House and Garden 
how a’stairway may be built without balusters 
OR MOULDINGS 
does not select his subject from the old 
or dilapidated because the wall is old or the 
building dilapidated, hut because they give 
him the color and form he wants. A ruin, 
except to the morbid, is not more interesting 
than a new building because it is in ruins. 
Nature has merely undone man’s over work, 
and if we took our cue from the artist and 
through him from the general taste, we 
could build as paintable buildings as ever 
existed, and with all that subtle human 
character that lingers around the old. Of 
course Nature must have a few seasons in 
which to creep up to the door side and wipe 
out the scars of man’s hasty building, and 
after that each year should add something 
to the intimacy. But simply and beauti¬ 
fully designed and built, the house would 
never offend, and would in 
itself be the prophecy of 
beauties to come. But you 
must abandon much that is 
routine and easy of accom¬ 
plishment in designing. Your 
problem is no office problem 
of machine-cut limestone and 
mill-made woodwork, fash¬ 
ioned after the bookmen’s 
rules. You must design in 
the open, with a mind wide 
to seize upon any tiny sug¬ 
gestion of Nature or of your 
client’s will or whim. You 
must diagnose the case, not 
as a doctrinaire with a well 
laid out scheme of design, 
and a series of fixed styles 
in mind, into one of which 
your client and his site are 
to be moulded, but as an 
artist, taking note of harmonies 
of line and color, of Nature’s 
proffered materials and sug¬ 
gestions in rock or sand or 
clay. She will surely have 
some dominant note to which 
you must bow, and with which 
other materials must be made 
to blend. It may be the color 
of the stone at hand. It may 
be its roughness, or smooth¬ 
ness, or its cleavage, that shall 
set the pace. It may be even 
the color of the local creek sand that, running 
through dashed wall or pointed stone, gives 
that bond that is necessary to tie your house 
and garden to the busy eartb. No artificial 
pigment can supply the lack of this kind of 
color. No hewn stone can give the native 
touch of texture. No ornament can take 
the place of either. The delicate grey of 
chestnut fence-post and rail, or silvery sheen 
on shingle or unpainted siding, cannot be 
matched by any stain, and if you have not 
time to wait, build in a suburb. You have 
no place in Nature’s heart. Not that you 
may not bring Nature into the suburb, or 
even the city; but if you will you must stand 
your neighbor’s finger of scorn, though 
afterwards possibly bis envy. He will look 
on your simple backing stone walls, your 
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