46 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES. 



ness of the joiners, than 1 would barter old-time 

 honesty against that of Oil Creek, or of Wall Street. 



Then again, your cockney must tear away the 

 laomely sheltering porch, with its plank " settles " on 

 either side, for some stupendous affair, with columns 

 for which all heathenism has been sacked to supply 

 the capitals. 



If renovation must be made, it should be made in 

 keeping with the original style of the house except 

 indeed change go so far as to divest it altogether of 

 the old aspect. In some farm-houses that may be 

 taken in hand for repairs, it might be well even to 

 strain a point in the direction of antiquity, and to 

 replace a swagging door by a stanch one of double- 

 battened oak or chestnut, with its wrought nails show 

 ing their heads in checkered diamond lines up and 

 down, and its hinges, worked into some fanciful pat- 

 tern of a dragon's tail, exposed. Then there should 

 be a ponderous iron knocker, whose din should reach 

 all over the house, and the iron thumb-latch not cast 

 and japanned, but showing stroke of the hammer 

 and taking on rust where the maid cannot reach with 

 her brick-dust. Of course, too, there should be the 

 two diamond lights like two great eyes peering from 

 under the frontlet of the old-fashioned stoop. All 

 these, if the house be so ancient and weather-stained 

 as to admit of it, will demonstrate that the occupant 



