GROWING THE HOUSE 
have five or ten acres, the chances are that some- 
where about your property there will be a natural 
center. You will see this when you come to study 
the slopes, the swales, and the outlooks. From this 
heart-spot your life and work can pulsate most easily 
to all the parts. It is wonderful how the country is 
gotten up for this sort of individualism. You will 
surely find a knoll or a ridge upon which you can 
stand with a friend, and looking over the valleys and 
hills, say, “Is not this beautiful?”’ It is on that 
spot you should begin to take root; and your house 
should grow over you and around you — not to 
shut out those visions, but to take them in. 
The next and most positive consideration is that 
a country house must not be acity house transferred 
to rural surroundings, and in this way misplaced. 
A city house is what it is from necessity, and as a 
rule city houses must be very much alike. Each 
one and all together express neighborhood — pieces 
of something else. But a house in the country 
should mean a home; a place to live in and to grow 
in and to be yourself in. Yet all over the land we 
find stiff and formal imitations of those habitations 
which city restrictions compel to be built. On one 
side of these buildings we find no windows, or very 
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