These houses, too, are settling down into unkempt grounds with
dilapidated porches and blinds. Such eyesores as one finds on the
trolley-lines in any direction! They may have town-water supply, or they
may depend on wells, but they are frequently without sewer-connection.
It is costly to be neat and clean, and only those whose minds require such
surroundings in order to be comfortable will pay the cost in time,
trouble, and money.
(3) Some families made a compromise and built what is called a modern
house with bath-room and furnace (after the air-tight-stove craze passed),
with jigsaw ornamentation outside and in, pretentious-looking dwellings
with no proper kitchen accompaniments, and an unsavory garbage-barrel in
the small back yard, under the next neighbor's windows. These houses are
so close together that sounds and smells mingle; there is so little land
that there is no satisfaction in caring for it. Houses of this sort are
altogether too frequently found, occupying good locations and jarring on
the nerves of the better-trained young people of to-day. What is to be
done with them? They are too expensive to pull down, and hence are the
last resort of those who find they must retrench.
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