Add to this the utilitarian needs of a country that had to build rapidly, caring for cheapness more than for permanence (so little of the building, in fact, was intended to be permanent), and one has an explanation of the absence of architectural quality in the American houses of the last hundred years. The characteristic of building in the time is seen in the lifeless blocks of “brownstone fronts,” in the apartments that have so little of the home about them that in the restlessness of his search for a place to live satisfactorily, the American of the cities has earned the name of the “van-dweller,”--one sees the thing again in the abject monotony of farm-houses and country residences. Their spirit, or lack of it, is continued in furniture and decoration. One understands why Europe has been the magic word for countless thousands of Americans. Perhaps it was the palaces and museums that they set out to see and that they told about on their return, but more impressive to them--because more satisfying to their hunger for a beauty near to their daily lives--was the sight of an Italian village built with love for hillsides and with understanding of the forms of the hill and of the type of construction that would suit it. Or was it the cheeriness of the solid Dutch houses whose clear reds and blacks look out so robustly through the green of the trees that border the canals? The bright-coloured clothing of the peasants became delightful to the traveller, even if he still gave it a pitying smile when he saw it again on the immigrant here; and the humble foreigner, anxious to fit in to his new surroundings, hastened to tone down the vivacity of his native costume to the colourlessness of the American farmer’s or workman’s garb. In place of the gay pink or green stucco of his cottage at home, the immigrant got more or less of sanitary plumbing, higher wages, and other material benefits, to recompense him for the life he had left behind.