Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1875-05-20
The Choice of Site.

fortune, think it very minor matter
what the scene shall be on which the
windows look, provided it is nothing
soualid, or detracting, by reason Of asso-
citation or neighborhood, from our jeal-
ously- guarded eminence or injurious to
our aspiration for eminence.
The man of the house is apt to think
that the WOman's place is at the hearth
and not at the window, and he himself
is but little at home till after dark; and
so TO him it would be in the nature of a
folly to be paying in the shape of inter
est on his investment SO much more
money yearly for the sake of what shall
or shall not be seen from his windows.
The mistress Of the house thinks she will
have enough to do without looking out
of windows; she would rather have pretty
things inside her house than outside Of
it; and if she hungers after natu-
raj beauty she can now and then go
where natural beauty is. And SO, if the
house itself be all that is wanted within
or without, they are very well COntented
to take it maugre thought Of what the
view may be IN the scenery around it.
If the street happens to be fashionable,
it coin cides more with his pride of purse,
his pride Of putting his wife and family
with the best, with her pride in her hus-
bands power of acquisition and care of
herself, to have their house there than to
have it fronting on any lovely river bank
that the gentry Of the town have long
ago deserted for narrow rows of elegant
buildings shutting out each others light !;
than to have It on some slightly hill over
looking land and sea, once the abode of
wealth, but which the capricious tide,
setting the other way, has left to poorer
population; than to have it on some
green and lonely square never dimmed
with the dust Of whirling wheels, and
among humble neighbors.
Doubtless it is pleasant sensation by
itself to know that ones abode is with
the best, that one has as good as the best,
and-as our affiliations are in some meas
ure with those Of our yicinity-that one
is, in fact, portion of nous aatt4es; ;
pleasant il ones position is assured,
pleasant if ones ambitions are yet to be
gratitied. And yet we suspect that there
are pleasanter sensations to be had, and
Worthier ones, arising from the selection
OF very different spot. To be sure, the
lovely river-bank may be unhealthy, the
slightly hill may have become too remote
from business or from friends, and in the
crowded city these things must arrange
themselves without criticism. But in
the large provincial town or in the open
country the selection of a site for
house is free for the exercise of the
widest individuality and most exacting
taste. Decent and civil neighbors are,
of course, wherever you are, things
of the first Importance, both for your
own comfort and for your children's
welfare. But, neighbors excepted, there
is usually no reason In a large town for
preferring one street over another eX-
Cept the liking to have handsome houses
about one, or the Whim of some rich
mans building the first, and every one
else desiring to follow suit. It may give
certain qualification every day to see
the handsome houses, a selfish gratitica-
ton far from suggestion of poverty and
want; but i is not often sight so pict-
ureSque us the poorer hOuSeS-thOse neat
ones with their lattices and vines and
bits of gardens full of hOllyhocks and
the sweet, old-fashiOned flowers that the
poor seem to have adopted-those shah
bier ones, with the light and shade of
their differing degrees of rum, and their
messy roofs in all the color of varying
green and rust against the sky; and
health being only considered, the pict-
Uresque sight seems to us preferable to
the selfish qualification, for the one feeds
the ennobling love Of beauty, the other
the ignobie love of ease.
Which does it seem, indeed, would
make the finer and richer growth Of soul,
nourish an Outreaching and soaring ma
ture the more, to see, every morning
wnen the shade is pulled up, the neat
row OF well-piled bricks and the windows
ranged in order opposite, the clean,
welLpainted clapboards and trim shut
tiers, never calling one from a dead level
OI ODSGINdI1Ou, OF Inc picture InaJ rOuSoS
thought, whether it be of curiously
grouped, rickety dwellings set at odd
angles of sky and land or great stretch
of open heaven and earth, field and dis
tant wood, all full of uncounted sugges-
ti0nS to the active mind?
1t is, indeed, our own opinion that, in
placing a house, too much attention can
not be paid 10 the circumstances of the
natural scenery about it, or the view it
shall command, when there is a view
possible to be had at all. In any city the
windows that can command the spire and
pinnl cles Of church, the arcades of a
synagogue, the pillared lines Of some in
stitution of learning, are beyond COM
parison in value with those windows that
look upon meaningless fronts of dwell
ings and the blank stare Of windows
like themselves; and that not because in
the vicinity of this church and this insti-
tute lands and buildings are OF higher
!