Having surveyed your land and explored what is beneath it, and made sure that it will be an abode of life, not death, consider next its nearness to the necessary centres of social life. Unless you are a farmer you cannot make your house a depot of all the necessaries of life, although there is immense pleasure in amateur farming, in making one's own butter and cheese, keeping poultry, and eating home-made eggs and chickens as well as bread. Country life is very delight- ful when the family is large and visits to and from relatit)ns and friends are among the occasional sensations, but if Sydney Smith, when lo- cated upon Salisbury Plain, bewailed his isolation from the centres of civilization in being " four miles from a lemon," you must take care that you do not find yourself ten miles from a post-office, a church or a library. In other chapters of this volume I have given all the useful advice that occurred to my own " prospecting," as to the best plans for making home as complete and as independent of external sources of supply as possible, but, unhappily, the cases are too frequent all over the country of persons expending a great deal of pains and money in building houses only to vacate them after a year's disappointment and ennui in them, to make it superfluous to advise every one to think well before he settles in a spot " remote from towns." " Distance lends enchantment to the view " when one is thinking of some beautiful villa, " far from the madding crowd," and where only " the tinkling sheep bells lull the distant folds," but when the cupboard is empty and there is neither butcher nor baker within reach, and the coal has given out, and the rain descends 3/2 THE hearthstone; or, life at home. and the winds blow, and the postman with his budget of newspapers is buried three feet deep in snow, and no " last new novel " is beside us to keep our facial muscles in exercise by its insipidity, then, be- lieve me, the "gentle hermit of the dale" and his wife and daughters are apt to wish themselves back again at the old number of the old town square or street. But you have considered all these antagonistic possibilities and you are about to build a house, either amid the mountains and lakes, the tall trees and green glades of nature or in the suburbs of a town, as the choice may be. And now you must thoroughly settle in your own mind precisely the kind of house you want, what the style of its architecture, what its internal arrangements, what its height, length and breadth, the number and size of the rooms, their " exits and their entrances," the equipment with everything needed for their special purpose, what that special purpose is to be, whether sewing- room, dining-room, drawing-room, nursery, kitchen or store-room. If you have a fkie view and " every prospect pleases," and your house is to be high enough, by all means have a room above all others forming a tower or roof rather than a spire, which shall be in sum- mer an observatory of the starry heavens by night and of the familiar fields, the glades and valleys, the winding river, the everlasting hills, and perhaps the far-spreading and resounding sea by day. Perhaps, one reason why St. Simeon Stylites lived on the top of a pillar was to be nearer the sky.

AI-modernized reading of the original text

Having surveyed your land and explored what is beneath it, and made sure that it will be an abode of life, not death, consider next its nearness to the necessary centres of social life. Unless you are a farmer you cannot make your house a depot of all the necessaries of life, although there is immense pleasure in amateur farming, in making one's own butter and cheese, keeping poultry, and eating home-made eggs and chickens as well as bread. Country life is very delightful when the family is large and visits to and from relatit)ns and friends are among the occasional sensations, but if Sydney Smith, when located upon Salisbury Plain, bewailed his isolation from the centres of civilization in being " four miles from a lemon," you must take care that you do not find yourself ten miles from a post-office, a church or a library. In other chapters of this volume I have given all the useful advice that occurred to my own " prospecting," as to the best plans for making home as complete and as independent of external sources of supply as possible, but, unhappily, the cases are too frequent all over the country of persons expending a great deal of pains and money in building houses only to vacate them after a year's disappointment and ennui in them, to make it superfluous to advise every one to think well before he settles in a spot " remote from towns." " Distance lends enchantment to the view " when one is thinking of some beautiful villa, " far from the madding crowd," and where only " the tinkling sheep bells lull the distant folds," but when the cupboard is empty and there is neither butcher nor baker within reach, and the coal has given out, and the rain descends 3/2 THE hearthstone; or, life at home. and the winds blow, and the postman with his budget of newspapers is buried three feet deep in snow, and no " last new novel " is beside us to keep our facial muscles in exercise by its insipidity, then, believe me, the "gentle hermit of the dale" and his wife and daughters are apt to wish themselves back again at the old number of the old town square or street. But you have considered all these antagonistic possibilities and you are about to build a house, either amid the mountains and lakes, the tall trees and green glades of nature or in the suburbs of a town, as the choice may be. And now you must thoroughly settle in your own mind precisely the kind of house you want, what the style of its architecture, what its internal arrangements, what its height, length and breadth, the number and size of the rooms, their " exits and their entrances," the equipment with everything needed for their special purpose, what that special purpose is to be, whether sewingroom, dining-room, drawing-room, nursery, kitchen or store-room. If you have a fkie view and " every prospect pleases," and your house is to be high enough, by all means have a room above all others forming a tower or roof rather than a spire, which shall be in summer an observatory of the starry heavens by night and of the familiar fields, the glades and valleys, the winding river, the everlasting hills, and perhaps the far-spreading and resounding sea by day. Perhaps, one reason why St. Simeon Stylites lived on the top of a pillar was to be nearer the sky.

The hearthstone; or, Life at home