or many years his
task was difficult, but now he will have to do with the young people who
know no other life and who will more readily fall in with the standards
set by the house itself.

For this very reason those who have social welfare at heart must come to
the rescue, and devise and put up samples, of the best that modern science
can offer, to rent for $300 to $500 a year. Let any one who loves his
kind, if he have a talent this way, not wrap it in a napkin, but give it
to the builder and the philanthropist to materialize. Now is the time to
set standards for the next thirty years. The electric car is opening new
country as never before. Who will make the practical advance?

These new houses will be roomy and yet, I think, will not fail of
sun-parlors or enclosed piazzas which will serve as extensions of the
house when occasion demands. I am sure they will not contain the
forbidding "front room" set apart for weddings and funerals and rare
family gatherings. More open-air life will be fashionable and practicable
as soon as we have learned that a wind-break and not a tightly-enclosed
space is what we need. In northern latitudes especially it is the wind
which makes the climate seem so inclement. The amount of accessible
sunshine may be doubled with great advantage in most of the
semi-country-houses. Shelter should not suggest a prison.

The education of the child demands that housing shall include land for
pets, for vegetables and flowers; not merely to increase beauty and
selfish pleasure, but for the ethical value of contact with things
dependent on care and forethought. The thoughtful sociologist recognizes
as one of the greatest needs for the children of to-day a closer
companionship with fathers--is urging that even money-making should be
secondary to the time given to moulding the character of the little ones,
instead of leaving them to nurses and coachmen or to the school of the
streets. Companionship in the garden-work will secure this opportunity in
a natural way.

It is only by going into the country that sufficient land for a simple
house with yard in front and garden in the rear--the ideal English
home--can be had. There will be a sacrifice of some of the things the city
gives, but a compromise is the only possible outcome of many claims.

Those who are feeling the return to Nature, who find pleasure in gardening
and in all the soothing effects of country life, or who can bring
themselves to it with