Answer:
A thousand petty shabbiness's bore witness to the negligence of the Raths. The front door had been scratched by a dog which had been run over the year before. The hot water faucet in the bathroom dripped. Almost all the furniture needed to be refinished, reupholstered, or cleaned. And besides that, the house was too small, ugly, and almost precisely like the houses on all sides of it.
I believe the answer is c.1920. However, I could be wrong.
A.Traties is the answer probably.I had some hard thinking and came up with this.
I believe that the subject was the American colonies