ADVICE FOR LACKLAND. 47 



is among the few who are left in these days of petro- 

 leum, who make a merit of homeliness, and cherish 

 tenderly its simplest features. If the house be really 

 weak in the joints, the sooner it comes down the 

 better ; but if it has snugness and stiffness and com- 

 fort, let not the owner be persuaded of the carpenters 

 to graft upon it the modernisms of their tricksy 

 joinery. I can well understand how a dashing buck 

 of two or three and thirty should prefer a young 

 woman in her furbelows, to an old one in her bomb- 

 azine ; but if the fates put him in leash with an 

 ancient lady, let him think twice before he bedizens 

 her gray head with preposterous frontlets, and puts a 

 mesh of girl's curls upon the nape of her old neck. 



I have said all this as a prelude to a little talk 

 about certain changes which my friend Lackland has 

 wrought in his country place thirty miles away by 



the New X road. The house he purchased could 



boast no respectability of age. The height of its 

 rooms was of that medium degree which neither sug- 

 gested any notion of quaintness nor of airiness. Its 

 entrance-hall was pinched and narrow ; its stairway 

 inhospitably lean, and altogether its appointments 

 had that cribbed and confined aspect, which, to one 

 used to width and sunshine, was almost revolting. 

 The wash-room was positively the only apartment 

 below stairs which had a southern aspect. I give his 



