From John.

OUR PICTURESQUE ANCESTORS.


MY DEAR ARCHITECT: I've no doubt it would be vastly agreeable to you
to have Mrs. John keep up this end of the correspondence. Very
gratifying, too, to another party,--the paper-makers. It would be a
big thing for them. But I don't want to hire a housekeeper, even in so
good a cause, not till I have a house.

In spite of Mrs. John's devotion to her first love (I mean the stone
walls), it is, as you say, quite possible that our family mansion will
be wood; and Barkis is willin' to hear what you have to say about it.

One topic in your reply to my wife's historical report I hope you will
work up more fully. Just explain, if you can, why the cheap buildings
we have nowadays are so much less satisfactory to look at than those
built fifty or a hundred years ago. Do you suppose the bravest artist
that ever swung a brush would dare put an ordinary two-story house of
modern style on the front seat in a New England landscape? It would
ruin his reputation if he did,--even without the French roof. Can you
tell why? There's no such objection to the homesteads of a generation
or two ago. Don't tell me age is venerable, and moralize about the
sacred associations and old-time memories that lend a halo of poetry
and romance and what-'s-his-name to these relics of the past. That's
all very well in its place, but if our grandchildren can discover
anything artistic or even picturesque in our common houses of to-day,
they'll be a progeny of enormous imaginations,--regular Don Quixotes;
windmills will be nothing to them.