,
not merely to hold the occupants when the doors are shut, but for
comfortable living and moving about. There is nothing in which all men
and women are more conservative than in the planning of their houses;
there seems to be something hereditary about it, as difficult to change
as a tendency to bald heads and awkward locomotion. Americans are
special sufferers in this respect. The primitive Anglo-American home
was only a step removed from the wigwams of the aboriginal savages, in
size, shape and general accommodations. Even our English ancestors,
from whom we derived some of our domestic notions, were not accustomed
to anything magnificent in the way of dwellings. The climate was
against them, and they were not sufficiently luxurious in their tastes.
Their houses were primarily places for shelter and refuge. In summer
they lived out of doors, and in winter they crept into close quarters
and waited for warm weather. With plenty of land and building materials
to be had for the taking, our colonial grandfathers should have had the
most generous homes in the world."

"Yes; and to judge by some of the old colonial mansions which have
escaped the 'making-over' vandals we have been going backwards in that
respect during the last fifty or a hundred years."

"Yes; and we ought to have been going the other way, for the size of
rooms should increase as the cost of furniture diminishes. Take for
instance, a parlor or sitting room fifteen feet square, which is, I
believe, about the orthodox size for a modern house. Give such a room a
dozen straight-backed and straight-legged chairs ranged along the
sides, a table in the center of the room with a green cover and four
books on it, two or three unhappy-looking family portraits on the
walls, a pair of brass candlesticks on the high, wooden mantel, a pair
of bellows, a shovel and tongs, with, perhaps, in the way of luxury, a
haircloth sofa. Now compare the room furnished in that way, which was
by no means uncommon in the days of our grandfathers with a room of the
same size, in which are stored half a dozen chairs, no two alike, and
some of them as large as small lounges, a center table piled with books
and magazines and photographs, till like a heap of jack straws, it is
impossible to remove one without disturbing the whole pile; a lounge
with a back, a divan or something without a back, an upright piano, two
or three bookcases, several small stools and piles of Turkish cushions
to