CHAPTER THREE 
GROWING THE HOUSE 
Nowuere in the world should industry be al- 
lowed to express itself more freely than when put- 
ting together material for a human soul to live in. 
Anyone going by such a home should easily be able 
to say, “That is Tom Jones’s place —I’d know it 
by the look of it, by the free and easy approaches. 
It looks like him.” Those animals which grow 
their own houses grow them to fit. You know a fish 
by the shell he lives in. 
The country house should stand far back from 
the street. It should be, if not near the center of 
your property, at least so near the center that no 
part of the land shall be difficult to reach. What 
you want is not to get close to the public way, one 
of a long succession of houses, but to have elbow 
room for your tastes, and to get out of the eye of the 
critic — the unmerciful critic who refuses to let you 
be unlike himself, a whit better or worse. If you 
