The Embellishment of Dwellings. 445 



The stiff spruces and firs, that stand like sentinels at each 

 corner, are as dusty as a soldier who has performed a day's 

 journey over the highway. A dirty hen-coop and pig-sty, 

 each with a prim white fence, blend their perfumes with that 

 of the roses, the tiger lilies, and the hollyhocks, that show 

 their dingy faces through the weeds and stubble. The grass 

 around the house has rotted in a blackish semicircle under 

 the back windows, where the slops, apple parings and potato 

 cuttings have been thrown out by the labor-saving housewife. 

 Upon the shrubbery under the windows numerous threads 

 and narrow strips of linen and calico are thickly suspended, 

 like the long moss that hangs from the maples in our swamps. 

 The enclosures, which must have been originally laid out 

 and planted at considerable expense, resemble a dandy, who, 

 having been suddenly overtaken by poverty, has continued 

 to wear his costly garments until they are miserably soiled 

 and ragged. 



I do not suppose that the inmates of these finical and showy 

 houses are less disposed to be neat in their habits than the 

 inmates of houses of a more humble appearance. But it 

 may be safely asserted that when a dwelling-house is sur- 

 rounded by a mingled mass of flowers and shrubbery, its 

 enclosures, without extraordinary painstaking, cannot be pre- 

 served in so neat a condition as one surrounded by a clear 

 open lawn. I know that the practice of surrounding one's 

 house with a fence enclosing a narrow yard, and of filling it 

 with all kinds of shrubbery, is so general, and is so generally 

 regarded as an evidence of taste on the part of the owner, 

 that many would deem it a sort of profanity to ridicule it. 

 It is not the shrubbery so much as the manner in which it is 

 kept, that is to be condemned. 



It was not until after a good deal of reflection that I could 

 explain the reasons why those situations were so pleasing, 

 where the house stood upon an open lawn, unenclosed in 

 front by a fence. These places have a certain agreeable 

 picturesque expression, the cause of which was a problem not 

 easy to be solved. I was at length convinced that it was an 

 appearance of combined comfort, neatness and freedom that 



