Excerpt from Low Cost Suburban Homes: A Book of Suggestions for the Man With the Moderate Purse

Much the same materials are being used to-day as were used centuries ago. We have improved on them; we are making things more comfortable according to our conceptions of comfort, and more sanitary and more lovely to look upon, but each generation brings its own improvement in the meas ure of its added wisdom over the generation that has gone. The bathroom that was a luxury Of yesterday is a necessity of to-day. Yet back of all build ing and building improvement is a mightier force than that of steel and stone and concrete. The house to-day is the product of ages of improvement in customs. Customs make houses what they are to-day; they are the architects and masons and carpenters of the house not built with hands.

Houses, a recent author claims, were made primarily to Shelter and protect the child. Was it the tree-house of the tropics or cave-house of the mountain dwellers or the hall of the sturdy folk of the north, for the child's sake a home was devised to protect it against the heat of summer and the cold of winter. Sociologists are only now awakening to the fact that the love of father and mother for child antedated the love of husband and wife.

From the cave dwelling developed the hall - or cave above ground and from the hall came the modern house. Traces Of the influence of the cave as a model may be seen in the construction of the hall. The hall stood east and west, with the door in the western end giving less access to cold winds. The roof was pitched high SO that the smoke could rise above the eyes. The lines Of the roof were irregular, so that a foe would mistake it for a grass-grown mound of earth. The entrance was through the western gable, whose lintel was so low and threshold so high that no enemy could enter without difficulty. There was a window, too, in the center of the roof.

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