From these model tenements it will not be difficult to advance to the suburban square with sufficient variety in house plans to content those who are willing to yield small personal whims.  Hitherto the erratic fancy of would-be tenants, the dissatisfaction with the arrangements provided, has made building en masse difficult.  As long as the builder was called upon to suit those who had lived in houses of their own for many years his task was difficult, but now he will have to do with the young people who know no other life and who will more readily fall in with the standards set by the house itself.

For this very reason those who have social welfare at heart must come to the rescue, and devise and put up samples, of the best that modern science can offer, to rent for $300 to $500 a year.  Let any one who loves his kind, if he have a talent this way, not wrap it in a napkin, but give it to the builder and the philanthropist to materialize.  Now is the time to set standards for the next thirty years.  The electric car is opening new country as never before.  Who will make the practical advance?

These new houses will be roomy and yet, I think, will not fail of sun-parlors or enclosed piazzas which will serve as extensions of the house when occasion demands.  I am sure they will not contain the forbidding “front room” set apart for weddings and funerals and rare family gatherings.  More open-air life will be fashionable and practicable as soon as we have learned that a wind-break and not a tightly-enclosed space is what we need.  In northern latitudes especially it is the wind which makes the climate seem so inclement.  The amount of accessible sunshine may be doubled with great advantage in most of the semi-country-houses.  Shelter should not suggest a prison.

The education of the child demands that housing shall include land for pets, for vegetables and flowers; not merely to increase beauty and selfish pleasure, but for the ethical value of contact with things dependent on care and forethought.  The thoughtful sociologist recognizes as one of the greatest needs for the children of to-day a closer companionship with fathers—­is urging that even money-making should be secondary to the time given to moulding the character of the little ones, instead of leaving them to nurses and coachmen or to the school of the streets.  Companionship in the garden-work will secure this opportunity in a natural way.

It is only by going into the country that sufficient land for a simple house with yard in front and garden in the rear—­the ideal English home—­can be had.  There will be a sacrifice of some of the things the city gives, but a compromise is the only possible outcome of many claims.