mited to two, as in city blocks. Of the
comparative advantages or disadvantages of city or country life, there is
no need to speak here. Our business is simply to give such details as may
apply to both, but chiefly to the owners of moderate incomes, or salaried
people, whose expenditure must always be somewhat limited. With the
exterior of such homes, women at present have very little to do; and the
interior also is thus far much in the hands of architects, who decide for
general prettiness of effect, rather than for the most convenient
arrangement of space. The young bride, planning a home, is resolved upon a
bay-window, as large a parlor as possible, and an effective spare-room;
but, having in most cases no personal knowledge of work, does not
consider whether kitchen and dining-room are conveniently planned, or not,
and whether the arrangement of pantries and closets is such that both
rooms must be crossed a hundred times a day, when a little foresight might
have reduced the number certainly by one-half, perhaps more.

Inconvenience can, in most cases, be remedied; but unhealthfulness or
unwholesomeness of location, very seldom: and therefore, in the beginning,
I write that ignorance is small excuse for error, and that every one able
to read at all, or use common-sense about any detail of life, is able to
form a judgment of what is healthful or unhealthful. If no books are at
hand, consult the best physician near, and have his verdict as to the
character of the spot in which more or less of your life in this world
will be spent, and which has the power to affect not only your mental and
bodily health, but that of your children. Because your fathers and mothers
have been neglectful of these considerations, is no reason why you should
continue in ignorance; and the first duty in making a home is to consider
earnestly and intelligently certain points.

Four essentials are to be thought of in the choice of any home; and their
neglect, and the ignorance which is the foundation of this neglect, are
the secret of not only the chronic ill-health supposed to be a necessity
of the American organization, but of many of the epidemics and mysterious
diseases classed under the head of "visitations of Providence."

These essentials are: a wholesome situation, good ventilation, good
drainage, and a dry cellar. Rich or poor, high or low, if one of these be
disregarded, the result will tell, either on your own health or on that of
yo