Page 73

                   DESIGN III.
  THE proportions of this house are good, and the
form pleasing without being complicated; the impres-
sion produced on the observer by its general aspect is,
that room, comfort, and convenience are within its
walls, and that the dignity and hospitality of the
gentleman farmer are manifested silently yet plainly
by its external expression.  It seems, however, in its
architectural details to have borrowed somewhat from
its city neighbor.  We readily suspect that its owner
has spent a portion of his life at something else than
tilling the soil; that he has been a merchant or a
physician, for we often hear of such changes of avoca-
tion in this country: at any rate, we must conclude
that he is a farmer with some means, and a taste some-
what refined and cultivated by the company he has
kept.  Yet the design looks essentially like a country
house-it could scarcely be recognized as anything
else; the few ornaments that it wears cannot disguise
its native plainness; it has been born and bred in the
country, and all the city polish that it has received
cannot conceal the palpable fact.  This design might
be built in any part of the Union, without reference to
the use implied by the appellation of "farm-house"
which we have here given it, and it would always be
ranked as a country house of considerable importance;
                                          ('13)