house as a home when it is done. By the same token—or by the inverse ratio of the same token—the persons who are building the house invariably begin to have doubts and misgivings regarding the worth of their own pet notions in regard to the said house the moment some outsider offers a counter argument. I do not know why this last should be so, but it is. It merely is one of the inexplicable phases of the common phenomenon called human nature. 

 In our own case the force of this fact applied with a pronounced emphasis. When the tentative draft of the house of our dreams was offered for our inspection it seemed to us a gem—perfect, precious and rare. Filled with pride as we were, we showed the drawings to every one who came to see us. Getting out the drawings when somebody called became a regular habit with us. Being ourselves so deeply interested in them, we couldn't understand why our friends shouldn't be interested too. And they were—I'll say that much for them; they were all interested. And why not? For one thing, it gave them a chance to show how right they were regarding the designing of a house; not our house particularly, but anything under a roof, ranging from St. Peter's at Rome to the façade of the government fish hatchery in Tupelo, Mississippi. For another thing, it gave them a chance to show us how completely wrong we were on this subject. Not a single soul among them but pounced at the opportunity. Until then I never realized how many born pouncers—not amateur pouncers but professional expert master pouncers—I numbered in my acquaintance. Right from the beginning the procedure followed a certain ritual. A caller or pouncer would drop in and have off his things and get comfortably settled. We would produce the sketches, fondling them lovingly, and spread them out and invite the attention of our guest to probably the only perfect design of a house fashioned by the mind of man since the days of the mound builders on this hemisphere. In our language we may not have gone quite so far as to say all this, but our manner indicated that such was the case. 

 He—for convenience in the illustration I shall make him a man, though in the case of a woman the outcome remained the same—he would consider the matchless work of inventive art presented for his consideration and then he would say; “An awfully nice notion—splendid, perfectly splendid! And still, you know, if I were——”  

 And so on. 

 Or perhaps it would be: “Oh, I like the general idea immensely! But—you'll pardon my making a little suggestion, won't you?—but if I were tackling this proposition—” And so 

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