BUILDERS' HOUSES

"_Mine own hired house_."


A large proportion of homes are made in houses which are not owned, but
leased, and this prevents each man or family from indicating personal
taste in external aspect. A rich man and house-owner may approximate to
a true expression of himself even in the outside of his house if he
strongly desires it, but a man of moderate means must adapt himself and
his family to the house-builder's idea of houses--that is to say, to the
idea of the man who has made house-building a trade, and whose
experiences have created a form into which houses of moderate cost and
fairly universal application may be cast.

Although it is as natural to a man to build or acquire a home as to a
bird to build a nest, he has not the same unfettered freedom in
construction. He cannot always adapt his house either to the physical or
mental size of his family, but must accept what is possible with much
the same feeling with which a family of robins might accommodate
themselves to a wren's nest, or an oriole to that of a barn-swallow. But
the fact remains, that all these accidental homes must, in some way, be
brought into harmony with the lives to be lived in them, and the habits
and wants of the family; and not only this, they must be made attractive
according to the requirements of cultivated society. The effort toward
this is instructive, and the pleasure in and enjoyment of the home
depends upon the success of the effort. The inmates, as a rule, are
quite clear as to what they want to accomplish, but have seldom had
sufficient experience to enable them to remedy defects of construction.