daily roast-beef, and in the sweet simplicity of a blissful ignorance
and a clear conscience assured our patient hostess that the dog-days
and her unworthy guests should go out together. Yet we never told a
lie or wilfully deceived any man, much less a woman.
But we anticipate. At the close of the third day we essayed to examine
progress at the new house. As we approached, a dim and doubtful but
wondrous pleasant anticipation took possession of our fancy. What if
it should, indeed, be finished! The carpenter had suggested three or
four days,--three had already passed. The painter was to get through
_almost_ as soon, the plumber would surely be out of the way, and
there would be only the furnace registers. It was, perhaps, too good
to be true, and we lingered to give the notion time to grow. Opening
the door at last, we received something the same shock the traveller
feels when he encounters a guide-post telling him the next town is
half a mile farther on than it was three miles back. But we've not
lived forty years without learning to bury our "might-have-beens" with
outward composure, whatever the internal commotion. We remembered
there was still a week, and resolved to keep a sharp lookout that no
time was wasted; an idle resolution, for the workmen were as anxious
to get through as we were to have them. Faithful industry and
attention we may demand, haste we have no right to ask. But our men
actually hurried. We were instant in season and out of season, and can
testify, with both hands in our empty pockets, that there was not an
hour wasted. Yet our full-blown hopes fell, as the roses fall, leaf by
leaf; drop by drop our patience ebbed, till, ere the close of the
week, we sank slowly down on a pile of black-walnut shavings in the
calmness of despair.
To make a long story short, we gave up, beaten, trespassed a week on
our long-suffering hostess, then went to visit our rich relations.
They were glad to see us when we came, and wondered how long we were
going to stay. We thought best to let them wonder, which they did for
the space of a few weeks, when we folded our nightgowns and silently
stole--not the spoons, but ourselves--away.
We mentioned the calmness of despair. From that depth it is often but
a single step to the serenity of faith, on which sublime height not
the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds hath power to vex or make
afraid, much less a few pine shavings and the want of a little paint.
Despair is never endless; it's a short-lived emotion at the worst, a
selfish one at the best. Moralizing thus, it was by some means
revealed to us that people are happy in paying twenty-five dollars a
week at Martha's Vineyard and Mount Desert for the blessed privilege
of living in unfinished and unfurnished rooms,--breathing plenty of
fresh air, typhoid malaria thrown in,--and eating such food as the
uncertain winds and waves may waft thither. If at Mount Desert why not
at Rock Rimmon, especially as the cost is somewhat less, the fresh air
equally abundant, with nothing more malarious than the pungent perfume
of the pines, and all the products of the civilized world within easy
reach? Moreover, our third, fourth, and fifth stories--the floor of
the latter just above the ridge pole, its ceiling just beyond the
stars--were, for all purposes of use and comfort, ready for
occupation. So we entered, hung up our hats, and told the busy
builders we had come to stay.
Which we have done; and now it's the first of October. The leaves are
falling, the rooks are calling, the crickets are crawling, and the
katydids are--well, squalling. There's a work-bench bigger than Noah's
ark in the drawing-room, another in the library, next size larger,
five tool-chests in as many different rooms, a thousand feet of lumber
in the front hall, and nine hundred and thirty-seven different colored
paint-pots in the guest-room,--more or less. We pry into cupboards and
drawers with our finger-nails, we keep next the wall going up stairs,
draw water through a straw, and to open doors we thrust a square stick
through a round hole and twist and turn till the stick breaks or the
door opens. Generally the stick breaks.
But we are no longer desperate. The sound of the builder's axe and
hammer mingles harmoniously with the rattling of dishes and the
drumming of the piano. A profound peace possesses our souls, for
Nature's own infinite glory is around us, and we go from our castle in
Spain to our cottage by the sea, from our house of active industry to
our restful home in the New Jerusalem, with the opening and the
closing of a door. We are not anxious or impatient, being well
assured that steadfast industry will finally conquer and our house be
finished as far as mortal house should be. Which leads us to remark
just here, that a man ought never to think his house is quite
complete; he will not, if he is wise, and grows as long as he lives.
Our present point is the inevitable delay in the outward finishing to
which home building is especially subject,--a difficulty familiar to
all who have tried it, but which people cannot always get out of by
jumping squarely into it as we have done.
There are various reasons for it. A superficial view of building is
one. The masons are scarcely noticed before the foundation-walls are
laid; the walls shoot up in a single day; the roof spreads its saving
shelter as easily as though it were a huge umbrella; the windows open
their eyes in new-born wonder; the chimneys breathe the blue breath
of home life out into the world; the painter touches the clapboards
with his magic wand; and, with one accord, all men cry out, and
especially all women, "Wal, I do declare! That air house goes up in a
hurry, don't it? Guess there hain't much but green lumber gone into
that. Folks'll be movin' in 'n a few days. Ketch me goin' into a house
like that! I'd a good deal druther live in an old house than die in a
new one."
But, for some reason, the folks don't move in. Week after week passes
without visible change till we hear no more of haste, but owner and
neighbors grow impatient, and can't for their lives see why that house
wa'n't done weeks and weeks ago! In point of fact, when it appeared
almost wholly built, it was hardly begun. The work thus far had been
of the sort that can be quickly executed, much of it done by
machinery. Even after the plastering is dry, the floors laid, the
windows in, and perhaps the greater part of the interior woodwork in
place, the actual labor of finishing is but fairly begun.
Changes always cause delay more or less serious. Whoever makes
alterations in his house builds four houses. There is the first doing
it, which is one; then there is the "cussing and discussing," the
hesitating and final deciding to make the change, equivalent, at least
in time and nervous wear and tear, to the original work, which is two;
the undoing is three; and the final adjusting it to your mind is four.
Woe to him by whom the change cometh, but come it will. It can be
wholly avoided only by having things done as you do not want them and
will never be satisfied to leave them. Of course, the want of plans is
a fruitful source of alterations. We are too modest and too sensible
to say all plans should be drawn by an architect, but carefully
prepared they must be, and, what is commonly more difficult,
thoroughly understood by the party most interested, that is, the
owner.
Another reason why the lengthened sweetness of finishing is so long
drawn out comes from the constant increase of "modern
improvements,"--accessories deemed essential to the completeness of
home comfort and convenience. Nowhere is the fertility of inventive
genius more apparent than in these household appliances, to all of
which the apostolic injunction applies, "Prove and hold fast the
good." Hold fast and be grateful, for they are the world's best
benefactors whose work makes happier homes.
THE END.
Cambridge: Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.
End of Project Gutenberg's Homes And How To Make Them, by Eugene Gardner