But underneath the spick and span there is something more dreadful than the servitude of the servants.  This dreadful thing is the philosophy of the spick and span.  In Korea the national costume is white.  Nobleman and coolie dress alike in white.  It is hell on the women who do the washing, but there is more in it than that.  The coolie cannot keep his white clothes clean.  He toils and they get dirty.  The dirty white of his costume is the token of his inferiority.  The nobleman’s dress is always spotless white.  It means that he doesn’t have to work.  But it means, further, that somebody else has to work for him.  His superiority is not based upon song-craft nor state-craft, upon the foot-races he has run nor the wrestlers he has thrown.  His superiority is based upon the fact that he doesn’t have to work, and that others are compelled to work for him.  And so the Korean drone flaunts his clean white clothes, for the same reason that the Chinese flaunts his monstrous finger-nails, and the white man and woman flaunt the spick-and-spanness of their spotless houses.

There will be hardwood floors in my house beautiful.  But these floors will not be polished mirrors nor skating-rinks.  They will be just plain and common hardwood floors.  Beautiful carpets are not beautiful to the mind that knows they are filled with germs and bacilli.  They are no more beautiful than the hectic flush of fever, or the silvery skin of leprosy.  Besides, carpets enslave.  A thing that enslaves is a monster, and monsters are not beautiful.

The fireplaces in my house will be many and large.  Small fires and cold weather mean hermetically-sealed rooms and a jealous cherishing of heated and filth-laden air.  With large fire-places and generous heat, some windows may be open all the time, and without hardship all the windows can be opened every little while and the rooms flushed with clean pure air.  I have nearly died in the stagnant, rotten air of other people’s houses—­especially in the Eastern states.  In Maine I have slept in a room with storm-windows immovable, and with one small pane five inches by six, that could be opened.  Did I say slept?  I panted with my mouth in the opening and blasphemed till I ruined all my chances of heaven.

For countless thousands of years my ancestors have lived and died and drawn all their breaths in the open air.  It is only recently that we have begun to live in houses.  The change is a hardship, especially on the lungs.  I’ve got only one pair of lungs, and I haven’t the address of any repair-shop.  Wherefore I stick by the open air as much as possible.  For this reason my house will have large verandas, and, near to the kitchen, there will be a veranda dining-room.  Also, there will be a veranda fireplace, where we can breathe fresh air and be comfortable when the evenings are touched with frost.

I have a plan for my own bedroom.  I spend long hours in bed, reading, studying, and working.  I have tried sleeping in the open, but the lamp attracts all the creeping, crawling, butting, flying, fluttering things to the pages of my book, into my ears and blankets, and down the back of my neck.  So my bedroom shall be indoors.