178 OLD-FASHIONED GARDENING 
are distinctly different and offer variety to suit nearly 
every taste. But if it is not enough, there is New 
England to fall back upon, with her farmhouses of 
far-extending kitchen wings, strung out sometimes be¬ 
hind, sometimes at the side, but always along the way 
that led to the far distant, single, huge building which 
combined stable, storehouse, workshop and practically 
all the rest under the comprehensive term of “barn.” 
This use of a “barn”—common now though it is in the 
greater part of the country—is so different from the 
undoubtedly wiser provision of older races that even 
the dictionary takes note of its singularity, saying: 
“In the United States a part of the barn is often used 
for stable.” Actually a barn is a covered, closed-in 
place for storage, and never a shelter or dwelling for 
livestock. 
The city plan of William Penn, with its stipulation 
that each house shall stand in the middle, breadthwise, 
of its plot, carries no suggestion of outside offices, 
neither do the accounts of New Amsterdam nor of 
Massachusetts Bay. But these all have to do with 
towns; and dwellers in the town, with none of the wide 
range of domestic activities which the little world of a 
plantation supported, would have no use for the many 
office buildings of the great country seat. A stall for 
a cow, one for a horse possibly, a small carriage shel¬ 
ter and quarters for barndoor fowl, would meet the 
