architect who has tried it.

The centrifugal forces that our social prophets are so fond of invoking,
holding that the words "town" and "city" may become as obsolete as
"mail-coach," will have to reckon with these features of country life.

It is assumed that the work of women is "housekeeping." I should like to
put the question suddenly to a thousand men. What is twentieth-century
housekeeping? I venture the guess that less than a hundred would take into
account the utter difference in their wives' duties from their mothers',
as they remember them; and yet the house, even the flat, is built more or
less along the old lines. The women do not know enough to assert
themselves, and have not the skill to show the builder what is wrong. The
architects could tell tales if they would. The utter ignorance of what a
house means, of the steps necessary to make a successful livable place, is
appalling. The young man who has $3000 as a legacy feels he can build. His
wife chooses the location near her friends whose houses she likes, and the
architect is called in. Do you wish back stairs? Are you to keep three
servants or none? Do you wish the rooms separate or connecting? All such
questions find a blank stare. "What difference does that make in the style
and price?" the would-be owner says. The architect is not always able to
show him that these little things are the whole problem in building a
_home_. The house as a home is merely outer clothing, which should fit as
an overcoat should, without wrinkles and creases that show their
ready-made character. The woman, born housekeeper as she considers
herself, is rigid in her ideas of what she thinks she wants, but when the
builder has followed her plans she is far from satisfied with the result.
She is used to material which puckers and stretches in her clothing; she
cannot understand the inflexibility of wood and stone. The remedy is for
high-school girls, probably even grammar-school pupils as well, to have