How To Build Your Dream House-EVERY MAN SHOULD HAVE A HOME.

My Dear John:
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 be clearly traced in the visible moral expression of the homes of the
people;-in the portable home-tents of the Arabs; the homely solidity of the houses in
Germany and Holland; the cheerful, wide-spreading hospitality of Switzerland; the
superficial elegance and extravagance of France; the thoroughness and self-assertion of
the English; and in the heterogeneous conglomerations of America, made up of
importations from every land and nation under the sun,-a constant striving and
changing,-a mass of problems yet unsolved.
A friend once said to me while we were passing an incurably ugly house, "The man
who built that must have had a very good excuse for it!" It was a profound remark, but if
that particular building were the only one needing apology for its ugliness, or if there
were no common faults of construction and interior arrangement, I should not think you
in special need of warning or counsel from me. There are, however, so many ill-looking
and badly contrived houses, so few really tasteful ones, while year after year it costs more
and more to provide the comfortable and convenient home which every man wants and
needs for himself and family, that I am sure you will be grateful for any help I may be
able to give you.
We are told that all men, women, and children ought to be healthy, handsome, and
happy. I have strong convictions that every man should also have a home, healthful,
happy, and beautiful; that it is a right, a duty, and therefore a possibility. Small and
humble it may be, cheap as to cost, but secure, refined, full of conveniences, and the
dearest spot on earth, a home of his own.
In the hope of making the way to this joyful consummation easier and plainer for you,
I propose to give you a variety of hints, information, and illustrations relating to your
undertaking, and will try to make my practical suggestions so well worth your attention


that you shall not overlook what I may say upon general principles. There is a right
and a wrong way of doing almost everything. I am yours, for the right way.