o simplifying the small-town business of living as well.

Of course, many of us who live in apartments either have a little house
or a big one in the country for the summer months, or we plan for one
some day! So hard does habit die--we cannot entirely divorce our ideas
of Home from gardens and trees and green grass. But I honestly think
there is a reward for living in a slice of a house: women who have lived
long in the country sometimes take the beauty of it for granted, but the
woman who has been hedged in by city walls gets the fine joy of
out-of-doors when she _is_ out of doors, and a pot of geraniums means
more to her than a whole garden means to a woman who has been denied the
privilege of watching things grow.

The modern apartment is an amazing illustration of the rapid development
of an idea. The larger ones are quite as magnificent as any houses could
be. I have recently furnished a Chicago apartment that included large
and small salons, a huge conservatory, and a great group of superb rooms
that are worthy of a palace. There are apartment houses in New York that
offer suites of fifteen to twenty rooms, with from five to ten baths, at
yearly rentals that approximate wealth to the average man, but these
apartments are for the few, and there are hundreds of thousands of
apartments for the many that have the same essential conveniences.

One of the most notable achievements of the apartment house architects
is the duplex apartment, the little house within a house, with its
two-story high living room, its mezzanine gallery with service rooms
ranged below and sleeping rooms above, its fine height and spaciousness.
Most of the duplex apartments are still rather expensive, but some of
them are to be had at rents that are comparatively low--rents are always
comparative, you know.

Fortunately, although it is a far cry financially from the duplex
apartment to the tidy three-room flat of the model tenements, the
"modern improvements" are very much the same. The model tenement offers
compact domestic machinery, and cleanliness, and sanitary comforts at a
few dollars a week that are not to be had at any price in many of the
fine old houses of Europe. The peasant who has lived on the plane of the
animals with no thought of cleanliness, or indeed of anything but food
and drink and shelter, comes over here and enjoys improvements that our
stately ancestors of a few generations ago would have believed magical.
Enjoys them