208 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
March, 1914 
What a 
Difference! 
\es, and would you. have believed 
it possible ? That snapshot shows just 
how forlorn it looked when we bought it. * 
We added the porch and painted the house. I 
selected the tints I wanted and our painter matched 
them exactly by adding tinting colors to a mixture of 
Dutch Boy White Lead 
and Dutch Boy linseed oil. 
You’d be just as surprised at how little it cost to make such 
a wonderful change. And it will last. Our painter says this 
paint will not crack and scale, and that we won’t have to scrape 
the house next time. 
Write for Paint Adviser No. 142—a selection of helps sent Free 
NATIONAL LSAp COMPANY 
NEW YORK BOSTON 
BUFFALO CHICAGO 
(JOHN T. LEWIS & BROS. CO., PHILADELPHIA) 
CINCINNATI CLEVELAND 
SAN FRANCISCO ST. LOUIS 
(NATIONAL LEAD & OIL CO., PITTSBURGH) 
The satisfaction of knowing you don’t have 
to worry about it being properly constructed 
to withstand cold weather is much of the 
pleasure of owning a greenhouse. 
Our STEEL-FRAME houses are the em¬ 
bodiment of up-to-date greenhouse con¬ 
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BIRD STEEL-FRAME GREENHOUSE CO., Inc. 
Designers and Buildersof Completely 
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General Sales Office, 15-17 West 38th St., 
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and we found it here. We started with 
three cardinal requirements: Situation, 
simplicity, privacy; situation, within an 
hour of New York and a mile of the 
station, with open country nearby and 
water for sailing or swimming not too 
far off; simplicity, an interior uncompli¬ 
cated by cozy-corners, yellow oak decora¬ 
tions, or other evil-shaped or colored 
things, and with rooms large enough for 
old furniture; privacy, of both house and 
grounds, where we might work and play 
without scrutiny from outside. These we 
have; yet it is a serious drawback, for 
me at least, that the house is in the 
country at all! I cannot afford the time 
it takes to commute. I know we ought 
to give it up, yet are loath to; it seems 
so suited to us in other ways. Even in 
these few years there have been so many 
litle happenings, pleasant in the retro¬ 
spect, that when we think about selling 
it, sentiment says: “No!” 
Yes, sentiment is one of the elements 
that render the remodeled house attract¬ 
ive. With us it is a strong tie, for we 
have found a personality in the building; 
a ghost of the former builder, and, as we 
discover more about him, sentiment 
adopts him, if not as a forebear, at least 
as a forebuilder. He was a certain 
Squire Jabez Mead, once a justice of the 
peace; a man of stern conscience, who 
relinquished the practice of law and all 
political advancement when he became 
convinced that honesty was incompatible 
with either! He may have had some 
justification, if we can generalize from a 
few fragmentary records, that perhaps, 
too, throw a light on the derisive title 
“Wooden Nutmeg State.” The Green¬ 
wich town records of March, 1756, tell 
how, at a town meeting, it was “further¬ 
more voted that Nehemiah Mead” (a col¬ 
lateral ancestor of the Squire) “should 
have liberty to sell the town stock of 
powder as soon as he can cenveniently 
to ye town’s best advantage, and lay out 
all the money that he shall sell said 
powder for in powder that is good, and 
put the same into town stock as soon as 
he conveniently can.” “In powder that 
is good!” Who, I wonder, bought the 
powder that, presumably, wouldn’t go 
off? Lack of keenness at a bargain 
never seemed a failing of the Yankee. 
Squire Mead engaged a joiner named 
Clark, they say, to build the staircase 
and the mantels, a man with the highest 
respect for his work, but with a yearning 
for the gin-flask, and, lest he succumb 
with his task unfinished, he invented a 
curious, wide leathern halter, which he 
padlocked over his mouth to demonstrate 
against the demon and be his constant 
reminder. Tradition says he kept it 
locked all day, and gave the key to Squire 
Jabez to hold till evening. The sunburst 
decoration on the drawing-room mantel¬ 
piece, I am told, was a symbol of his re¬ 
solve, though to me the connection is not 
quite clear. 
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