establish himself
wherever he chooses. There is no doubt that the latter is able to find a
far better farmhouse, for he can go farther away, where the best types
have not been reclaimed, owing to their distances from the large cities.

It is to be taken for granted that a person has a definite purpose when
he leaves the city for a country existence, and it is necessary that he
educate himself to the point where he makes his ideas practical. This
cannot be done without study beforehand. In making a house suit
individual requirements, one must follow along its own lines. Do not
attempt to transplant into it features from some other house you admire.
An Elizabethan gable or a craftsman living-room may have been very
interesting in the friends' houses in which you saw them, but they would
be quite out of place thrust into a Colonial farmhouse. If you have a
real need for the features that you find in some other house, you should
adapt them to the spirit of the building you are remodeling.

If it cannot be made to harmonize with the other motives, it is possible
that you are attempting to make a home out of a building that is not
suited to your style of life. But it is because these Colonial
farmhouses meet the requirements of the average American families so
adequately that they are so interesting to remodel. Each house owner
must decide for himself what is the main element in his existence and
reclaim the house accordingly. In one family, the interests will be
entirely domestic; another household will live in the open, occupied
with sports; another devotes much time to music; and there are still
others who are absorbed in some special craft or work that will require
definite accommodations. In many cases the house can readily be adapted
to these particular requirements without any essential change in its
atmosphere. The success that is achieved by working with these old-time
elements is due to their sincerity and honesty in solving the problems
of their own day and age; they are the results of actual and real
experience, and we know no better ways to meet the same conditions. So
that when we have the same problems confronting us, we cannot do better
than accept the successful results of others' experiments.

This does not mean a slavish copying of the old in restoration; to
simply imitate old elements would be neither interesting nor
commendable, except for the purposes of a museum. Each style is based
upon some fundamen