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I do not know which contention was the more ridiculous. Nothing is commoner in modern house-planning than rooms which have at least two doors and a French window. We constantly see rooms or halls which, if transported to the stage, would provide three or four entrances and exits; and this is even more true of the "central heated" houses of America than of English houses.
Toward the end of the seventeenth century the Earl of Ranelagh built himself a house at Chelsea, and surrounded it with gardens which were voted the best in England for their size. This peer, who was Paymaster-General of the Forces, seems to have taken keen pleasure in house-planning and the laying out of grounds.
They did not know that none of E. Williams Jackson's fellow architects had ever guessed the truth. Ambitious and ingenious, with a natural liking for house-planning, she had resolved that her sex should not stand in the way of success. And when she finally came to herself, there in her bunk, and suspected that her secret was out instead of shame or embarrassment she felt only chagrin.
The remedy is for high-school girls, probably even grammar-school pupils as well, to have along with their drawing some problems in house-planning and some lessons in carpentry. It will be seen from the foregoing glance at the rapid change and steady deterioration of houses that the care of such living-places must involve special discomforts in most cases.
This became articulate a few years ago in the large number of books and magazines devoted to house-planning, construction, decoration, furnishing, and garden-craft. The success which has attended these publications, and their marked influence, give some measure of the magnitude of this revolt. But now attention must be called to a significant, and somewhat sinister fact.
I think it the most original, most thoughtful and most carefully-worked-out theory that has appeared for a long time, and it does not say much for the critics that, as far as I know, its great merits have not been properly recognised. I have been so fully occupied with road-making, well-digging, garden- and house-planning, planting, etc., that I have given up all other work.
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