around our castle. On the other hand, the light outside blinds,
that shake and rattle and bang when the stormy winds "do blow, do
blow," are a fair substitute for the cooling shade of forest-trees.
You may have learned that life is a succession of compromises.
Building in New England certainly is. No sooner do we get nicely
fortified with furnaces, storm-porches, double windows, and forty tons
of anthracite, than June bursts upon us with ninety degrees in the
shade. Then how we despise our contrivances for keeping warm, and
bless the ice-man! We wish the house was all piazza, and if it were
not for burglars and mosquitoes, would abjure walls and roof and live
in the open air. Just here is our dilemma. We go "from Greenland's icy
mountains to India's coral strands" and back again every twelve
months, whether we will or no, and are obliged to live in the same
house through it all. It's really a desperate matter. I've been to the
ant and the beasts and the birds. They recommend hibernating or
migration, but our wings are too short for the one, our fur too thin
for the other!

Seriously, you must not forget to prepare for extremes of climate.
Fortunately the walls that most thoroughly resist the cold are
effective against the heat. The doors and windows--the living,
breathing, seeing, working part of the house--demand the twofold
provision. You must have double windows in winter, to be taken off
(laid away and more or less smashed up) in summer; outside blinds to
ward off the summer sun, which may, in their turn, be removed when we
are only too glad to welcome all the sunshine there is. The
vestibules--portable storm-porches are not to be tolerated--must also
be skilful doorkeepers, proof against hostile storms, but freely
admitting the wandering zephyrs. Piazzas are not so easily managed. We
like them broad and endless in July and August, but the shadows they
cast we would fain remove when the very trees fold away their
sunshades. Often a platform, terrace, balcony,--whatever you please
to call it, practically a piazza without a roof,--is the best thing to
have, for this will not keep the sun from the windows, when comfort
requires it may be shaded by a movable awning, and by its sunny
cheerfulness it will lengthen our out-door enjoyment two or three
months in the year.

You are still floundering helplessly in the kitchen. I've no doubt
Sister Jane has excellent ideas on the subject,--probably knows ten
times as much a