were able to secure for a small sum a landscape painted by one of the
masters and esteemed of great value. You would think it folly to let
the chance pass unimproved. By simply cutting a hole in the wall you
may have a picture infinitely grander than human artist ever painted;
grander in its teaching, in its actual beauty, its variety, and its
permanency; grander in everything except its market value. I am not
sure but your children's children will find some one window in the old
homestead that commands a view of the everlasting hills, an heirloom
even of greater pecuniary value than the rarest work of art. Do not
forget, either, the views _through_ the house. If your windows can be
placed so that throwing open the doors from room to room or across the
hall will reveal a charming prospect in opposite directions, there's a
sense of being in the midst of an all-surrounding beauty, hardly
possible when you seem to look upon it from one side only. You have
surely been abiding in a city. The interior of your house is all that
concerns you or your family. The outside--French roof and fashionable
finish, forsooth!--is for the public to admire. They are not to have
any intimation what sort of a home is sheltered by your monstrous
Mansard; and it never occurs to you that there can be anything out of
doors worth building your house to see.

[Illustration: "LOOK OUT, NOT IN."]

Here is another unhappy result of evil examples,--the sliding-doors
between the two parlors, as you call them,--an arrangement convenient
enough, sometimes indispensable in houses built on crowded streets,
houses that only breathe the dusty air and catch the struggling
sunbeams at their narrow and remote extremities,--air and sunlight at
nobody knows how many hundred dollars the front foot. They are worse
than useless in such a house as yours.