CHAPTER III 



BUILDING THE HOUSE 



WHEN we are at last ready to build a coun- 

 try house, we must understand that we 

 have a good while ago begun to build a 

 home. The house is not to be the central thought 

 in this homestead of ours. It will be a convenience 

 rather, and we shall do our receiving of friends as 

 often under the apple trees, or where we can share 

 with them the babbling of the brook and the fra- 

 grance of the roses. We mean to enjoy this country 

 place of ours from gateway to wind-break, and all our 

 planting and building will have in it this understand- 

 ing, that we are not to repeat the restrictions and 

 conventionalisms of city life out here in the country. 

 I assure you that this has been a serious trouble with 

 country home-making, but then it is hardly country 

 at all, or country things, or country atmosphere that 

 fills our minds. 



The average country house is a misnomer. The 

 builder gets his model from the city avenue. He has 

 not studied the house from the country standpoint. 

 A house in the city is related only to streets and to 

 other houses, but the country house ought to be 

 mainly related to the landscape, the orchards, the 



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