair landing twenty feet in length with a 

 ceiling forty feet high, wainscoted and settled, in whose wall is a 

 sixteen foot square concave window of green and golden leaded glass, 

 colors which swing the compass from north to south. Its form 

 makes it appear six feet higher than its width, a point we remem- 

 bered in building other concave windows. A broad columned 

 entrance hall opens on the west to a veranda twenty feet wide. 



The Colonial dining room, 20 x 30 has wide columned alcove 

 window and mahogany beamed ceiling. 



All mantels are high, wide, and deep; one marble, others 

 mahogany, gilded wood, or white enamel finish in keeping with the 

 rooms. 



French windows open from parlor to porch, showing in their 

 curved muntins a touch of Versailles. The veranda has an excep- 

 tionally low stone rail, increased to normal height by boxes of 

 plants. Posts are unusual, as seen in the photograph, with tops 

 broader than bases seemingly too slender at the bottom, but for the 

 enlarging stone support which is a foot or two above the low 

 stone rail. They are of chestnut plank built about a heavy chestnut 

 centre, the forty-two members of each post-shell held together as hard 

 and fast as iron can band them. 



A Trussed Transom. 



Twin picture windows of one sheet of plate glass at the west 

 end of both the long parlor and library are each nine feet wide and 

 six feet high. A thirteen foot ceiling allows of leaded light transoms, 

 but the wooden parting strip is barely two inches wide, and when 

 they were first placed a gale threatened to dash the whole front to 

 the floor. The problem was solved with a two-inch truss-iron 

 set edgewise laid closely against each side of the lock-rail its full 

 length within and without. It could not be beaten in with a 

 sledge hammer as far as the parting strip is concerned. The library 

 has mahogany book-cases, high columned mantel, wide window 

 settles, and a big observatory window with leaded transom. 



Under the stair landing is a butler's pantry with three divi- 

 sioned sink of planished copper to avoid dish breaking. It extends 

 the length of the three windows, which thoroughly light this impor- 

 tant room. 



An easy flight of basement stairs brings us to the tarred and 

 cemented cellar blasted from the ledge. It is and has always 

 been a stranger to moisture, except as the area entrance was flooded 

 before we bricked and drained it, and built an overhead wire-glass, 

 light giving bulkhead roof that shoots the water where it belongs, into 

 cobbled gutter and thence to flower garden and lawn. The stone 

 walled basement extends under the entire house, and contains kitchen, 



