House and Garden 
their street door opens on the sidewalk, behold, close 
to our noses, as we pass the tiny window with its 
Nottingham lace sash curtains, eight or ten inches 
deep, are gay red geraniums and pot plants rare and 
luxuriant. Can we manage to steal a peep into the 
back garden as well ? Through this dim, brick- 
paved passage, at the far end, in a square of sunlight 
lies the garden where tall spikes of hollyhocks, 
poppies and vetches mingle with the gray-green pomp 
of the lordly cabbage. 
The perennials live all winter in the ground 
untouched by frosts, and when spring comes and 
summer, with their bountiful soft rains, what can 
the plants do but make haste and bloom in their 
utmost profusion for all the blessings so abundantly 
bestowed upon them ? 
^ According to most of the prevailing building laws 
in England, dwellings, barns and stables are chiefly 
constructed of non-combustible materials, stone, 
brick or cement. Thanks to these laws, the build¬ 
ings do not go up in smoke every quarter century or 
so and the plain little stone or brick houses are much 
prettier than similar plain little frame houses such 
as we build over here. 
The old row of cottages in Warwick at the foot of 
Mill Street, now dedicated to tourists’ teas and 
artists’ studios, is a good example of what is left 
of the past. Even the modern cottages in the villages 
are blessed with a certain dignified grace of concep¬ 
tion unlike our ugly little barn-like homes. The 
double cottage shown here with its inset porch, 
latticed windows and group chimneys is a sightly and 
“ THE POOREST COTTAGERS HAVE THEIR GARDENS 
smile invitingly and unexpectedly at us when we 
are least looking for them. We can trace every 
small impetus or growth by these queer, cranky little 
arrangements that have no relation apparently to 
one another and yet make up a whole more fasci¬ 
nating in its degree than is the great metropolis. 
And the roads! Saw we ever such smooth, clean 
kept parkways ? Wouldn’t their yellow or gray 
ribbons of crushed stone, bordered with grass and 
shrubs, hedges or stone walls, make even a little 
treeless, frame cottage town fairly paradisiacal ? 
After all, it is the cottages themselves that make 
the village. There are those of the gray sandstone 
that on exposure to the air turn a soft ochre yellow. 
There are also the red brick ones that have little 
rustic archways, overrun with roses over the doors 
and hits of gables over the windows. They all 
beam with love. Love for you or me or for them¬ 
selves ? Well, perhaps reflexively for us all, but 
chiefly love for flowers. 
The small patch of front garden as big as a coun¬ 
terpane or less, throws out color and blossoms that 
would shame the tropics. The procession of flowers 
starts before apple blossom time with the snow-drops, 
tulips, narcissi and hyacinths and never halts 
through the brave detachments of iris, peonies, 
alyssum, phlox, dahlias and gladioli until the arrival 
of the asters and the Michaelmas daisies. And all 
this time over the doorway and up the walls clamber 
the roses, huge yellow-gold balls, or pink puffs of 
blossoms or those of mad crimson. 
The poorest cottagers have their gardens. If 
CHARMING SPECIMENS OF TIMBER AND PLASTER 
238 
