common good, and by modes at once healthful, economical, and tasteful.
Of course, much of the instruction conveyed in the following pages is
chiefly applicable to the wants and habits of those living either in
the country or in such suburban vicinities as give space of ground for
healthful outdoor occupation in the family service, although the general
principles of house-building and house-keeping are of necessity
universal in their application--as true in the busy confines of the
city as in the freer and purer quietude of the country. So far as
circumstances can be made to yield the opportunity, it will be assumed
that the family state demands some outdoor labor for all. The
cultivation of flowers to ornament the table and house, of fruits and
vegetables for food, of silk and cotton for clothing, and the care of
horse, cow, and dairy, can be so divided that each and all of the
family, some part of the day, can take exercise in the pure air, under
the magnetic and healthful rays of the sun. Every head of a family
should seek a soil and climate which will afford such opportunities.
Railroads, enabling men toiling in cities to rear families in the
country, are on this account a special blessing. So, also, is the
opening of the South to free labor, where, in the pure and mild climate
of the uplands, open-air labor can proceed most of the year, and women
and children labor out of doors as well as within.

In the following drawings are presented modes of economizing time,
labor, and expense by the close packing of conveniences. By such
methods, small and economical houses can be made to secure most of the
comforts and many of the refinements of large and expensive ones. The
cottage at the head of this chapter is projected on a plan which can
be adapted to a warm or cold climate with little change. By adding
another story, it would serve a large family.