312 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



winter landscape. In a corner of the jungle were a half dozen 

 sandal-wood trees between groups of midget Japanese evergreens cen- 

 turies old when the keel of the caravel Santa Maria reached the shores 

 of San Salvador. The greatest picture gallery in the State boasted 

 nothing so fine as our ten foot square framed nature-picture, chang- 

 ing with the seasons, and replenished from time to time from the 

 greenhouse, all flower pots and boxes being concealed in mossy bank. 



Vines versus Wooden Exteriors. 



Do not give that matched board portable porch horror a resting 

 place. The fancy for thus marring a beautiful home is unaccount- 

 able. Settled, windowed, or screened permanent porches or a glassed- 

 in semi-conservatory veranda entrance are attractive solutions of the 

 porch problem. Against stone or brick one must avoid as far as 

 possible the incongruities of wood, often emphasized still more by 

 inappropriate painting in porch room, veranda, bay, and porte cochere, 

 adjuncts to be built at all hazards, but planned to fit into the whole. 

 If to be covered with vines they should be oiled instead of painted. 

 With care re-oiling will not injure them. 



The pergola and even a modest belvedere add to the appear- 

 ance of a property much more than their cost, and the former often 

 saves an unfortunate situation. Ugly lines can be concealed, bare 

 outlines broken, and high, stilted, and box-like structures lowered 

 and widened thereby. An effective but more expensive pergola is 

 made by the cross members sweeping downward a couple of feet 

 with an under curve on the outer side. Broad spaces can be spanned 

 and still kept uniform by sloping the wider timbers at bearing ends 

 to one width. 



An Attractive Entrance. 



Calling on a railroad magnate some years ago in his wonder- 

 fully beautiful Fifth Avenue home opposite the park, we climbed 

 to his attic den by a circular marble staircase that cost a fortune, 

 while another fortune was represented in the leaded windows, rarely 

 carved woodwork, mosaic floors, pictures, and statuary, yet after all 

 these years, but one feature of the house whose cost, compared to 

 the above, was as pennies to dollars, is clearly recalled, and that is 

 the vestibuled entrance which led through a labyrinth of banked 

 palms interspersed with floral gems of rich and delicate coloring, 

 the air laden with divine melody from silver-throated songsters, who 

 lived their lives in this bower of beauty. Remembering that exotic 

 entrance, when the opportunity came, I struck a duplicate, though 

 minor key in one of my vestibule entrance halls, in size twelve by 

 eighteen feet, centred with a red tiled walk five feet wide. Grassy 

 banks, waving fronds, and swirl of bloom stamped it forcibly on the 

 mind of every caller, whether mendicant, stranger, or bosom friend, 



