The woman architect will pay especial attention to the plumbing, not only to its sanitary, but also to its ornamental aspect, which leaves much to be desired. And she will, if it is humanly possible, construct a bathroom for those of the household who need it most—the servants; and when she has done all this, then she has only done what is common in American houses built for families of comfortable, but not large incomes.
Further, the woman architect will study the economical use of electricity. She will not (being a woman) waste it by putting too much of it in impossible and unbecoming places, and yet at the same time she will know just where to place an artful lamp so that her long-suffering sister will at last be able to see, even at night, how her dress hangs. She will not be extravagant; for extravagance she leaves to her brother architects, who understand neither the value of space nor the wise economy of exertion. For this reason I urge that women should become architects, but only domestic architects. They must not meddle with cathedrals!
The more comfortable and convenient the houses are the more pleasant the daily life, and what that means as an influence on the temper of a nation cannot be over-estimated. It may do for peace what the Hague Conference has so magnificently failed to do. So we shall inevitably become a better and happier people when the minor problems of life are solved once for all: the carrying of coal upstairs; the freezing in winter, because the heating methods are inadequate; and the shielding of one's wardrobe from the festive moth in a space already overflowing with other garments.
No, women should never build cathedrals; but I am quite sure it is their destiny to build what is possibly of even greater importance, and that is the homes of the people.
The Electric Age
The American contribution to the characteristics of nations is hurry, and it is so contagious that the whole world has caught the infection—the whole world is in a hurry!
The modern man has as much emotion and variety crammed into a year of his life as would have sufficed to leaven generations of lives two hundred years ago. Now as we can only eat so much with comfort, in the same way our brains will only assimilate so many impressions, and our hearts will only bear a certain amount of emotion. If we have too many impressions we go mad, and if our hearts are too full they break, only we are told there is no such thing as a broken heart. But there is.
It goes without saying that impressions, both on the heart and the brain, which are as rapid and broken as the biograph, must be of infinitesimal duration. It is therefore a foregone conclusion that the modern man is not only in a perpetual hurry from his cradle to that final rest where all hurry ceases, but his memory, being limited to a certain number of photographic plates, while the impressions are unlimited, has but an infinitesimal space for each. The appeals made to our understanding in those limited years we call a lifetime are simply maddening. We have the entire daily history of the world dished up hot for a ha'penny innumerable times a day, and when it is a day old it is ancient history fit only to do up bundles with or light the fire.
It is perhaps not one of the least terrors of life that the world is growing so small, cruelly linked together by the copper coils of the cable, that before long there will not be left a nook or cranny where the soul can escape to solitude. There will be nothing left to discover in this little world, and if the astronomers do not come to our aid where will the outlet be for eager adventurers?