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 on her own account, but for a friend of hers who is talking of building.

I expect you’ll inquire pretty soon who’s running these letters,—­you or I; but if we don’t sometimes show our ignorance by asking questions and making comments, how are you going to know what sort of information to shed?

Yours,
John.

LETTER XV.

From the Architect.

The coming house will be fair to see and made of brick.

Dear John:  Once for all, your questions and those of Sister Jane or any of her friends and relatives are always in order.  The more the better.  I will do my best to answer them, if not exactly by return mail, yet as soon as may be.

Other things being equal, a house built of brick may be as easily increased to suit a growing family as one built of wood.  There is necessarily a loss attending any change in a finished building, yet it is often well to arrange one’s plans with reference to future additions.  Will it be in order for me to express to Sister Jane my approval of any young man who is willing to begin life on a small scale, undertaking no more than he can do honestly and well, yet with ambitious forethought providing for future increase?  You seem to be slightly in error upon this point.  I have not said you must build your house without any regard to the exterior, or intimated that it would even be right to do so.  I only protest against building for the sake of the exterior,—­against sacrificing thoroughness and interior comfort to outside display,—­against using labor and material in such fashion that they are worse than thrown away, their whole result being false and tasteless,—­against every kind of ostentation and humbug.  The truth is, we have all gone astray, literally, like sheep.  We follow, for no earthly reason than because some one, not a whit wiser than we, happens to have rushed blindly in a certain direction.