f by-gone years, of making
the main hall reach back to the kitchen itself. This is here obviated by
a cutting up of the rear section of the hall, by which a passage, in all
cases of the better kind of dwelling, is preserved, without encroaching
upon the occupied rooms in passing out and in. To be sure, the front
door is not the usual passage for the laborers or servants of the house,
but they are subject, any hour of the day, to be called there to admit
those who may come, and the continual opening of a private room for such
purposes is most annoying. Therefore, as matter of convenience, and as a
decided improvement on the designs above noticed, we have adhered
strictly to the separate rear passage.

The _garret_, also, as we have arranged our designs, is either
altogether left out, or made a quite unimportant part of the dwelling.
It is but a _lumber_ room, at best; and should be approached only by a
flight of steps from a rear chamber or passage, and used as a receptacle
for useless traps, or cast-off furniture, seldom wanted. It is hot in
summer, and cold in winter, unfit for decent lodging to any human being
in the house, and of little account any way. We much prefer running the
chambers partially into the roof, which we think gives them a more
comfortable expression, and admits of a better ventilation, by carrying
their ceilings higher without the expense of high _body_ walls to the
house, which would give them an otherwise naked look. If it be objected
that thus running the chambers above the plates of the roof prevents the
insertion of proper ties or beams to hold the roof plates together to
prevent their spreading, we answer, that he must be a poor mechanic who
cannot, in framing the chamber partitions so connect the opposite plates
as to insure them against all such difficulty. A _sheltered,
comfortable_ aspect is that which should distinguish every farm house,
and the _cottage_ chamber is one of its chiefest characteristics; and
this can only be had by running such apartments into the roof, as in our
design.

CONSTRUCTION.

A house of this kind must, according to its locality, and the material
of which it is built, be liable to wide differences of estimate in its
cost; and from our own experience in such matters, any estimate here
made we know cannot be reliable as a rule for other localities, where
the prices of material and labor are different from our own. Where
lumber, stone, and brick abound, and eac