Excerpt from American Country Houses of to-Day: An Illustrated Account of Some Excellent Houses Built and Gardens Planted During the Last Few Years, Showing Unmistakable Influence of the Modern Trend in Ideals Architectural T is said that no part of a book is so intimate as the preface, where it is the privilege of the author to address the public in an informal man ner, explaining, Why the book? About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.