Doubtless we must wait a little longer for our lost Eden to be restored by the angels of the household; but, in the hastening of that good time, such examples, permit me to say, as your own will be worth far more than any multiplying of conveniences and labor-saving machines for the benefit of those who do not know or care to learn how to use them,—­examples of the nobleness, the gentility if you please, of all useful labor.  Until that everlasting truth is understood and applied, there will be more need of your teaching than of my plans.  If you will teach your neighbors what a fully equipped home building should contain, I will try to show them how their wants can be supplied.  Teach them, at the same time, what it need not contain.  As certain folks do not understand how heaven can be enjoyable without a Tartarean attachment to which all disagreeable people and performances are consigned, so a common notion of home, that earthly epitome of heaven, appears to be that it should also contain an abridgment of the same direful institution; that there must be somewhere in the house a place of torment, the angels who abide therein, giving us our daily bread and doughnuts, being of a totally different type from the glorious creatures singing songs of praise and operatic melodies in the upper stories.  That the genius of the kitchen and the parlor can be one and the same is a conception too stupendous for the average understanding.

This, too, I hope you will insist upon.  Every man who would build himself a house shall first sit down and—­not count the cost, that comes into my department, but—­ask himself solemnly what the house is for.  To live in, of course.  But living is a complex affair; it is constant growth or gradual death; there can be no standing still.  Is the house to be an end, or a means; a help to make the life-work larger and better, or an added burden?  Shall it lift, or crush him?  When this solemn questioning is honestly done, we shall have a new order of domestic architecture.  It may not be classic, neither Grecian nor Roman, Gothic nor French, but the best of all that has gone before and the last best thing thrown in.  We shall have more cheap houses, more small ones, I think; more comfort and less show, more content and fewer mortgages.

LETTER XXXII.

From Fred.

GO TO; LET US BUILD A TOWER.

MY DEAR ARCHITECT:  I’ve been hearing a variety of suggestions from Miss Jane, the substance of which she has already forwarded you in a letter.  Her ideas are excellent.  They ought to be adopted in every household.  I wish to have them carried out as far as possible in mine, when the time comes.  She favors a basement kitchen, which I had always thought objectionable.  If adopted it would change my arrangement considerably.  What do you think of it?  How high shall I have the different stories, and will you give me some hints for exterior?