One Source of Color Values 
well as we see it to-day, shows that great thought was 
given to the likelihood of development. If a room or 
two had to be built to the house, a fresh border or 
terrace for the flowers—there already was the place 
—just the right place for mason or the gardener 
to do their part. This is where skilled sight of 
artist comes before limited sight of layman, who 
designs in bits. Pretty, but small. 
The Painter’s homestead, about five hundred 
acres, is in the wildest section of Long Island, on the 
northern portion, some four miles from Cold Spring 
village, a part of the property running down to the 
bay. The original farmhouse was very small and 
low. It had to be “built over, to dodge the wind 
and yet keep the sun. ” 
The problem of life in the country is an attractive 
field of investigation. It is just now before the public 
worn out with life in the city. Intellectual people 
are trying to solve the problem. It is worthy. Even 
those who have devoted years to the study here and 
abroad, find they know little about it, and ask 
who can lay out the plan—the whole plan—of a 
country place, making the most of everything, 
remembering a good house-plan is not merely a 
collection of rooms, tied together to secure a special 
view of a special landscape, or mere shelter for a 
family and protection from weather—a sort of 
skeleton framework or collection of bones, first 
fashioned and then clothed. A good house resembles 
the life of a man. It is an adaptation to condition 
and adjustment of rooms to site. Houses are too 
frequently expensive playthings, bespangled, be¬ 
littled, overfed with attention and embellishment, 
when they might be characterized by exquisite 
simplicity—so little understood,—largeness, repose 
and wholesomeness that win all who see them. Nor 
is a good block plan of the whole property a mere 
adjustment of house to site and view, and the selec¬ 
tion of a fence. It is the shaping and controlling of 
things generally. Water-courses, if water be on the 
site, that they run pleasantly, husbanding their 
strength that they feed, not drown, vegetation, 
spreading into an ornamental pool important enough 
to form a decorative spot, and yet kept moving to 
avoid stagnation. It is the adjustment of levels to 
form terrace lines in sympathy with house, without 
false effort, and yet leading to a natural climax. It 
is the selection of materials, natural to the location 
and yet not foreign to the scheme as a whole. It is 
the preservation of scale in gate-posts, sun-dials, 
garden-seats and the rest of it, remembering propor¬ 
tion counts, not inches. It is the selection of trees, 
plants, shrubs that look well when matured, and the 
building of roads, gutters, walks, steps and borders 
so that sudden rains do not destroy them, and the 
providing of “blind drains,” to receive the over¬ 
flow of water-tanks. 
The tremendous responsibilities of home-designing 
and building, involve things greater than architec¬ 
ture, of which the above outline is but a hint. In 
presenting this contribution to the students of the 
country home problem, it is not as a portrayal of 
some newly discovered art, but as an illustration 
of one man’s conception of the theme. And 
that man well-acknowledged as a true lover 
of the beautiful, and a painter of considerable 
distinction. The Painter has expressed this love 
in his graceful adaptation of an old principle, and 
he has done one thing supremely well—shown us 
where to stop—in one architectural and decorative 
problem. 
In the search for a vehicle of expression, architec¬ 
ture, painting and the drama are said to have failed, 
the novel is reported to be the present, and music the 
coming agent of intellectual force. Can we not unite 
all these to form the home ? 
113 
A PEEP AT THE LAKE 
