No. 11. 



Painting Houses. 



839 



supplies in Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, 

 are always kept up from year's end to year's 

 end. 



"The source of the main supply of ice is 

 not Wenhajn Pond — called VVenham Lake 

 in England, — but Fresh Pond, five miles 

 from Boston. After this, as the business 

 has increased, additional supplies have been 

 taken from Spy pond, about the same dis- 

 tance. Then comes Long pond, and the 

 last or latest which has come into use, is 

 Wenham pond. All these ponds are full of 

 fine water, and give the purest ice. 



"There may be about one hundred and 

 fifty cargoes of ice shipped the present year, 

 and the business appears every year to be 

 extending. Mr. Tudor's enterprise, as you 

 will readily see, not only contributes in a 

 high degree to the comfort and luxury of 

 thousands, in climates where pure ice was 

 hitherto an unknown thing, but also now 

 furnishes, and will long continue to furnish, 

 employment to great numbers, both at home 

 and abroad, whose labour is put in requisi- 

 tion by the various requirements of the 'Ice 

 business.' " — Downing^s Fruit Culturist, 



Fainting Houses. 



Charles Dickens, in that unlucky visit 

 to America, in which he was treated like a 

 spoiled child, and left it in the humor that 

 often follows too lavish a bestowal of sugar 

 plums on spoiled children, made now and 

 then a remark in his characteristic vein of 

 subtle perceptions. Speaking of some of 

 our wooden villages — the houses as bright 

 as the greenest blinds and the whitest wea- 

 ther-boarding can make them, he said it was 

 quite impossible to believe them real, sub- 

 stantial habitations. They looked "as if 

 they had been put up on Saturday night, 

 and were to be taken down on Monday 

 morning !" 



There is no wonder that any tourist, ac- 

 customed to the quiet and harmonious colour 

 of buildings in an English landscape, should 

 be shocked at the glare and rawness of many 

 of our country dwellings. Brown, the cele- 

 brated English landscape gardener, used to 

 eay of a new red brick house, that it would 

 " put a whole valley in a fever!" Some of 

 our freshly painted villages, seen in a bright 

 summer day, might give a man with weak 

 eyes a fit of the ophthalmia. 



We have previously ventured a word or 

 two against this national passion for white 

 paint, and it seems to us a fitting moment 

 to look the subject boldly in the face once 

 more. 



In a country where a majority of the 

 houses are built of wood, the use of some 



paint is an absolute necessity in point of 

 economy. What the colours of this paint 

 are, we consider a matter no less important 

 in point of taste. 



Now, genuine white lead, — the colour 

 nominally used for most exteriors — is one of 

 the dearest of paints. It is not therefore 

 economy which leads our countrymen into 

 such a dazzling error. Some mistaken no- 

 tions, touching its good effect, in connection 

 with the country, is undoubtedly at the bot- 

 tom of it. " Give me," says a retired citi- 

 zen, before whose eyes, red brick and dusty 

 streets have been the only objects for years, 

 " give me a white house with bright green 

 blinds in the country." To him, white is at 

 once the newest, cleanest, smartest, and most 

 conspicuous colour which it is possible to 

 choose for his cottage or villa. Its freshness 

 and newness he prizes as a clown does that 

 of his Sunday suit, the more the first day 

 after it comes from the tailor, with all the 

 unsullied gloss and glitter of gilt buttons. 

 To possess a house which has a quiet air, as 

 though it might have been inhabited and 

 well taken care of for years, is no pleasure 

 to him. He desires every one to know that 

 he, Mr. Broadcloth, has come into the 

 country and built a neto house. Nothing 

 will give the stamp of newness so strongly 

 as white paint. Besides this, he does not 

 wish his light to be hidden under a bushel. 

 lie has no idea of leading an obscure life in 

 the country. Seclusion and privacy are the 

 only scare crows of his imagination. He 

 wishes every passer by on the river, rail-road 

 or highway, to see and know that this is Mr. 

 Broadcloth's villa, ft must be conspicu- 

 ous — therefore it is painted white. 



Any one who has watched the effect of 

 example in a country neighbourhood, does 

 not need to be told, that all the small dwel- 

 lings tiiat are built the next season after 

 Mr. Broadcloth's new house, are painted, 

 if possible, a shade whiter, and the blinds a 

 little more intensely verdant — what the 

 painters triumphantly call " French green." 

 There is no resisting the fashion ; those who 

 cannot afford paint, use whitewash ; and 

 whole villages, to borrow Miss Miggs' strik- 

 ing illustration, look like "whitenin' and 

 supelters." 



Our first objection to white, is, that it is 

 too glaring and conspicuous. We scarcely 

 know anything more uncomfortable to the 

 eye, than to approach the sunny side of a 

 house in one of our brilliant mid-summer 

 days, when it revels in the fashionable pu- 

 rity of its colour. It is absolutely painful. 

 Nature, full of kindness for man, has covered 

 most of the surface that meets his eye in the 

 country, with a soft green hue — at once the 



