8 The Country House 



rid of. If your neighbour's pigpen is as good at fifty rods as it is at one look 

 out for it. If there is manufacturing within the radius of a mile, examine it care- 

 fully and note what it does. If there be a waterway handy, watch out for drain- 

 age; and the more especially if it passes through your proposed site. Your 

 neighbour can, with either good or bad intentions, make things highly interesting 

 for you. Marshes and swamps are often very obnoxious. Investigate it may 

 be worth while. As has been previously stated, it is best to live in the locality 

 for a while and learn about it. 



The principal thing to avoid, in the way of soil, is clay. It is best to have 

 nothing to do with it, but if the conditions are so very extraordinary otherwise, 

 and you are willing to drain both your wallet and the land thoroughly, as 

 well as excavate and grade with gravel to the limit, it can be done. Soft, swampy 

 land is also to be avoided, and the conditions of a rocky soil or ledge must be 

 fully taken into consideration before any decision is made. Of course one must 

 risk the striking of a ledge or rock in the digging of the cellar; it cannot always 

 be foreseen. 



The best soil is, of course, gravel. The water filters through it easily and 

 gives the owner some chance in the game. Sand filters too, but it will wash 

 badly unless protected. 



A house built on a rock partakes of the rigidity of its foundation. It is apt 

 to vibrate slightly during a thunder storm, a fact which might annoy the timid 

 individual to some extent at first. It is solid, however, and will not settle. The 

 cellar under such conditions is a question. There is the ordinary summer 

 house that may require no cellar. If the ledge slopes quickly, a cellar may 

 be had on the lower side of it; but this should have a wooden floor, free from 

 the ledge, . to avoid such surface water as may flow over it. Blasting can be 

 done, but this is too expensive for the ordinary house. A slight elevation 

 is, of course, the best site for the house itself, be this natural or artificial. 



The slope of the land, if it be marked in character, is better toward the 

 south or in the direction of the best outlook. Things do not often happen 

 exactly as we may wish then begins the problem, which differs from others, and 

 hence the advisability of planning the house for the land. The direction of the 

 outlook is better toward the sun, that the living room may receive healthy sun- 

 light at some time during the day. 



It is advisable not to set a house too near the sea, unless it be at a con- 

 siderable height above it. The storms of winter are often severe, and the 

 place for the ocean is surely not in your living room, to say nothing of the 

 damage to the outside of the house. From six to twenty inches of house wall is 

 not much against a wall of water, w r ith miles of wall on wall coming right along, 

 with a soaring, snorting hurricane back of it, urging it on. 



Once upon a time a cheerful idiot built a little camp on a two-by-four 

 island in the most placid of inland lakes. His island was about four feet 

 above summer level at the highest point, and his front porch set out over the 

 water on posts. That winter the elements distributed kindlings to all the camps 

 on the lake, and the porch was no more. The next winter did things to the camp 

 itself, and the following summer the wreck was abandoned. 



