They want a kind of
classic front, with pillars and a pediment; or more the Mount Vernon
style, body yellow, with white trim. They call it Georgian after
Washington?" This was obviously a joke.
"No, I believe it was another George, or four others. But I don't
wonder you want to keep your house as it is. It expresses something
characteristic." I saved myself by forbearing to say it was handsome.
It was, in fact, a vast, gray-green wooden edifice, with a mansard-roof
cut up into many angles, tipped at the gables with rockets and finials,
and with a square tower in front, ending in a sort of lookout at the
top, with a fence of iron filigree round it. The taste of 1875 could
not go further; it must have cost a heap of money in the depreciated
paper of the day.
I suggested something of the kind to my neighbor, and he laughed. "I
guess it cost all we had at the time. We had been saving along up, and
in those days it used to be thought that the best investment you could
make was to put your money in a house of your own. That's what we did,
anyway. I had just got to be superintendent of the Works, and I don't
say but what we felt my position a little. Well, we felt it more than
we did when I got to be owner." He laughed in good-humored self-satire.
"My wife used to say we wanted a large house so as to have it big
enough to hold me, when I was feeling my best, and we built the largest
we could for all the money we had.
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