Of the
comparative advantages or disadvantages of city or country life, there is
no need to speak here. Our business is simply to give such details as may
apply to both, but chiefly to the owners of moderate incomes, or salaried
people, whose expenditure must always be somewhat limited. With the
exterior of such homes, women at present have very little to do; and the
interior also is thus far much in the hands of architects, who decide for
general prettiness of effect, rather than for the most convenient
arrangement of space. The young bride, planning a home, is resolved upon a
bay-window, as large a parlor as possible, and an effective spare-room;
but, having in most cases no personal knowledge of work, does not
consider whether kitchen and dining-room are conveniently planned, or not,
and whether the arrangement of pantries and closets is such that both
rooms must be crossed a hundred times a day, when a little foresight might
have reduced the number certainly by one-half, perhaps more.
Inconvenience can, in most cases, be remedied; but unhealthfulness or
unwholesomeness of location, very seldom: and therefore, in the beginning,
I write that ignorance is small excuse for error, and that every one able
to read at all, or use common-sense about any detail of life, is able to
form a judgment of what is healthful or unhealthful.
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