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Page 8
"And spoil it? No; I learned a second lesson on our journey, and it was
well worth what it cost. We shall never find a plan made for somebody
else that will suit us."
"Not good enough?"
"It isn't a question of goodness--it's a question of fitness. Neither
Cousin George's, nor any other house I ever saw, is precisely what we
need."
"Moral: Draw your own plans."
"We must, and we'll begin to-morrow."
"Why not this evening?"
"We couldn't see."
"Light the gas."
"Oh, but we must make the plans out of doors on the lot. We shall then
know where every room will be, every door and especially every window.
We must fix the centre of the sitting-room in the most commanding
situation, and be certain that the dining-room windows do not look
straight into somebody's wood-shed. Then, if there are any views of
blue hills and forests far away over the river, I shall be
uncomfortable if we do not get the full benefit of them."
"Don't you expect to have anything interesting inside the house?"
"Except my husband? Oh yes! but it would be a wicked waste of
opportunities not to accept the blessings provided for us without money
and without price, which only require us to stand in the right places
and open our hearts and windows to receive them."
Jill's second lesson was indeed worth learning, even if it cost a
wedding journey. Every house must suit its own ground and fit its own
household, otherwise it can neither be comfortable nor beautiful.
The next morning, armed with a bundle of laths, sharpened at one end,
and equipped with paper, pencil and tape-line, the prospective
house-builders proceeded to lay out, not the house but the plan. They
planted doors, windows, fireplaces and closets, stoves, lounges,
easy-chairs and bedsteads, as if they were so many seeds that would
grow up beside the laths on which their respective names were written
and bear fruit each according to its kind. Later in the day a high
step-ladder was introduced, from the top of which Jill scanned the
surrounding country, while Jack stood ready to catch her if she fell.
The neighbors were intensely interested, and their curiosity was mixed
with indignation when, toward night, a man was discovered cutting down
two of the rock-maple trees that Jill's grandfather planted more than
fifty years before, and which stood entirely beyond any possible
location of the new house.
"This evening, Jack, you must write for the architect to come."
"I thought you were going to make your own plans."
"I have made them, or rather I have laid them out on the ground and in
the air. I know what I want and how I want it. Now we must have every
particular set down in black and white."
Jack wrote accordingly. The architect was too busy to respond at once
in person, but sent a letter referring to certain principles that reach
somewhat below the lowest foundation-stones and above the tops of the
tallest chimneys.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER II.
MORAL SUASION FOR MALARIAL MARSHES.
"You are quite right," the architect wrote, "to fix the plan of your
house on the lot before it is made on paper, provided first the lot is
a good one. Nothing shows the innate perversity of mankind more
forcibly than the average character of the sites chosen for human
habitations in cities, in villages and in the open country. Or does it
rather indicate the instinctive struggle for supremacy over nature? The
'dear old nurse' is most peaceably inclined toward us, yet we shall
never be satisfied till all the valleys are exalted and the hills laid
low. Not because we object to hills and valleys--quite the contrary;
but we must show our strength and daring. Nobody wants the North Pole,
but we are furious to have a breach made in the wall that surrounds it.
If we discover a mighty primeval forest we straightway grind our axes
to cut it down; an open prairie we plant with trees. When we find
ourselves in an unclean, malarious bog, instead of taking the short cut
out, shaking the mud from our feet and keeping clear of it forever
after, we plunge in deeper still and swear by all the bones of our
ancestors that we will not only walk through it dry-shod, but will
build our homes in the midst of it and keep them clean and sweet and
dry. The good mother beckons to us with her sunshine and whispers
with her fragrant breezes that on the other side of the river or across
the bay the land is high and dry, that just beyond the bluffs are the
sunny slopes where she expected us to build our houses, and, like saucy
children as we are, we say that is the very reason we prefer to go
somewhere else.
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