ordance with plans and specifications, and
satisfactory to the owner? This is precisely the plain English of what a
business man wants to know; for we hold that it is right and proper,
that every one should look right through all the connected links and
complications that require a considerable expenditure of money, and see
that he lands carefully in the place anticipated. To start with the
intention of disbursing $5,000, and wind up with an expenditure of
$12,000, is not only annoying in a money point of view, but an
impeachment of one's judgment and good sense, not pleasant to hear
outsiders reflect on; for however much one might wish to shift the
responsibility on others, it is one of those things that time will
always place where it belongs. As long as men consider the arts of
designing and constructing buildings to be of no special importance, or
that they are qualified, without instruction or experience, to practice
them, expensive blunders will naturally result, and sooner or later it
will be discovered that such wisdom is dearly bought. There are many,
however, who prefer to manage their building affairs thus, and who can
only learn more agreeable and less expensive modes by actual experience;
some do it from ignorance, some from supposed economy, and others from
the supposition that they are best qualified.

The design for a house or other building, and a plan of the interior
arrangement of each floor, prepared by a professional man who makes such
things the business of his life, is now very generally admitted by
intelligent men to be essential; but the management or superintendence
of the work by the party who has studied and designed it, does not seem
quite so apparent. An architect prepares the drawings for a dwelling to
cost $5,000; now whether it actually will cost $5,000, $8,000 or
$10,000, in the hands of another superintendent, is an unanswered
problem. A prevailing folly which we find very general, is to suppose
that all men can build the same house, in all places, for precisely the
same amount of money; and but few are willing to admit that they, of all
others, are not the most competent to carry through the whole business
of building at the lowest figure. Some must find out in the most
expensive manner, that the profession of an architect, or the skill of a
builder, can only be attained by long years of careful application.

[Illustration: FIG. 50.--_Basement Plan._]

[Illustration: FIG. 51.--_Firs