_ But, my friend, surely these piazzas and pipe-stem
pillars are all American.
_Laurie._ But the cottage to which they belong is English. The
inhabitants, suffocating in small rooms, and beneath sloping roofs,
because the house is too low to admit any circulation of air, are in
need, we must admit, of the piazza, for elsewhere they must suffer all
the torments of Mons. Chaubert in his first experience of the oven.
But I do not assail the piazzas, at any rate; they are most desirable,
in these hot summers of ours, were they but in proportion with the
house, and their pillars with one another. But I do object to houses
which are desirable neither as summer nor winter residences here. The
shingle palaces, celebrated by Irving's wit, were far more
appropriate, for they, at least, gave free course to the winds of
heaven, when the thermometer stood at ninety-five degrees in the
shade.
_Aglauron._ Pity that American wit nipped in the bud those early
attempts at an American architecture. Here in the East, alas! the case
is become hopeless. But in the West the log-cabin still promises a
proper basis.
_Laurie._ You laugh at me. But so it is. I am not so silly as to
insist upon American architecture, American art, in the 4th of July
style, merely for the gratification of national vanity.
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