The animal act of breakfasting at a given hour, of taking a given train, can be accomplished as unconsciously as breathing.

Early rising should be the rule, because the children are then available as they are not at night.
We shall assume that the sane man will hold the little home in the country with all outdoors to breathe in as worth the half-hour journey and the early breakfast, and that the woman will have time set free by the labor-saving devices sure to come as fast as she will use them wisely.
This free time she will give to the aesthetic side of life and will make of her home a more attractive place than the club.
_But_ once a week let them both go into town either to the club or to some other place for dinner and an entertainment afterward.

This will be sufficient to keep them out of an intellectual rut, will brighten the appetite with needed variety, and make the next quiet evening more delightful.
Once a week is sufficient to break the monotony of diet and routine, and not often enough to create that insatiable appetite for the glare of lights and the rush of people which makes all family life "deadly dull," as one cafe-haunting woman confessed.
While this country life is the only thing for a family of young children and for those who really enjoy the country, there is a larger number needing rational housing which will be left behind, let us hope with more room because of the flitting of these others.
Much as I deprecate the evils of the present apartment system, I do believe that an idealized modification will be needed for many years, especially for the elderly, for the commercial traveler, for the bachelor men and maids temporarily or permanently living single, for the newly married as yet unsettled in business or profession, for the man who does not know his own mind or whose employers do not know theirs.

An instance has come to the writer's knowledge of a young man who, after his wedding cards were out, was ordered to take charge of an office in another city.
Marrying for shelter is and should be no longer necessary; and as for the fear that this habit of bachelor quarters will be hard to break up and tend to delay marriage, it will all depend upon whether it comes from the merely animal layer of the brain or from the intellectual.
This housing of the individual instead of the family has introduced an entirely new problem into house-building.
Formerly when a widow or widower, a maiden aunt, a homeless uncle or cousin made his home with relatives, it was "as one of the family"; only the minister was recognized as having need for a separate sitting-room.
The trials of this forced companionship have been told in many a witty story; and pathetic instances that never came to print are matters of common knowledge.
Will any one dare question the fact that the sum of human happiness has been increased by the freedom given to these prisoned souls by the small independent apartment?
I have been reminded that here is no provision for the different generations to live together under the same roof; that the nineteenth century held it to be of great social value to have the children grow up with the elders.

I am sorry for the twentieth-century grandparents if they are obliged to live in a flat with the twentieth-century child; some readjustment of manners and ideals must be made before such living will be comfortable, and it seems as if they are better apart until the new order is accepted or modified.