an, for this wall is a record
of burst water-pipes; and rough in his methods, as his emendation of the
garden gate--a remedy rather worse than the disease--shows. The mark of
this prepotent previous man is left on the house from cellar to attic.
It is his house really, not mine. And against these haunting
individualities set the horrible wholesale flavour, the obvious
dexterous builder's economies of a new house. Yet, whatever your
repulsion may be, the end is always the same. After you have asked for
your ideal house a hundred times or so you begin to see you do not get
it. You go the way of your kind. All houses are taken in despair.

But such disgusts as this are for the man who really aims at taking a
house. The artist house-hunter knows better than that. He hunts for the
hunt's sake, and does not mar his work with a purpose. Then
house-hunting becomes a really delightful employment, and one strangely
neglected in this country. I have heard, indeed, of old ladies who
enlivened the intervals of their devotions in this manner, but to the
general run of people the thing is unknown. Yet a more entertaining way
of spending a half-holiday--having regard to current taste--it should be
difficult to imagine. An empty house is realistic literature in the
concrete, full of hints and allusions if a little wanting in tangible
humanity, and it outdoes the modern story in its own line, by beginning
as well as ending in a note of interrogation. That it is not more
extensively followed I can only explain by supposing that its merits are
generally unsuspected. In which case this book should set a fashion.

One singular thing the house-hunter very speedily discovers is, that the
greater portion of the houses in this country are owned by old gentlemen
or old ladies who live next door. After a certain age, and especially
upon retired tradespeople, house property, either alone or in common
with gardening, exercises an irresistible fascination. You always know
you are going to meet a landlord or landlady of this type when you read
on your order to view, "Key next door but one." Calling next door but
one, you are joined after the lapse of a few minutes by a bald, stout
gentleman, or a lady of immemorial years, who offers to go over "the
property" with you. Apparently the intervals between visits to view are
spent in slumber, and these old people come out refreshed and keen to
scrutinise their possible new neighbours. They will tell you all