The Belding banner-news. (Belding, Mich.) 1918-1973, 1919-01-08
EDITED by NOBLE FOSTER HOCCSON
PRESIDENT HoCcsoN BROTHERS BUILDERS

The country house that serves as a
sort CT glorified night, morning and
weekend vacation place from May
until October falls far short of it's
own proper destiny. That destiny is
high one and as the philosophers
would say, true one. For the real
function of a country dwelling place
is that of physical and spiritual re-
generation; it is the place in which it
is given that one who, in the drive of
workaday city, has worn himself
more or less bare of certain fine
things, can once again take root in
the earth and inwardly and outwardly
flourish. Five or six months of the
year is hardly sufficient time to make
permanent that fine readjustment of
ones nature which the ordinary man
turned 40 begins dimly to sense when
he discovers himself noting keenly
the reasonableness of the demands of
the family for a permanent summer
abode well out of the city's fearful
din and dust.
Not until the fortieth year looms
just ahead, or is just fading into the
past, does the ordinary man Of affairs
attain that hunger for permanence
which makes summer hotels, be they
never so elaborate, camps in Maine,
cottages by the sea, unsatisfactory.
Not until then, perhaps, does his wife,
who may have desired a country place
for social reasons, as well as for those
which appeal more to the average
husband, succeed in arousing his en-
thusiasm. But let four decades roll
over the head Of any man Of means,
oV,I ha mill 1fza ctr1tat,lxr dow
that family life means home. and a
home, properly speaking, is a place in
the country rather than a place in
town.
The glamour with which the radiant
ebullience Of youth once painted all
things new and transient has faded
into mellower, less dazzling colors;
the imagination no longer supplies
the charm which the summer landlord
has failed to impart to his sometimes
oppressively magnificent hostelries.
SO the summer vanderer finds him
self weary Of habitats which he hires
from other men. with their too often
clumsy approximation of the general
requirements and utter failure to sat-
isfy the individual need, and desires
nothing sc much as place of his
own, with comforts exactly to his own
liking, and surrounding soothing to
his increasingly exacting sensibilities.
Probably. misled by the fashion Of the
day, he thinks he needs a six-months'
place in the country. What he re-
quires is home: and home it cannot
be 'f II is inhabited but half the year.
This then is the key to the riddle IF
the country house that satisfies. The
architect who designs q country place
that is merely convenient, quaint, or
imposing. halts this side of his high
est art, because he does not under
stand the hunger behind the desire to
create dwelling place in the open
spaces.
Failure, then. insidious end ccrrod-
ing, marks for its owrn the country
place that is not home. Home is its
own strongest attraction. and those
with the home sense must of GER
tainty have suffered disappointment
If they find it possible each Septem-
Der or October to fit back to the
construction of city quarters. The
first proof Of the country place is its
quality of creating in its owners the
desire to inhabit IL all the year
around
There are those who have never at
tempted rhyme who hunger still for
a glimpse CT starry skies undimmed
by arc lights, and place where one
may absorb moonlight that has not
been painfully strained through the