I have not thought of many details.  But here are a few.  Take the bath-room, for instance.  It shall be as beautiful as any room in the house, just as it will be as useful.  The chance is, that it will be the most expensive room in the house.  Upon that we are resolved—­ even if we are compelled to build it first, and to live in a tent till we can get more money to go on with the rest of the house.  In the bath-room no delights of the bath shall be lacking.  Also, a large part of the expensiveness will be due to the use of material that will make it easy to keep the bathroom clean and in order.  Why should a servant toil unduly that my body may be clean?  On the other hand, the honesty of my own flesh, and the square dealing I give it, are more important than all the admiration of my friends for expensive decorative schemes and magnificent trivialities.  More delightful to me is a body that sings than a stately and costly grand staircase built for show.  Not that I like grand staircases less, but that I like bath-rooms more.

I often regret that I was born in this particular period of the world.  In the matter of servants, how I wish I were living in the golden future of the world, where there will be no servants—­naught but service of love.  But in the meantime, living here and now, being practical, understanding the rationality and the necessity of the division of labour, I accept servants.  But such acceptance does not justify me in lack of consideration for them.  In my house beautiful their rooms shall not be dens and holes.  And on this score I foresee a fight with the architect.  They shall have bath-rooms, toilet conveniences, and comforts for their leisure time and human life—­if I have to work Sundays to pay for it.  Even under the division of labour I recognize that no man has a right to servants who will not treat them as humans compounded of the same clay as himself, with similar bundles of nerves and desires, contradictions, irritabilities, and lovablenesses.  Heaven in the drawing-room and hell in the kitchen is not the atmosphere for a growing child to breathe—­nor an adult either.  One of the great and selfish objections to chattel slavery was the effect on the masters themselves.

And because of the foregoing, one chief aim in the building of my house beautiful will be to have a house that will require the minimum of trouble and work to keep clean and orderly.  It will be no spick and span and polished house, with an immaculateness that testifies to the tragedy of drudge.  I live in California where the days are warm.  I’d prefer that the servants had three hours to go swimming (or hammocking) than be compelled to spend those three hours in keeping the house spick and span.  Therefore it devolves upon me to build a house that can be kept clean and orderly without the need of those three hours.