On habits and manners

But both man and woman find themselves amply repaid for all their labor and sacrifice when, the goal being won, the house and home are theirs, and they can rest, as did the wise men of old, under the safe and beautiful shelter of their own vine and figtree. Now, taking for granted the desire and resolution to make homes for yourselves which, I believe, exist among most of you to whom these chapters are addressed, there follow at once the practical questions: first, " What is the safest and quickest way of becoming the owner of a house, open to a man who works for his daily bread?" and second, i4What is the best and most convenient plan for building a suitable house on limited means?" The answer to the first question will vary to a certain extent with circumstances, but in the main will remain the same, and, to show that the principle upon which it is based has already been successfully demonstrated, I quote from an editorial in the Southern Workman for October, 1875, which describes an undertaking similar to many which have been initiated, and in a majority of cases successfully carried through, in the South, from that date to the present. " Commencing in April, 1871, a gentleman, resident in the South, built and sold to negroes forty-nine houses, besides selling to them sixteen vacant lots. Only three of the houses were paid for in cash. Twenty-four of the remaining houses have been paid for in full, chiefly in monthly instalments. The other twenty-two were sold for $10,755, of which $5,650 has been paid. No case has yet occurred, or is likely to occur, in which it has been or will be necessary to turn out a purchaser for default. First payments of from one-tenth to one-fifth have always been insisted on, partly as a means of sorting out the better class, and partly because having paid their fifty or one hundred dollars, they would make great efforts rather than lose it." The cost of these houses, built as above described, was, as the figures show, about five hundred dollars apiece, and every one of the forty-nine purchasers has found it in his power to pay from fifty to one hundred dollars (or more) down at once, and to continue monthly payments of from five to ten dollars. The security of the gentleman who thus offers his experience, lay in the fact that he withheld the deed of house and lot until the whole price was paid, giving the purchaser a contract to give him the deed when the last payment should be made, and he made his profit, which was very small, by buying a large tract of land and building by wholesale. The interest was included in the instalments, and this served often to hasten payments, the whole arrangement being, in short, exactly similar in its results to a mortgage. A man buying a single lot and building a single house? could hardly, of course, do it on such advantageous terms as the above ; but the difference would not be very great, and in a neighborhood where a number of steady, industrious men were willing to unite, land could be bought and houses put up at the cheapest possible rates, the necessary money being borrowed from a bank or an individual upon mort-