... To-day the first glimpse of this manuscript as a whole. It was alldetached pieces before, done over a period of many months, with manyintervening tasks, the main idea slightly drifting from time to time....The purpose on setting out, was to relate the adventure of home-makingin the country, with its incidents of masonry, child and rose culture,and shore-conservation. It was not to tell others how to build a houseor plant a garden, or how to conduct one's life on a shore-acre or two.Not at this late day. I was impelled rather to relate how we foundplenty with a little; how we entered upon a new dimension of health andlength of days; and from the safe distance of the desk, I wanted tolaugh over a city man's adventures with drains and east winds, countrypeople and the meshes of possession.
In a way, our second coming to the country was like the landing of theSwiss Family Robinson upon that little world of theirs in the midst [Pg viii]ofthe sea. Town life had become a subtle persecution. We hadn't beenwrecked exactly, but there had been times in which we were torn andweary, understanding only vaguely that it was the manner of our days inthe midst of the crowd that was dulling the edge of health and takingthe bloom from life. I had long been troubled about the little childrenin school—the winter sicknesses, the amount of vitality required toresist contagions, mental and physical—the whole tendency of the schooltoward making an efficient and a uniform product, rather than to developthe intrinsic and inimitable gift of each child.
We entered half-humorously upon the education of children at home, butout of this activity emerged the main theme of the days and the work athand. The building of a house proved a natural setting for that; gardensand woods and shore rambles are a part; the new poetry and all the finethings of the time belong most intensely to that. Others of the cominggeneration gathered about the work here; and many more rare young beingswho belong, but have not yet come, send us letters from the fronts oftheir struggle.
It has all been very deep and dramatic to me, a study of certainbuilders of to-morrow taking their place higher and higher day by day inthe thought and action of our life. They have given me more than I couldpossibly give them. They have monopolised the manuscript. Chapter after[Pg ix]chapter are before me—revelations they have brought—and over all, ifI can express it, is a dream of the education of the future. So thechildren and the twenty-year-olds are on every page almost, even in thetitle.
Meanwhile the world-madness descended, and