HOUSE AND GARDEN 
1 54 
November, 1909 
The south end. This is the best view of the house and its surroundings, for it 
shows the big pine tree and the winding road leading to the Ridge 
hearth, and a crane with an iron tea-kettle swinging across its 
generous width All of the rooms were small so I had the parti¬ 
tions chopped down and made three into one. This gave me a 
main room fourteen by twenty-four with an L thirteen by fifteen. 
There was another fireplace in the L and opposite this 1 put my 
stairs, low risers and broad treads, that you would as readily run 
up and down as to walk on a level. Our sitting-room now has 
six windows, three doors and two fireplaces. So it does not want 
for ventilation. 
Across the front of the house runs a narrow veranda, but as we 
do not care to sit facing the road we never use it. At the back 
of the house there is a drop in the land of fifteen feet and there is 
where I built the veranda upon which we live and move and have 
our being. It is a two-story affair and the second story we use 
for sleeping. 
The dining-room, which had been used for a bedroom, was of 
fairly good size for a small family and only needed painting and 
papering. Then I added a butler’s pantry and a kitchen, with a 
room over. This room over I intended for a servant’s room, but it 
was so hot that only a salamander could 
have occupied it. So I built a wing be¬ 
yond the kitchen, to which I added all 
the modern conveniences. There is no 
cooler or pleasanter room in the house. 
The second story was cut up into 
small rooms, as was the first, and there 
was no way of getting at one without 
going through the other. 1 chopped 
out a dark and mouse-haunted closet, 
tore down a partition or two, and made 
a convenient hallway, so that now each 
room is “self-contained,” as they say in 
England. 1 added a bathroom and put 
running water in the guest room. 
Then there was the attic! That I did 
not tackle the first year, but later added 
a room with a double dormer window 
looking out over the sunset hills and 
the woods below, and I do not hesitate 
to say, once you get there, for view and 
airiness it beats any room in the house. 
Considering that our highest ceilings 
are only six feet seven inches, it is re¬ 
markable that we are as cool as we are 
within doors. One thing, we have 
plenty of windows and lots of breeze, almost too much 
at times, for 1 have found it impossible to keep awnings 
on the upstairs veranda. 
When 1 bought this place it had a picturesque old 
well with pole and sweep, the old oaken bucket and all. 
Every one said that it was the finest well in the neigh¬ 
borhood and that when all the other wells ran dry it 
was as wet as ever. That was a splendid record and 
1 congratulated myself. After I put in a bath and 
running water generally, I withdrew the congratulation. 
We used at the least six hundred gallons a day and at 
the end of the first—it may have been the second— 
month of our occupancy the well was as dry as Death 
Valley. “Give the water a chance to run in,” our 
neighbors advised. So we hauled water in barrels from 
a near-by artesian well and gave ours the chance. A 
few gallons may have trickled in, but no more. A 
neighboring farmer had a big pond fed by springs on a 
hilltop about twelve hundred feet up from our place. 
1 besought him to let me dig it out, fence it in from 
the cattle and smaller intruders, build a proper reservoir 
and pipe it into my house. “Wait till next year,” 
he said, “and we’ll talk it over.” 1 could not postpone my 
bath that long, so 1 took council of local talent and the result 
was that I widened and deepened the old well with excellent results. 
The old well was two and a half feet in diameter and twenty feet 
deep. The new well is ten feet in diameter in the clear and 
thirty-five feet deep. Sometimes it has nineteen feet of water 
in it and again, in times of drought, not more than four, but it has 
never run dry and 1 do not think that it will. It cost me four 
hundred dollars, but if it had been an artesian it might have cost ; 
four thousand. At first we used a double-action hand pump, 
but no one liked the job of pumping,though it did not take more 
than an hour a day. Now I have installed a hot-air engine that 
1 bought second-hand. 
Now let us see what our country place has cost'—To the first 
price of $600 add $2500 and you will about get it to date. That 
is a little over $3000 and the work of improving is going merrily 
on. We could sell for double that price any moment, but “ not 
for gold or precious stones would I leave my mountain (hill) 
(Continued on page vii) 
A view from the lower corner of the lot, some fifty feet below the house 
The upper veranda is used as an outdoor sleeping-room 
