to look at property, a few don'ts are in order
if you would steer a fair course to the country home you have in mind.

Don't expect any place to have all the requirements included in your
mental picture.

Don't buy a place that does not appeal to you. Each year you will like
it less.

Don't buy a bargain without finding out why it is below the prevailing
price. Only too often it proves extremely expensive.

Don't disparage a piece of property with the naive idea that by so
doing the price will be lowered. You only arouse resentment on the
part of the owner.

Don't make a pest of yourself by too frequent visits to a place that
attracts you.

Don't try to eliminate the real estate broker. If he really knows his
territory, his services are worth far more than his fee which is paid
by the seller anyway.

Don't lose your temper during the negotiations that must precede the
terms of sale. You may lose the place that just suits you.

Don't expect to buy property with wooden money. That custom went out
shortly after 1929.

If you can subscribe to these points, you are one of those who really
want a country home and will eventually find one. Those who only think
they do will stumble over some detail and then settle back with a
plaintive, "We would love to move to the country if we could only find
a place like yours." Castles in the air have everything, for
imagination builds them; but those planted four square upon the earth
always have certain "outs," even though you buy a perfect building
site and put the house you have dreamed of thereon.

Personally, we have always wanted a little gray house mellowed by the
summers and winters of at least a century. What we bought was a small
story-and-a-half farm cottage with outer walls of weathered shingles,
painted red. It is old. During the Revolution, a British soldier was
slain in the very doorway as he came out with loot from the upper
rooms. It would undoubtedly be a haunted house in England but here our
eyes are holden and we have never seen him, nor have any of our
guests.

We still admire gray stone houses of which there are plenty down in
the Pennsylvania Dutch country but we are honestly suited with what we
have. Its general outline is akin to the house we envisioned and the
mellow tone of its red-shingled exterior has a charm of its own. True,
the grounds are lacking in those little irregularities that enable one
to develop secluded spots and charming rock garde