50 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES. 



condemnation ; sometimes (on my part) the lack of 

 sunny exposure ; and oftenest (on hers) the lack of 

 closets. She insists that no man yet ever planned a 

 house properly on this score. She doesn't see clearly 

 (*eing deficient in mathematics) why a closet shouldn't 

 be made in every partition wall. She don't definitely 

 understand, I think, why a person should thwack his 

 head in a closet under the stairs. She sometimes (our , 

 carpenter tells us) insists upon putting a window 

 through a chimney ; and on one occasion (it was 

 really a very pretty plan) contrived so as to conduct 

 a chimney through the middle of the best bed room ; 

 and the nicest scheme of all, to my thinking, posi- 

 tively had the stairs left out entirely. 



" In this dilemma, I want you to tell us what can 

 be done with the old shell, so as to make it passably 

 habitable, until we find out if this new passion for 

 country life is to hold good." 



Upon this I ventured to send him this little plan 

 of adaptation, which, though not without a good 

 many faults that could be obviated in building anew, 

 yet promised to meet very many of their wants, and 

 gave to Lackland his sunny frontage. 



" Here you have," I wrote him, " your south door, 

 and porch to lounge upon, and your south bow win- 

 dow to your library, which, if the rural tastes grow 

 upon you, you can extend into a conservatory, cover 



