ard a quality which we may call "livableness." This
tendency we shall do well to fix in our teaching.

In general, the good house is plain, substantial, convenient, and
suited to its surroundings. Efficient housekeeping is largely
conditioned by such very practical details as closets and pantries,
the relative positions of sink and stove, the height of work tables
and shelves, the distance from range to dining table, the ease or
difficulty of cleaning woodwork, laundry facilities, and the like.
Housekeeping is made up of accumulated details of work, and adequate
preparation for comfort in working can be made only when the house is
in process of construction.

Not less are the higher and more abstract duties of the homemaker
served by the kind of house she lives and works in. In a hundred
details the homemaker should be able to increase the efficiency of the
"place to make citizens in." A common mistake in building produces a
house which adds to, rather than lessens, the burdens of its inmates.
More often than not this is the result of a misapprehension of what
houses are for.

There are many large mansions in our villages and cities built for
show and display of wealth in which no one will live today. These
houses are being torn down and sold for junk. The modern home is built
for one purpose only, a home.

We must therefore teach our boys and girls that houses are for
shelter, work, comfort, and rest, and to satisfy our sense of beauty,
not to serve as show places nor to establish for us a standing in the
community proportionate to the size of our buildings. We must teach
them to measure their house needs and to avoid the uselessly ornate as
well as the hopelessly ugly. We must teach them to consider ease of
upkeep a distinctly valuable factor in building. But most of all must
the homemaker be taught that the comfort and well-being of the family
come first in the making of plans.

Few persons possess sufficient originality to think out new and
valuable arrangements for houses; therefore we must see that their
minds are rendered alert to discover successful arrangements in the
houses they are constantly seeing and to adapt these arrangements to
their own needs. Unless their minds are awakened in this direction,
the majority will merely see the house problem in large units,
overlooking the finer points of detail which mean comfort or the
opposite.

I recall spending a considerable number of drawing periods in my