OUR HOUSE.
There are certain characteristic words which the human heart loves to
conjure with, and one of the strongest among them is the phrase, "Our
house." It is not my house, nor your house, nor their house, but _Our
House_. It is the inseparable _we_ who own it, and it is the _we_ and
the _our_ that go a long way towards impregnating it with the charm that
makes it the symbol of things most blessed and eternal.
Houses have their physiognomy, as much as persons. There are
common-place houses, suggestive houses, attractive houses, mysterious
houses, and fascinating houses, just as there are all these classes of
persons. There are houses whose windows seem to yawn idly--to stare
vacantly--there are houses whose windows glower weirdly, and look at you
askance; there are houses, again, whose very doors and windows seem wide
open with frank cordiality, which seem to stretch their arms to embrace
you, and woo you kindly to come and possess them.
My wife and I, as we put our key into the door and let ourselves into
the deserted dwelling, now all our own, said to each other at once that
it was a home-like house. It was built in the old style, when they had
solid timbers and low ceilings with great beams and large windows, with
old-fashioned small panes of glass, but there was about it a sort of
homely individuality, and suggestive of cosy comforts. The front room
had an ancient fire-place, with quaint Dutch tiles around it. The
Ferguses had introduced a furnace, gas, and water, into it; but the
fire-place in most of the rooms still remained, suggestive of the old
days in New York when wood was plenty and cheap. One could almost fancy
that those days of roaring family hearths had so heartened up the old
chimneys that a portion of the ancient warmth yet inhered in the house.
"There, Harry," said my wife, exultantly pointing to the fire-place,
"see, this is the very thing that your mother's brass andirons will fit
into--how charmingly they will go with it!"
And then those bright, sunny windows, and that bay-window looking across
upon those trees was perfectly lovely. In fact, the leaves of the trees
shimmering in October light, cast reflections into the room suggestive
of country life, which, fresh from the country as we were, was an added
charm.
The rooms were very low studded, scarcely nine feet in height--and, by
the by, I believe that that feature in old English and Dutch
house-building is one that greatly conduces to give an air of comfort. A
low ceiling insures ease in warming, and in our climate where one has to
depend on fires for nine months in the year, this is something worth
while. In general, I have noticed in rooms that the sense of snugness
and comfort dies out as the ceiling rises in height--rooms twelve and
fifteen feet high may be all very grand and very fine, but they are
never sociable, they never seem to brood over you, soothe you, and take
you to their heart as the motherly low-browed room does.
My wife ran all over her new dominions-exploring and planning, telling
me volubly how she would arrange them. The woman was Queen here; her
foot was on her native heath, and she saw capabilities and possibilities
with the eye of an artist.
Now, I desire it to be understood that I am not indifferent to the
charms of going to housekeeping full-handed. I do not pretend to say
that my wife and I should not have enjoyed opening our family reign in a
stone palace, overlooking New York Central Park, with all the charms of
city and country life united, with all the upholsterers and furniture
shops in New York at our feet. All this was none too good for our taste
if we could have had it, but since we could not have it, we took another
kind of delight, and one quite as vivid, in seeing how charmingly we
could get on without it. In fact, I think there is an exultation in the
constant victory over circumstances, in little inventions,
substitutions, and combinations, rendered necessary by limited means
which is wanting to those to whose hand everything comes without an
effort.
If, for example, the brisk pair of robins, who have built in the elm
tree opposite to our bay-window, had had a nest all made, and lined, and
provided for them to go into, what an amount of tweedle and chipper,
what a quantity of fluttering, and soaring, and singing would have been
wanting to the commencement of their housekeeping! All those pretty
little conversations with the sticks and straw, all that brave work in
tugging at a bit of twine and thread, which finally are carried off in
triumph and wrought into the nest, would be a loss in nature. How much
adventure and enterprise, how many little heart-beats of joy go into one
robin's nest simply because Mother Nature makes them work it out for
themselves!
We spent a cheerful morning merely in running over our house, and
telling each other what we could do with it, and congratulating each
other that it was "such a bargain," for, look, here is an outlook upon
trees; and here is a little back yard, considerably larger than a good
sized pocket-handkerchief, where Mrs. Fergus had raised mignonette,
heliotropes, and roses and geraniums enough to have a fresh morning
bouquet of them daily; and an ancient grape-vine planted by some old
Knickerbocker, which Jack Fergus had trained in a sort of arbor over the
dining-room window, and which at this present moment was hanging with
purple clusters of grapes. We ate of them, and felt like Adam and Eve in
Paradise. What was it to us that this little Eden of ours was in an
unfashionable quarter, and that, as Aunt Maria would say, there was not
a creature living within miles of us, it was still our mystical "garden
which the Lord God had planted eastward in Eden." The purchase of it, it
is true, had absorbed all my wife's little fortune, and laid a debt upon
us--but we told each other that it was, after all, our cheapest way of
renting a foothold in New York. "For, you see," said my wife
instructively, "papa says it is a _safe_ investment, as it is sure to
rise in value, so that even if we want to sell it we can get more than
we paid."
"What a shrewd little trader you are getting to be!" I said, admiring
this profound financial view.
"Oh, indeed I am; and, now, Harry dear, don't let's go to any expense
about furniture till I've shown you what I intend to do. I know devices
for giving a room an air with so little; for example, look at this
recess. I shall fill this up with a divan that I shall get up for nine
or ten dollars."
"You get it up!"
"Yes, I--with Mary to help me--you'll see in time. We'll have all the
comfort that could be got out of a sofa, for which people pay eighty or
ninety dollars, and the eighty or ninety dollars will go to get other
things, you see. And then we must have a stuffed seat running round this
bay-window. I can get that up. I've seen at Stewart's such a lovely
piece of patch, with broad crimson stripes, and a sort of mauresque
figure interposed. I think we had better get the whole of it, and that
will do for one whole room. Let's see. I shall make lambrequins for the
windows, and cover the window-seats, and then we shall have only to buy
two or three great stuffed chairs and cover them with the same. Oh,
you'll see what I'll do. I shall make this house so comfortable and
charming that people will wonder to see it."
"Well, darling, I give all that up to you, that is your dominion, your
reign."
"To be sure, you have all your work up at the office there, and your
articles to write, and besides, dear, with all your genius, and all
that, you really don't know much about this sort of thing, so give
yourself no trouble, I'll attend to it--it is my ground, you know. Now,
I don't mean mother or Aunt Maria shall come down here till we have got
every thing arranged. Alice is going to come and stay with me and help,
and when I want you I'll call on you, for, though I am not a writing
genius, I am a genius in these matters as you'll see."
"You are a veritable household fairy," said I, "and this house,
henceforth, lies on the borders of the fairy land. Troops of gay and
joyous spirits are flocking to take possession of it, and their little
hands will carry forward what you begin."