70 
House & Garden 
Dreer’s 
Superb 
Orchid- 
Flowered 
Sweet Peas 
This wonderful t 3 'pe, willi 
its wide-open flowers of ex¬ 
traordinary size, with wa^•y 
standards and wide-spread¬ 
ing wings, represents the highest achievement in Sweet 
Peas. The flowers usually measure two inches across 
and are borne in sprays of three or four on long, strong 
stems, making them of exceptional value for cutting. 
Choicest mixed colors, 10 cts. per pkt., 20 cts. per oz., 
60 cts. per ^ lb., $2.00 per lb., postpaid. 
Dreer’s Garden Book for 1917 
is a ready-reference work that will be of invaluable help in 
planning your garden; in selecting the best varieties; and in 
making them grow. 
A copy sent free if you mention this publication 
HENRYA.DREER 
Chestnut St., Phila. 
’'It 
Joys of 
Rose Culture 
All the delights of garden planning 
are enhanced by an abundance of 
roses. And no garden or lawn is com¬ 
plete without the "Queen of Flowers.” 
Fhere's a rose for every purpose—^^edging 
I the walk, screening the porch, and grac¬ 
ing the lawn with variant hues. Our 
1917 Floral Guide—FREE 
Will help you solve your planting problems. 
It's rich in suggestions based upon a half-century 
of rose-growing experience. Describes nearly 
400 "Best Roses for America” gathered from 
every land, klarks 81 choicest with ★—a 
great aid to the beginner. 92 pages; 253 
beautiful illustrations. Send for your copy 
now, before planning the spring planting. 
“iJoti; to Grow Roses 
is a delightful hand book for rose-lovers. “I was 
1 amazed at the way that you put all the information 
on this wonderful flower into such a small vol¬ 
ume,” writes I'rof. Arno H. Nehrling, Massachu-j 
^ setts Agricultural College. Tells how to select J 
roses for every purpose and how to grow them 
successfully. Gives helpful “Calendar of Op¬ 
erations” for year-round reference. It’s a 
^hook that you will come to know and love^ 
,^as a trusted friend. Library edition, 121 
pages (16 in full color). Price $1 
with coupon worth $1 on first 
$5 order. 
Order today. 
Ottr Roses are 
Guaranteed to 
Bloom 
C ONARD ir ROSES 
& JONES CO., Box 126, WEST GROVE, PA. 
Robert Pyle, Pres. A. Wintzer, Vice~Pres. 
Rose Specialists—Backed by 50 years' experience. 
Constructing the Unburnable House 
{Continued from page 68) 
of the average builder is the cost. 
It is never fair to compare mere 
costs without consideration of other 
qualities. To compare the cost of 
a piece of calico and a piece of 
leather, or of denim overalls and a 
broadcloth suit means nothing. 
Aletal studs and joists and frames^ 
concrete beams and composition lath 
and hollow tile cost more than wood. 
Cement plaster costs more than the 
old-fashioned mixture of cement and 
sand. It costs more to drill holes 
in cement and other hard materials 
for plumbing and electric fixtures 
than to drive nails and screw screws 
into wood. A cement floor properly 
laid and finely finished costs as much 
as a polished wood floor. But when 
we stop to think that work well done 
in unhurnable, non-rotting materials 
will last not only the builder’s life¬ 
time, hut that of his children and 
their children, the initial cost has a 
different meaning. 
The present high cost of an un¬ 
burnable house is partly due to the 
fact that this type of building is not 
standardized. The exceptional thing 
always costs more than the usual, 
both for material and labor. The 
pioneer must pay for the privilege 
of pioneering. But let the demand 
for lasting materials increase until 
they are the usual thing, letting wood 
and its flimsj’ kindred he the excep¬ 
tional, and the relative cost will actu¬ 
ally be reversed. 
The unhurnable house does away 
with fire insurance and reduces the 
cost of upkeep to the vanishing point. 
The use of lasting materials will 
make us stop and think a bit before 
we build, and there will be fewer 
changes in styles of houses and house 
decorating and furnishing, which 
have become almost as frequent as 
changes in hats and hair-dress. 
