The House that Jill Built after Jacks had Proved a Failure | Page 6

somebody's wood-shed. Then, if there are any views of
blue hills and forests far away over the river, I shall be uncomfortable if we do not get the
full benefit of them."
"Don't you expect to have anything interesting inside the house?"
"Except my husband? Oh yes! but it would be a wicked waste of opportunities not to
accept the blessings provided for us without money and without price, which only require
us to stand in the right places and open our hearts and windows to receive them."
Jill's second lesson was indeed worth learning, even if it cost a wedding journey. Every
house must suit its own ground and fit its own household, otherwise it can neither be
comfortable nor beautiful.
The next morning, armed with a bundle of laths, sharpened at one end, and equipped with
paper, pencil and tape-line, the prospective house-builders proceeded to lay out, not the
house but the plan. They planted doors, windows, fireplaces and closets, stoves, lounges,
easy-chairs and bedsteads, as if they were so many seeds that would grow up beside the
laths on which their respective names were written and bear fruit each according to its
kind. Later in the day a high step-ladder was introduced, from the top of which Jill
scanned the surrounding country, while Jack stood ready to catch her if she fell. The
neighbors were intensely interested, and their curiosity was mixed with indignation when,
toward night, a man was discovered cutting down two of the rock-maple trees that Jill's
grandfather planted more than fifty years before, and which stood entirely beyond any
possible location of the new house.
"This evening, Jack, you must write for the architect to come."
"I thought you were going to make your own plans."
"I have made them, or rather I have laid them out on the ground and in the air. I know
what I want and how I want it. Now we must have every particular set down in black and
white."
Jack wrote accordingly. The architect was too busy to respond at once in person, but sent
a letter referring to certain principles that reach somewhat below the lowest
foundation-stones and above the tops of the tallest chimneys.
[Illustration]

CHAPTER II.
MORAL SUASION FOR MALARIAL MARSHES.

"You are quite right," the architect wrote, "to fix the plan of your house on the lot before
it is made on paper, provided first the lot is a good one. Nothing shows the innate
perversity of mankind more forcibly than the average character of the sites chosen for
human habitations in cities, in villages and in the open country. Or does it rather indicate
the instinctive struggle for supremacy over nature? The 'dear old nurse' is most peaceably
inclined toward us, yet we shall never be satisfied till all the valleys are exalted and the
hills laid low. Not because we object to hills and valleys--quite the contrary; but we must
show our strength and daring. Nobody wants the North Pole, but we are furious to have a
breach made in the wall that surrounds it. If we discover a mighty primeval forest we
straightway grind our axes to cut it down; an open prairie we plant with trees. When we
find ourselves in an unclean, malarious bog, instead of taking the short cut out, shaking
the mud from our feet and keeping clear of it forever after, we plunge in deeper still and
swear by all the bones of our ancestors that we will not only walk through it dry-shod, but
will build our homes in the midst of it and keep them clean and sweet and dry. The good
mother beckons to us with her sunshine and whispers with her fragrant breezes that on
the other side of the river or across the bay the land is high and dry, that just beyond the
bluffs are the sunny slopes where she expected us to build our houses, and, like saucy
children as we are, we say that is the very reason we prefer to go somewhere else.
[Illustration: WARMTH IS BEAUTY.]
[Illustration: A HIDDEN FOE.]
"Now, if the particular spot of earth on which you expect to set up the temple of your
home is not well adapted to that sacred purpose, think a bit before you commence digging.
If it is low, wet and difficult of drainage; if the surface water or the drains from adjacent
lands have no outlet except across it; if its size and shape compel your house to stand so
near your neighbor on the south that he takes all the sunshine and gives you the odors of
his dinner and the conversation of his cook in exchange; if there are no pleasant outlooks;
if it is shaded by trees owned by somebody who