44 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES. 



Lackland 's Souse Plans. 



TTKFOKTTJNATELY, almost every city gentle- 

 ^-^ man who comes into possession whether by 

 purchase or otherwise of a plain country house, 

 from which some honest well-to-do farmer has just 

 decamped, puzzles his brain first of all, to know how 

 he shall make a " fine thing " of it. My advice to 

 such puzzled gentlemen, in nine cases out of ten, 

 would be " not to do it." 



If the ceilings are low, and the beams show here 

 and there the generous breadth and depth of timber 

 which old-time builders put into their frames, cherish 

 these remembrances of a sturdier stock than ours ; 

 scrub and paint and paper as you will, but if the 

 skeleton be stanch, and no dry rot shake the joints 

 or give a sway to the floors and ceiling try, for a 

 few years at least, the moral effect of an old house. 

 It can do no harm to a dapper man from the city. It 

 may teach his wife possibly some of the humilities 

 which she cannot learn on Broadway. With a free, 

 bracing air whistling around the house corners, and 

 here and there an open fire within, low rooms are by 

 no means poisonous ; and if the trees do not so far 

 shade the roof as to keep away the fierce outpourings 

 of a summer's sun, and the low chambers carry a 



