The tyranny of things is very real and most distressing in connection with this problem of shelter and all that it involves. There is only needed a social awakening to result in an adjustment of men's views as to what is good and right. New social habits adapted to the age we live in will be accepted by the next generation as good form. CHAPTER III. LEGACIES FROM THE NINETEENTH CENTURY NOT ADAPTED TO CHANGED CONDITIONS CAUSE PHYSICAL DETERIORATION AND DOMESTIC FRICTION. "A large part of the evils of which we complain socially to-day are due to the kind of houses we live in and the exactions they make upon us."--H.G. WELLS. Four classes of houses have come down to us: (1) The family homestead in the country set low on the ground with damp walls and dark cellar, one of a cluster of rambling buildings; with a well, the only water supply, in close proximity to various sources of pollution. These houses are for the most part now abandoned to the foreigner, who uses them for the primitive purposes of shelter without the ennobling intellectual life they once harbored. Now and then a grandson rescues the old place, brings water from a spring or brook, digs a drain, lets light into the cellar, and builds on a kitchen and dining-room. The expense is often greater than to build anew, but the effect is usually very good when the changes are made under sanitary supervision. (2) The village or suburban house set in its own grounds, too near the street usually, but with garden and fruit-trees in the rear, and possibly a stable for horse and cow. This was the compromise made by the generation just from the free life of the farm-house, who, consciously or unconsciously, clung to the green of grass and trees, and the blue of the sky. So long as habit or love of caring for the things lasted all went well. The father found his recreation in planting the garden before breakfast, as in his boyhood. The mother cared for flower and vegetable-garden, as she recalled her mother's life; she picked her own beans and corn, even if she did not cook the dinner. But the _children_ had to hurry off to school, and it was a pity to call them early: they had lessons to learn in the afternoon. To them the garden was work, not play as it should have been; so they failed to gain that contact with mother earth which gives inspiration as well as health; they failed to acquire a love of nature, became infected with the germ of gregariousness, preferred the glare of lights, the rush of hurrying crowds, and lost the relish for fresh air and quiet. This second generation came to the city boarding-house and flat as soon as they were free, leaving their parents' houses to go the same way as the grandfather's farmhouse, into the hands of the foreigner not yet Americanized to high standards of cleanliness and orderliness.