BUILDING. 13 



and healthful house ; to know how to make the best of 

 even a three-roomed cottage, as well as the statelier man- 

 sion which it may be her good fortune to possess. 



Young country-girls, it rests largely with you to up- 

 lift and adorn and dignify farm-life ! to so refine and 

 brighten and enrich that which is now so often bleak and 

 ugly and barren, that your brothers, instead of breaking 

 away to clerkships and offices, or something worse, will be 

 loth to leave their noble farm-homes ; and you yourselves 

 will find something better there than in the back-rooms 

 of milliners' shops, or the unhealthful slavery of a dress- 

 maker's sewing-machine. 



There is a great deal of talk in the household depart- 

 ments of newspapers and magazines about making homes 

 attractive, and the bulk of it is in regard to barrel-chairs, 

 fancy match-safes, and embroidered lambrequins. 

 These things are well enough ; but, my country-, 

 girl, go you much deeper than this line of decora- 

 tion, and begin at the ground- work of things ! Draw 

 plans of your future home, and review them with John 

 or Charles or whatever his dear name may be until you 

 have one so good, and yet so in keeping with the money 

 to be invested, that life within it will be a satisfaction 

 and a blessing. Build a permanent home or the begin- 

 ning of one at the outset, and give it all possible graces, 

 instead of settling down in some ugly little square box 

 of a "temporary" character, with the intention of 

 building a grand house when the " better times" come. 

 The Better Times are when youth and health and love 

 join hands, and set out upon the journey of life together. 

 Build the home now, and though you commence with 

 only a kitchen and a bedroom, the seasons will come and 

 go, bringing their gifts of improvement and beauty, and 

 thirty years hence your home will be a far sweeter and 

 lovelier abode than any grand " new house," at such a 

 time, can possibly be. 



