If You're Going to Live in the Country

A RIVERSIDE HOME RECONSTRUCTED FROM THE RUINS OF AN OLD MILL Photo by Samuel H. Gottscho. Robertson Ward, architect
Copyright, 1937
By THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper.
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, INC., BINGHAMTON, N. Y.
To CARROLL and THERESE NICHOLS
No book that covers so many phases of human relationships could be compiled without taking advice from those who are specialists. When we have wanted to know facts, we have freely turned to others whose detailed knowledge represented long experience. For this assistance we are particularly indebted to: M. Shaler Allen, Bruce Millar, Mrs. Herbert Q. Brown, and George S. Platts; also, to House & Garden , in which parts of this book appeared serially; and to Miss Eleanor V. Searing for many hours spent reading manuscript.
New Canaan, Conn. April 1937
There is a beginning with everything. So far as this book is concerned, annual driving trips through Central Vermont are responsible. They were great events, planned months in advance. With a three-seated carriage and a stocky span good for thirty miles a day and only spirited if they met one of those new contraptions aglitter with polished brass gadgets, that fed on gasoline instead of honest cracked corn and oats, we took to the road. A newspaper man, vacation-free from Broadway first nights and operas sung by Melba, Sembrich, and the Brothers de Reszke, was showing his city-bred children his native hills and introducing them to the beauties of a world alien to asphalt pavements and brownstone fronts.
It was leisurely travel. When the road was unusually steep, to spare the horses, we walked. If Mother's eagle eye spotted a four-leaf clover, we stopped and picked it. If a bend in the road brought a pleasing prospect into view, the horses could be certain of ten minutes for cropping roadside grass. Most of all, no farmhouse nestling beneath wide-spread maples or elms went without careful consideration of Father's constant daydream, a home in the country.