The Choice of a Plac( 



application than that things are not so much discomforting 

 or pleasurable in themselves, but are just what they are con- 

 sidered to be. So that what would be intolerable to many- 

 might become perfectly inoffensive to those who were deter- 

 mined to regard it favorably. 



2. Neighborhood Environment. — Besides the advantage 

 of having the property on the best boundaries of a place 

 congenially treated, and appropriated to agricultural or gar- 

 den purposes, or left to the rudeness and picturesqueness of 

 nature, it is of consequence that the whole of the surrounding 

 property be of a similar character, and that it be not covered 

 with cottage tenements, or crowded with any kind of inferior 

 houses, or the atmosphere darkened by the smoke and pol- 

 luted by the gases from large manufactories. To live amidst 

 fields and gardens and cultivated or unassisted nature, or 

 to have only the vicinity of kindred or superior places, is a 

 luxury well worth the sacrifice of some trifling conveniences 

 and the traveling a mile or two further from a town. There 

 is so much calculated to offend and to annoy in a closely 

 peopled neighborhood, especially if it be crowded with small 

 cottages, that the majority of persons will gladly shun it. 



Not only, however, will it be well to look closely into the 

 character of the surrounding district, and ascertain how it is 

 actually built upon or appropriated, and by what class of 

 persons it is populated, but the probable uses of the neigh- 

 borhood should likewise be considered. A particular local- 

 ity may at the time of choosing it appear highly rural, and 

 have every desirable characteristic, whereas in a few years 

 it may become densely covered with small houses or obnox- 

 ious manufactories, be cut up into narrow roads, and other- 

 wise be completely spoiled as a place for residence. For all 

 these things, then, due calculation must be made; and though 

 no human foresight can reach anything like certainty in such 



