[Illustration: Mr. Architect]


Now that your "ship" is at last approaching the harbor, I am confident
your first demonstration in honor of its arrival will be building
yourself a house; exchanging your charmingly good-for-nothing
air-castle for an actual flesh-and-blood, matter-of-fact
dwelling-house, two-storied and French-roofed it may be, with all the
modern improvements. In many respects, you will find the real house
far less satisfactory and more perplexing than the creation of your
fancy. Air-castles have some splendid qualities. There are no masons'
and carpenters' contracts to be made, no plumbers' bills to be vexed
over, the furnaces never smoke, and the water-pipes never freeze; they
need no insurance, and you have no vain regrets over mistakes in your
plans, for you may have alterations and additions whenever you please
without making a small pandemonium and eating dust and ashes while
they are in process. Nevertheless, I have no doubt you will plunge at
once into the mysteries and miseries of building, and, knowing your
inexperience, I cannot at such a juncture leave you wholly to your own
devices.

It is a solemn thing to build even the outside of a house. You not
only influence your fellow-men, but reveal your own character; for
houses have a facial expression as marked as that of human beings,
often strangely like their owners, and, in most cases, far more
lasting. Some destroy your faith in human nature, and give you an ague
chill when you pass them; others look impudently defiant, while many
make you cry out, "Vanity of vanities!" If you are disposed to
investigate the matter, you will find that the history of nations may