"No; we keep very few. Cats kill birds, and we need the birds for our farms and gardens. They keep the insects down."
"Do they keep the mice down, too?"
"Owls and night-hawks do, as far as they can. But we attend to the mice ourselves. Concrete construction and the removal of the kitchen did that. We do not live in food warehouses now. There, look! We are coming to Westholm Park; that was one of the first."
In all the beauty spread below me, the great park showed more beautiful, outlined by a thick belt of trees.
We kept our vehicle gliding slowly above it while Nellie pointed things out. "It's about 300 acres," she said. "You can see the woodland and empty part—all that is left wild. That big patch there is pasturage—they keep their own sheep and cows. There are gardens and meadows. Up in the corner is the children's playground, bathing pool, and special buildings. Here is the playground for grown-ups—and their lake. This big spreading thing is the guest-house and general playhouse for the folks—ballroom, billiards, bowling, and so on. Behind it is the plant for the whole thing. The water tower you'll see to more advantage when we land. And all around you see the homes; each family has an acre or so."
We dropped softly to the landing platform and came down to the pleasure ground beneath. In a little motor we ran about the place for awhile, that I might see the perfect roads, shaded with arching trees, the endless variety of arrangement, the miles of flowers, the fruit on every side.
"You must have had a good landscape architect to plan this," I suggested.
"We did—one of the best."
"It's not so very unlike a great, first-class summer hotel, with singularly beautiful surroundings."
"No, it's not," she agreed. "We had our best summer resorts in mind when we began to plan these places. People used to pay heavily in summer to enjoy a place where everything was done to make life smooth and pleasant. It occurred to us at last that we might live that way."