36 
House & Garden 
IN PRAISE OF THE LITTLE HOUSE 
A Man lias Arrived at Wisdom When Ilis Castle in Spam Becomes a 
Cottage in the Country 
CHARLES HANSON TOWNE 
A RECENT visitor to our shores spoke of the pathetic new¬ 
ness and bigness of our dwellings; of the lack of mem¬ 
ories and gentle ghosts in our corridors; and he told me, 
after he had seen our finest abodes, scattered like jewels over 
the country, that it made him heartsick to think of our poverty 
of background. 
To him, a home was more than a roof over one’s head. He 
thought of home as a place where there were old secret cup¬ 
boards and mysterious doors, haunted attics and, best of all, a 
few little mice to creep out in the darkness, after the family had 
settled down for the night, to find those crumbs which even the 
tidiest housewives must sometimes leave strewn about. Of 
course you have guessed that he was an Englishman. 
Home! There is no more magical word in our whole lan¬ 
guage; and sad indeed are they who have no permanent abiding 
place. Home has been called heaven on earth; and through all 
time the cry of the homeless has been the bitterest, the most 
agonizing that men could hear. But the word home need not 
be associated with riches—on the contrary, there has always 
been a tradition that palaces are seldom homelike, and the 
simpler one’s surroundings the happier one is likely to be. 
Thoreau convinced us long ago that one needs only a few feet 
of earth and the smallest of dwellings to be as contented as a 
mortal can be. He even pointed out that two chairs are suffi¬ 
cient. If more than one guest arrived, the host could sit upon 
the floor in solid comfort. 
As we grow older we see how much, that in our youth we 
thought was indispensable, comes to be simply so much un¬ 
necessary impedimenta. We obstruct the pathway of our hap¬ 
piness by placing useless goods and chattels at every turning. 
You remember, perhaps, the definition a little country boy gave 
of the word ‘“parlor.” “A parlor,” he said, “is a room which 
is never opened except for funerals and weddings.” 
Think of having so much wasted space! Think of the lack 
of imagination in filling a great, staring room with hideous 
furniture, closing the square piano, polishing the central stove, 
placing the shells carefully by the family album, and then 
drawing the curtains and lowering the shades, and leaving this 
mausoleum in its false dignity and isolation to have nightmares 
by itself! 
Such a room plays no part in the home life of the occupants 
of the house. Then why have it at all? It is like a delightful 
old lady I once knew who craved a hat with an aigrette. Final¬ 
ly she purchased one, and then, instead of putting it upon her 
top-knot, she put it upon her top shelf. There are plenty of 
people like that. But I prefer the kind of person who has but 
a small house, and yet utilizes every nook and corner of it. A 
friend of mine in the country, who owns the tiniest of gray- 
shingled and vine-covered dwellings, is proud of what he calls 
his “Gun Room.” This is, in fact, merely a closet under the 
stairway; but here he stores his three bits of armament, and 
takes a certain foolish delight in thinking of them as in a 
cloistered “room.” He has another cranny, scarcely bigger than 
a cracker box, which he designates his “Butterfly Room”—for 
he collects rare specimens, and must have a special place for 
the captured beauty of the fields and meadows. 
I think the first thing that smites one’s eyes after a trip abroad 
is the ugliness of our country architecture. In Europe, the 
meanest house is apt to be beautified by a bit of surrounding 
garden. Especially is this so in England, where every working¬ 
man takes a native pride in his geranium-bed; and the smaller 
his dwelling, the larger he tries to make his garden, creating, 
as it were, another room which will always know the sun¬ 
light. Haven't you motored along a highroad and exclaimed, 
“What a darling little house!” But we seldom cry out in sud¬ 
den joy at a glimpse of some monstrous mansion. We may be 
awed and impressed by it, standing as it does among its stately 
trees; but certainly our hearts do not miss a beat at the thought 
of the life lived within its sombre and pretentious walls. No! it 
is the little homes that thrill us, that bring a sense of longing to 
us, the older and wiser we grow. For we come to know that 
one can be happier amid simplicity than amid pomp, and that 
one’s own dusting and sweeping can take on the nature of a 
sacrament, while the obsequious movements of a dozen flunkeys 
may bring to us nothing but a miserable satiety. 
In America, it has become our foolish habit to tear down old 
landmarks. Our ancestors may have created for us a certain 
beautiful thing; but the generations that speed onward to the 
music of jazz and the loud motor-horn have no reverence, it 
would seem, for that which should be most precious to us all. 
“Old fashioned!” they cry, looking out upon some quiet garden, 
with a border of phlox and mignonette, and enchanting flag¬ 
stone paths leading to a quaint sun-dial; and in the place where 
a venerable oak has stood, one is very likely to find—a gasoline 
station! Such is the tendency of our time, and it is a tragic 
commentary on us as a people that we tolerate such ruthless 
destruction, and refuse to stay the hand of the unimaginative 
and brutal executioner. We would smile now at such a poignant 
poem as “Woodman, Spare that Tree!” And again I can hear 
that glib phrase, “old fashioned!” coming to the ready lips of 
the present generation. “For each man kills the thing he loves” 
is packed with truth, as well as with poetry; and blind indeed 
are they who do not see how charged with meaning is that 
single line. 
Now, in art, the surest way to be dead tomorrow is to be the 
(Continued on page 76) 
