AND GROUNDS. 
225 
the results of culture and wealth in other places open his eyes to 
other refined objects of expenditure, he cannot but see, living as he 
does in the centre of a farming country, with open fields and 
pleasant shade-trees only a few squares away, how he has cramped 
his house, like a prisoner, between the walls of his stores and his 
new neighbors, and has not even play-room for his children. But 
the fine house is built and cannot be abandoned. The neighbors, 
with fine, but smaller city-houses, are in the same predicament. 
They are all persons in good business, with (we will suppose) the 
average taste of tolerably educated people for a certain degree of 
elegance outside as well as inside their houses. 
We have represented the entire fronts of the lots as bounded 
by a low stone-wall and coping, making the grounds four steps 
(twenty-eight inches) above the level of the sidewalks, and the main 
floors of the houses five steps more, so that the basement-kitchens 
for which all the houses are planned will be mostly above the level 
of the ground. In addition to a fine low iron fence on the stone 
coping, and some elegant vases in the centre of each of the front 
spaces between the walks, and the vines on the porches and ve- 
randa, the three places nearest the store can have little more done 
to them to make them attractive homes exteriorly. The back-yard 
of the double-house has room for a little decoration, and as the 
wall next to the alley has an east exposure, it is a good place for a 
cold grape-house, and is used accordingly. The rear arcade and bay- 
windows of the library and dining-rooms now have a pleasant look- 
out on a pretty bit of grass-plat, dotted with a vase and a few beds 
for low flowers ; the grapery bounding the view in front, and a 
square rose-covered arbor marking the intersections of the walks 
on two sides of the fruit and vegetable square, behind the store- 
yards. The other neighbors follow suit with cold grape-houses 
along the alley j the one on the extreme left improving on the 
others by adding a decorative gable-entrance fronting the main 
street, and forming a pleasing termination to the view of the side- 
yard as seen from the front. These four places now have about all 
the out-door comforts and beauties that the lots are capable of ; 
but after all they are city houses, on cramped city lots. The 
pleasures incident to the care of these bits of lawn, the filling of the 
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