(3) They possess the fortitude to give it up at the call of duty after all they have lavished on it;

(4) They care enough for the real education and the real fun they will get out of it to save in other ways what the running and repairs will cost over and above the amount estimated.  This saving will be largely by doing many things with their own hands.

To be bound hand and foot either by unsalable real estate or by sentiment is an uncomfortable condition for the young family who may find itself in uncongenial surroundings, in an unhealthful situation, or who may need to retrench temporarily.

Another serious objection to building and owning a house in the first years of married life is the chance that the house will be too large or too small, or the railroad station will be moved, or the trolley line will be run under the garden window, or a smoking chimney will fill the library with soot (although the latter will not be permitted in the real twentieth-century town).

A new element has come into the question of ownership by the family of limited means which did not meet the elder generation of house-owners.  In the past the repairs were confined to a coat of paint now and then, new shingles, an added hen-house, or a bay window.  The well might have to be deepened, but little expense was put into or onto the house for fifty years.  The married son or daughter might add a wing, but the main house once built was never disturbed.  In the modern plastic condition of both ideals and materials this is all changed.  In any city well known to my readers how many streets bear the same aspect as five years ago?  In any suburban village made familiar by the trolley how many houses are the same as five years ago?  Even if their outward aspect is not changed, that worst of all havocs, new plumbing, has been put in.  The installation of neither furnace nor plumbing is accomplished once for all; at the end of ten years at most repairs or replacement must be made on penalty of loss of health.  As the community grows in wisdom and in knowledge it makes sanitary regulations more stringent notwithstanding the fact that the increase in expense bears most heavily on the small householder with a family whose need is out of proportion to the income.  Many a parent who grieves the loss of his child would gladly have paid a reasonable sum for repairs, but would have been in the poor debtors’ court if he had allowed the plumbers to enter his house.  The new laws made since he bought his house require diametrically opposite things, and the old fittings must all be torn out as well as four times as costly put in.

It is a sad fact that the advantages of all modern sanitation are so often denied to those who need and who would appreciate them.  The renter has here an advantage over the owner.  He can call for an examination by the city or town inspector before he takes a lease; the capitalist owner must then put matters right.  But as yet a man has a right to live with leaky sewer- or gas-pipes in his own house without being disturbed by an inspector.  How far into the century this will be allowed is uncertain; in time there will be an inspection of the premises of the small owner.