LETTER XIV.

From John.

EVERY MAN TO HIS TRADE.


My dear Architect: There is one point you might as well square up
before you go any further. I understood that I was to build my house
for myself to live in, not for my neighbors to look at. But I appeal
to any white man, if you haven't had a deal more to say about the
outside of the platter than the contents thereof. To be sure, it's
what I might have expected. It's a way you architects have. You can no
more help thinking how a house is going to look, than a woman can help
hoping her first baby will be a beauty. I allow it would be a
first-rate thing if we could have some streaks of originality, just a
trifle more of variety, and a few glimpses of really good taste, along
with the crumbs of comfort; and I'm willing to admit that your moves
in that direction, as far as I can follow them, are all right. Still,
it's a downright fact, that, unless a man is a great simpleton or a
small Croesus, he is more anxious to make his house cosey and
convenient, than he is to outshine his neighbors or beautify the
landscape.

Sister Jane wants to know whether, in case one wishes to begin
housekeeping on a small scale, it would be as easy to make additions
to a brick house for future need, as to a wooden one. She doesn't ask