Regarding the real country, there is one other consideration of which I am constantly reminded by a little water-color hanging in my library, painted by me a few years ago while I was staying with my friend Henley. It represents a modest but pretty house and a charming rustic landscape. I call it Henley’s Folly. Henley, who possessed ardent social instincts, had always lived in town; but he suddenly took it into his head to move thirty miles into the country. He told me that he did so primarily for the benefit of his wife and children, but added that it would be the best thing in the world for him, that it would domesticate him still more completely, and give him time to read and cultivate himself. When I went to stay with him six months later, he was jubilant regarding the delights of the country, and declared that he had become a genuine farmer. He pished at the suggestion that the daily journey to and from town was exhausting, and informed me that his one idea was to get away from the bricks and mortar as early in the afternoon as possible. Just two years later I heard with surprise, one day, that the Henleys had sold their farm and were coming back to town. The reason--confided to me by one of the family--was that his wife was so much alone that she could not endure the solitude any longer. “You see,” said my informant, “the nearest house of their friends was four miles off, and as Henley stayed in town until the last gun fired, the days he returned home at all, and as he had or invented a reason for staying in town all night at least once a week, poor Mrs. Henley realized that the lot of a farmer’s wife was not all roses and sunshine.” From this I opine that if one with ardent social instincts would live wisely he should not become a gentleman farmer merely for the sake of his wife and children. The _Dwelling_. II. Whether we live in the city or the country, it must be apparent to all of us that a great wave of architectural activity in respect to dwelling-houses has been spreading over our land during the past twenty years. The American architect has been getting in his work and showing what he could do, with the result that the long, monotonous row of brick or freestone custom-made city houses, and the stereotyped white country farm-house with green blinds and an ell or lean-to attached, have given place to a vivid and heterogeneous display of individual effort. Much of this is fine and some deadly, for the display includes not merely the generally tasteful and artistic conceptions of our trained native architects, who have studied in Paris, but the raw notions of all the builders of custom-made houses who, recognizing the public desire for striking and original effects, are bent upon surpassing one another.