TROUT BROOKS ARE BETTER THAN STREET SEWERS.

My dear architect: We read, we saw, and-were conquered. The pictures, the
arguments, and especially the illustrious examples, brought down the house, or rather
brought it up. Mrs. John is not only fully reconciled to stone walls, but she is decidedly
unreconciled to any other,-that is, for the first story; the second story is to be of wood,
the walls shingled or slated instead of being covered with clapboards, in the orthodox
fashion. She is delighted with the notion that her "Baltimore belles" and the like can
clamber against the house without being torn away every two or three years for paint. On
the strength of this notion, she has already ordered a big lot of all sorts of herbs and
creeping things, from grape-vines and English ivy to sweet-peas and passion-flowers.
That's only one thing. Every time we go out to ride she gathers up from the wayside such
a load of small rocks as makes the buggy-springs ache. We found a smooth round stone,
yesterday, that looks so much like my head she declares it must be a fossil, and is bound
to have it set over the front door instead of a monogram. We follow your lead in another


direction; if we can't rise in the world without going up stairs for it, we'll try to
cultivate the meek and lowly style.
Your best point, according to my thinking, is on the migration question. I read that
paragraph over twice, and stuck a pin at the end of it. It doesn't concern me, to be sure;
but I have the utmost pity for a man who is content to live all his life shut in between
brick walls. To undertake to bring up a family of boys and girls where all the blessed
freedom of out-door life is denied them, is worse than pitiful,-it's heathenish. Not that
every boy ought to live on a farm and work in a barn-yard,-hoe corn all summer and
chop wood all winter,-but I don't believe a child can grow up strong, healthy, and
natural, body-wise and soul-wise, unless he has a chance to scrape an acquaintance with
Mother Nature with his own hands. When I stake out John City it will be a city of
magnificent distances, in the form of a Greek cross,-two wide streets crossing each
other at right angles in the middle; all the business at the "four corners," where there will
be plenty of short cross streets; the dwellings stretching away for miles on the two broad
avenues; house-lots one to ten acres; Union Pacific Railroad will cut through the centre
corner-wise; and the Metropolitan Transportation Company, or something else with a big
name, will run elegant cars like shuttles through the two main streets, and Mrs. A at the
West End can call on Mrs. B at the North, South, or East End, ten miles away, with less
trouble than you in your city can go from Salem to Howard Street.
Similarly, Springfield ought to stretch from Longmeadow to Chicopee Street, from
Indian Orchard to Agawam. At all events, if your folks will make the most of their
opportunities, it will some day be one of the most charming inland cities on the continent.
Whether there is good sense, public spirit, and patriotism enough to make it so remains to
be seen.
Yours,
JOHN.