Roads and Paths 
in g. They lived in their houses or in their 
gardens ; when their descendants introduced 
the piazza it marked a compromise in habits, 
eminently expressive of the less reticent so- 
cial spirit which had developed in America, 
and of the peculiarities of the American cli- 
mate. A house set well back from the road, 
possessing a piazza where its inhabitants 
could pass their leisure hours, protected from 
the sun and screened from too inquisitive 
passing eyes, became the rule ; a house with 
its principal rooms on the front, not on the 
back as in colonial cities, and, naturally, 
with its garden lying between these rooms 
and the street. 
We may accept this arrangement, then, as 
the typical one for an American villa, and 
pass to the question, Where should the main 
doorway be placed? With a villa, even 
more than with a true country house, this is 
a vital question, for the smaller one’s grounds, 
the more need there is that every inch of 
them shall be made available for beauty. 
From the architect’s point of view it may 
seem almost incontestably best to put the 
