mantels, for
the luxury of hot and cold water in each chamber, and a couple of
comfortable bath-rooms. Then, the disposition of windows and doors is so
wholly without regard to convenience! How often we find rooms, meant for
bed-rooms, where really there is no good place for either bed or
dressing-table!"

Here my wife looked up, having just finished re-drawing the plans to the
latest alteration.

"One of the greatest reforms that could be, in these reforming days,"
she observed, "would be to have women architects. The mischief with
houses built to rent is that they are all mere male contrivances. No
woman would ever plan chambers where there is no earthly place to set a
bed except against a window or door, or waste the room in entries that
might be made into closets. I don't see, for my part, _apropos_ to the
modern movement for opening new professions to the female sex, why there
should not be well-educated female architects. The planning and
arrangement of houses, and the laying-out of grounds, are a fair subject
of womanly knowledge and taste. It is the teaching of Nature. What would
anybody think of a bluebird's nest that had been built entirely by Mr.
Blue without the help of his wife?"

"My dear," said I, "you must positively send a paper on this subject to
the next Woman's-Rights Convention."

"I am of Sojourner Truth's opinion," said my wife,--"that the best way
to prove the propriety of one's doing anything is to go and _do it_. A
woman who should have energy to go through the preparatory studies and
set to work in this field would, I am sure, soon find employment."

"If she did as well as you would do, my dear," said I. "There are plenty
of young women in our Boston high-schools who are going through higher
fields of mathematics than are required by the architect, and the
schools for design show the flexibility and fertility of the female
pencil. The thing appears to me altogether more feasible than many other
openings which have been suggested to woman."

"Well," said Jennie, "isn't papa ever to go on with his paper?"

I continued:--

* * * * *

What ought "our house" to be? Could any other question be asked
admitting in its details of such varied answers,--answers various as the
means, the character, and situation of different individuals? But there
are great wants pertaining to every human being, into which all lesser
ones run. There are things in a house that eve