ADVICE FOR LACKLAND 



tenderly its simplest features. If the house 

 be really weak in the joints, the sooner it 

 comes down the better; but if it has snugness 

 and stiffness and comfort, let not the owner 

 be persuaded of the carpenters to graft upon 

 it the modernisms of their tricksy joinery. I 

 can well understand how a dashing buck of 

 two or three and thirty should prefer a young 

 woman in her furbelows, to an old one in her 

 bombazine; but if the fates put him in leash 

 with an ancient lady, let him think twice be- 

 fore he bedizens her gray head with prepos- 

 terous frontlets, and puts a mesh of girl's 

 curls upon the nape of her old neck. 



I have said all this as a prelude to a little 

 talk about certain changes which my friend 

 Lackland has wrought in his country place 



—thirty miles by the New X road. 



The house he purchased could boast no re- 

 spectability of age. The height of its rooms 

 was of that medium degree which neither 

 suggested any notion of quaintness nor of 

 airiness. Its entrance-hall was pinched and 

 narrow; its stairway inhospitably lean, and 

 altogether its appointments hjid that cribbed 

 and confined aspect, which, to one used to 

 width and sunshine, was almost revolting. 

 The wash-room was positively the only apart- 



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