be somewhere in the house a place of torment, the angels who abide
therein, giving us our daily bread and doughnuts, being of a totally
different type from the glorious creatures singing songs of praise
and operatic melodies in the upper stories. That the genius of the
kitchen and the parlor can be one and the same is a conception too
stupendous for the average understanding.

This, too, I hope you will insist upon. Every man who would build
himself a house shall first sit down and--not count the cost, that
comes into my department, but--ask himself solemnly what the house is
for. To live in, of course. But living is a complex affair; it is
constant growth or gradual death; there can be no standing still. Is
the house to be an end, or a means; a help to make the life-work
larger and better, or an added burden? Shall it lift, or crush him?
When this solemn questioning is honestly done, we shall have a new
order of domestic architecture. It may not be classic, neither Grecian
nor Roman, Gothic nor French, but the best of all that has gone before
and the last best thing thrown in. We shall have more cheap houses,
more small ones, I think; more comfort and less show, more content and
fewer mortgages.




LETTER XXXII.

From Fred.

GO TO; LET US BUILD A TOWER.