FIRST-FLOOR PLAN OF THATCHED COTTAGE
Inside and outside the tiny house must conform to one law—elimination of non-essentials; and the person who has a clear idea of his individual needs and has also the strength of will to limit his needs to his circumstances, will find in his tiny house a satisfaction more than compensating for any sacrifices he may have made.
No one doubts that it is a sacrifice to give up a lesser pleasure even to gain the "summum bonum" and that it does take will power to keep oneself from weakly saying in the face of temptation, "Oh, well! what does it matter! My little house would perhaps be better without that, but I have grown accustomed to it, let it stay!"
Such weakness is fatal in a tiny house.
But how much more fatal in a tiny garden!
Oh! the waste lands which lie beneath the sun trying to call themselves gardens! Oh! the pitiful little plots, unfenced, unused, entirely misunderstood by people who stick houses in the middle of them and call them "gardens"!
No amount of good grass seed, or expensive planting, or well-cared-for flowers and lawns will ever make the average suburban lot anything but a "lot," and most of them might as well, or better, be rough, uncultivated fields for all the relation they bear to the houses upon them or the use they were intended for.
(Continued on [page 289])