For example, a man, in building his house, takes a plan of an architect.
This plan includes, on the outside, a number of what Andrew Fairservice
called "curlywurlies" and "whigmaliries," which make the house neither
prettier nor more comfortable, and which take up a good deal of money.
We would venture to say that we could buy the chromo of Bierstadt's
"Sunset in the Yosemite Valley," and four others like it, for half the
sum that we have sometimes seen laid out on a very ugly, narrow, awkward
porch on the outside of a house. The only use of this porch was to
cost money, and to cause every body who looked at it to exclaim as
they went by, "What ever induced that man to put a thing like that on
the outside of his house?"
Then, again, in the inside of houses, we have seen a dwelling looking
very bald and bare, when a sufficient sum of money had been expended
on one article to have made the whole very pretty: and it has come
about in this way.
We will suppose the couple who own the house to be in the condition
in which people generally are after they have built a house--having
spent more than they could afford on the building itself, and yet
feeling themselves under the necessity of getting some furniture.
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