The never ceasing trouble with servants, the burden of entertaining company, the fearful strain of the stairs incident to living in a house where there are only two good rooms on a floor,—all these and other things are more and more compelling people of moderate means either to board or live in a “flat,” where one servant can do the work for which, in an ordinary house, two would be required. I think the continual increase of boarding-houses marks a sign of decadence in American social and home life, and yet I do not blame delicate women for longing for freedom from the details of work, which is often done at a great disadvantage, and for immunity from the back-breaking stairs and other things that are the cause of so much invalidism. Seeing these domestic problems and the wear and tear of the nervous system contingent on the ordinary methods of city housekeeping, I have determined to try in this experiment to see if for a moderate cost, say nine or ten hundred dollars rental, it may not be possible to supply a family with twelve good-sized rooms all on one floor, and with the back yard of a size which is usual to an ordinary house. [Illustration] [Illustration] One great objection to the ordinary flat is the absence of a back yard where clothes can be dried, and children can play. Families with children find but little freedom and comfort in the ordinary flat, and I propose to remedy this in the simplest way in the world,—at least, it seems perfectly simple and feasible to me. If the architect you engage makes any objections to the scheme, let me know what they are. Taking the eight lots which you have purchased, each one hundred feet deep, let us devote say sixty feet to the back yards. This will admit of flowerbeds, and a little playground, a very important item with a mother of young children. These dimensions are the same as those of hundreds of South End lots and houses. Then there will be left for the building of the eight homes an area of eight lots, each forty feet deep and twenty-three feet wide. According to our ordinary wasteful system in the building of houses vertically there would be eight sets of stone steps, eight doors and lobbies, and allowing four stories to each house, there would be four halls and three staircases, one over the other, in each of the eight houses. Each hall would involve more or less expense in carpeting, much time in sweeping and keeping clean; and beside, much physical energy would be wasted in simply getting from dining-room to parlor and from parlor to bedroom.