MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE 



cessible be not the more economic material. 

 A large allowance in its favor is to be made in 

 view of the fact that the painters' bills must 

 needs be modest, and that repairs for an indef- 

 inite series of years will be almost infinitesimal. 

 And yet whatever may be a man's plottings 

 in favor of rude material, and a resolute indif- 

 ference to other beauty of exterior than the 

 natural faces of the scattered boulders in his 

 fields, it is quite possible that the city masons, 

 if consulted, will swell their estimates to the 

 same aggregate that belongs to the nice finish 

 of the town houses. Every experiment, even 

 in the direction of economy, is taxed somewhat 

 by reason of its quality of experiment. 



To avoid this tax it would be well to seek 

 out some trusty and sagacious foreman who 

 could be brought to entertain some pride in the 

 issue of the proposed scheme and allow him to 

 select the laborers through whom it should be 

 carried into execution on "day's wages." 

 Good country wall-layers, who have only 

 a little deftness in the use of the trowel, would, 

 be capital co-workers; and at 'all hazards, that 

 riffraff of lazy fellows should be discarded who 

 delight in hammering out ten listless hours in 

 defacement of the beautiful natural cleavage 

 of our rocks. 



295 



