of it is a utility, is designed to perform work. It is
created for the express purpose of dividing the water in front of it, of
gliding over the water beneath it, of leaving the water behind it--and
all with the least possible wastage of stress and friction. It is not
created for the purpose of filling the eye with beauty. It is created
for the purpose of moving through the sea and over the sea with the
smallest resistance and the greatest stability; yet, somehow, it does
fill the eye with its beauty. And in so far as a boat fails in its
purpose, by that much does it diminish in beauty.

I am still a long way from the house I have in my mind some day to build,
yet I have arrived somewhere. I have discovered, to my own satisfaction
at any rate, that beauty and utility should be one. In applying this
general idea to the building of a house, it may be stated, in another and
better way; namely, construction and decoration must be one. This idea
is more important than the building of the house, for without the idea
the house so built is certain to be an insult to intelligence and
beauty-love.

I bought a house in a hurry in the city of Oakland some time ago. I do
not live in it. I sleep in it half a dozen times a year. I do not love
the house. I am hurt every time I look at it. No drunken rowdy or
political enemy can insult me so deeply as that house does. Let me tell
you why. It is an ordinary two-storey frame house. After it was built,
the criminal that constructed it nailed on, at the corners
perpendicularly, some two-inch fluted planks. These planks rise the
height of the house, and to a drunken man have the appearance of fluted
columns. To complete the illusion in the eyes of the drunken man, the
planks are topped with wooden Ionic capitals, nailed on, and in, I may
say, bas-relief.

When I analyze the irritation these fluted planks cause in me, I find the
reason in the fact that the first rule for building a house has been
violated. These decorative planks are no part of the construction. They
have no use, no work to perform. They are plastered gawds that tell lies
that nobody believes. A column is made for the purpose of supporting
weight; this is its use. A column, when it is a utility, is beautiful.
The fluted wooden columns nailed on outside my house are not utilities.
They are not beautiful. They are nightmares. They not only support no
weight, but they themselves are a weight that drags