Climate and Style 
Coming to the 'last consideration: 
Is the unhurnable house adaptable 
to any style of architecture and all 
climates? To all climates, yes. To 
any stifle of architecture, emphati¬ 
cally. NO. 
It has been amply proved that the 
I'arious clay products and concretes, 
properly used, form walls that keep 
out heat and cold alike. The frame 
house resists neither. There is no 
climatic bar to the unburnable house. 
But it demands a style of its own, 
individual though not necessarily uni¬ 
versal. Why try to express new 
thoughts in old terms ? Ten years 
ago the dictionary had enough words 
in it to say all we knew. But it 
became inadequate with the advent 
of automobiles and wireless teleg¬ 
raphy and submarines and airships, 
to say nothing of Christian Science 
and moving pictures and cubist art. 
Those half-and-half houses which 
have more or less of concrete and 
hollow tile walls, more or less fire¬ 
proof roofs, and more or less wood 
inside, ivhich are commonly called 
fireproof to differentiate them from 
their frame neighbors, have kept 
more or less close to old familiar 
architectural stifles. 
But here and there fearless re¬ 
formers are at work. I know of 
one in California and one in Iowa, 
one an architect with a mission, the 
other a millionaire with a hobbiv 
Doubtless there are others. These 
two have cast wood aside without 
apology or regret, together with the 
belief that the last word in archi¬ 
tecture was said somewhere between 
5000 B. C. and 1500 A. D., somewhere 
in Europe or Asia or Africa. 
The architect has evolved a dis¬ 
tinct style by allowing the outside to 
express the absolute simplicity result¬ 
ing from the revolution within; and, 
all doubting Thomases to the con¬ 
trary notwithstanding, people who 
live in these houses find them home¬ 
like. They are quite content with 
their woodless wall surfaces, their 
frameless doors and windows, their 
polished cement floors. A school 
teacher asked that her house be dirt- 
pro'of as well as fireproof and she 
has cut down her furnishings to a 
minimum she could not have tol¬ 
erated in an ordinary house. A 
wealthy social leader was entirely 
unashamed of uncurtained windows 
for a year in her $40,000 home, and 
then chose a very simple scrim or net. 
Some have hesitated to cover their 
severe outer walls with the vines 
called for in the architect’s mental, if 
not written, specifications. All this 
shows sheer pleasure in emancipa¬ 
tion from flimsy construction and 
tawdry decoration. 
Old-Time Valentines for the Modern Collector 
(Continued front page 25) 
kfany of Them Never Bef.ore Pub¬ 
lished, Suitable For Females In Every 
Station of Life.” Veri^ complete in¬ 
deed is this vade-mecum, since it out¬ 
lines the sort of a valentine that it 
would he suitable for a dressmaker 
lo copy and bestow. One cannot re¬ 
frain from quoting its elegancies : 
From a Dress-Maker 
A. dress-maker sends you this. 
And hopes you’ll take it not amiss, 
Tho’ hard at work, to tell the truth, 
I think of thee, thou dearest youth; 
O, do not then my love decline. 
But be my wish’d-for Valentine, 
Be constant, kind, and I will prove 
A pattern of virtuous love. 
Now in case the dressmaker’s 
knight proved surly, unappreciative 
or remiss, this same little valentine 
recipe-hook held forth to solace the 
seamstress these crushing, confusion- 
heaping stanzas: 
To a Vain Gentleman 
Your manners truly are beguiling. 
You captivate therewith,— 
I guess whj^ 3 ’ou’re alwaj’S smiling— 
’Tis to show 3 'Our prett 3 ' teeth. 
How many b 3 ' your charms are smit¬ 
ten. 
For you these verses show ; 
By whom, tho’ are these verses writ¬ 
ten ? 
From th 3 ' dear self they flow. 
I know 3 mu’ll boast how many ladies 
Have sent you Valentines; 
Remember, while you thus upbraid us. 
To show 3 'our friends these lines. 
These old Valentine Writers are 
as well worth collecting as are old 
valentines and one may still pick 
them up in second-hand hook shops 
or find them occasionally included in 
the catalogs of Iiooks at auction. 
The colored frontispieces to many 
of the Valentine Writers are most in¬ 
teresting. Very likely they suggested 
the issue of printed and engraved 
(Continued on page 72) 
