on. 

 It has been my observation that all complimentary remarks uttered by a member of the human race in connection with a house which somebody else contemplates building end in “but.”  

 You just simply can't get away from it. 

 From the treasure-troves of my memory I continue to quote: 

 “But if I were tackling this proposition I would certainly not put the dining room here were you've got it. I'd switch it over there right next to the living room and give a vista through. See, like this!”  

 And out would come his lead pencil. 

 “But that would mean eliminating the main hall,” one of us would venture. 

 “Of course it would,” Brother Pounce would say. “Next to giving a vista through, cutting out the hall is the principal idea I had in mind. What do you want with a hall here? For that matter, what do you want with a hall any place that you can get along without it? Why, my dear people, don't you know that hallways are no earthly good except to catch dust and be drafty and make extra work for servants? And besides, in modern houses people are cutting the hallways down to a minimum—to an absolute minimum.”  

 We gathered that in a modern house—and, of course, a modern house was what we devoutly craved to own—persons going from one part of it to another didn't pass through a hall any more; they passed through a minimum. The idea seemed rather revolutionary to persons reared—as we had been—in houses with halls in them. Still, this person spoke as one having authority and we would listen with due respect to his words as he went on: 

 “All right, then, we'll consider the hallway as chopped out. By chopping it out that gives us a chance to put the dining room here in this place and give a vista through into the living room. Here, I'll show you exactly what I mean—what did I do with my lead pencil? Because no matter what else you do or do not have, you must have a vista through.”  

 Before he had finished with this alteration and taken up with the next one we were made to understand that a house without a vista through was substantially the same as no house at all. Ashamed that we had been guilty of so gross an oversight, I would make a note, “Vista through,” on a scratch pad which I kept for that very purpose. Under the spell of his eloquence and compelling personality, I had already decided that first we would build a 

 Prev. P 52/101 next