colors.  Look in the same places to-morrow, and they will all be changed, an endless variety.  Some one of these soft and neutral tints should clothe the body of your house.  Enliven it, if you choose, with dashes of crimson, green, or even blue and gold, but use these bright colors carefully.  Aim to make your house (in this as in all other respects) in harmony with its surroundings, not defiant of them.  Your proffered advice shall be duly applied, for it’s true that a man may easily occupy all his leisure time, be it more or less, in watching the building of his home, however carefully the work may be laid out before he begins.  No two builders will interpret and execute the same set of plans exactly alike.

There are different habits of training and tricks of trade.  What seems finished elegance to one is coarse awkwardness to another; and when you enter upon the more artistic part of the work, there are fine shadings impossible, even with the best intent, to any save the cultured hand and eye.  The inability to perceive and therefore to bring out these delicate expressions in the execution of the work must be borne patiently.  We can pardon failure when it follows an humble, honest effort.

The unpardonable sin of builders is their wilful attempt to improve the architect’s design by making alterations in cold blood, through sheer ignorance and conceit.  They will reduce the size of the doors and windows; substitute some other moulding for that on the drawing; or tell you they have made a bracket, or a bay-window, or a cupola, for Mr. Rusticus that looked first-rate, and advise you to have the same thing.  No thought of harmony or fitness, no fine sense of a distinctive idea, pervading the whole, and giving it unity and character, ever enters their heads.  Argument and persuasion are alike useless.  Your only safety lies in finding some young builder, who is not yet incurably wise in his own conceit, or an old one, who has learned that, while architects are not infallible, the taste and opinions of a man who studies faithfully a special department, are entitled to more respect than even his own.  As you say, these defects are commonly incurable.  Neither is there any redress.  The builders will either tell you they “couldn’t help it,” “did the best they knew how,” “thought the lumber was seasoned,” “understood the plans that way,” or else insist that it’s better so,—­and maybe ask you to pay extra for what you do not like.  As to your own right to spoil the house by any alterations that strike your fancy or accommodate your purse, that is unquestioned.  Architects who insist upon your having what you don’t want or choose to pay for, exceed their prerogatives, and bring disfavor upon us considerate fellows. We never try to dissuade a man from carrying out his own ideas.  We only beg him to be certain that he has a realizing sense of what he is undertaking, then help him to execute it as well as we can.  The more he leaves to our discretion the more hopefully do we work.