I am a frank, open-hearted man, as, perhaps, you have by this time
perceived, and you will not, therefore, be surprised to know that I read
my last article on the carpet to my wife and the girls before I sent it
to the "Atlantic," and we had a hearty laugh over it together. My wife
and the girls, in fact, felt that they could afford to laugh, for they
had carried their point, their reproach among women was taken away, they
had become like other folks. Like other folks they had a parlor, an
undeniable best parlor, shut up and darkened, with all proper carpets,
curtains, lounges, and marble-topped tables, too good for human nature's
daily food; and being sustained by this consciousness, they cheerfully
went on receiving their friends in the study, and having good times in
the old free-and-easy way; for did not everybody know that this room was
not their best? and if the furniture was old-fashioned and a little the
worse for antiquity, was it not certain that they had better, which they
could use, if they would?
"And supposing we wanted to give a party," said Jane, "how nicely our
parlor would light up! Not that we ever do give parties, but if we
should,--and for a wedding-reception, you know."
I felt the force of the necessity; it was evident that the four or five
hundred extra which we had expended was no more than such solemn
possibilities required.
"Now, papa thinks we have been foolish," said Marianne, "and he has his
own way of making a good story of it; but, after all, I desire to know
if people are never to get a new carpet. Must we keep the old one till
it actually wears to tatters?" This is a specimen of the _reductio ad
absurdum_ which our fair antagonists of the other sex are fond of
employing. They strip what we say of all delicate shadings and illusory
phrases, and reduce it to some bare question of fact, with which they
make a home-thrust at us.
"Yes, that's it; are people _never_ to get a new carpet?" echoed Jane.
"My dears," I replied, "it is a fact that to introduce anything new into
an apartment hallowed by many home-associations, where all things have
grown old together, requires as much care and adroitness as for an
architect to restore an arch or niche in a fine old ruin. The fault of
our carpet was that it was in another style from everything in our room,
and made everything in it look dilapidated. Its colors, material, and
air belonged to another manner of life, and were a constant plea for
alterations; and you see it actually drove out and expelled the whole
furniture of the room, and I am not sure yet that it may not entail on
us the necessity of refurnishing the whole house."
"My dear!" said my wife, in a tone of remonstrance; but Jane and
Marianne laughed and colored.
"Confess, now," said I, looking at them, "have you not had secret
designs on the hall- and stair-carpet?"
"Now, papa, how could you know it? I only said to Marianne that to have
Brussels in the parlor and that old mean-looking ingrain carpet in the
hall did not seem exactly the thing; and, in fact, you know, mamma,
Messrs. Ketchem & Co. showed us such a lovely pattern, designed to
harmonize with our parlor-carpet."
"I know it, girls," said my wife; "but you know I said at once that such
an expense was not to be thought of."
"Now, girls," said I, "let me tell you a story I heard once of a very
sensible old New-England minister, who lived, as our country-ministers
generally do, rather near to the bone, but still quite contentedly. It
was in the days when knee-breeches and long stockings were worn, and
this good man was offered a present of a very nice pair of black silk
hose. He declined, saying, he 'could not afford to wear them.'
"'Not afford it?' said the friend; 'why, I _give_ them to you.'
"'Exactly; but it will cost me not less than two hundred dollars to take
them, and I cannot do it.'
"'How is that?'
"'Why, in the first place, I shall no sooner put them on than my wife
will say, "My dear, you must have a new pair of knee-breeches," and I
shall get them. Then my wife will say, "My dear, how shabby your coat
is! You must have a new one," and I shall get a new coat. Then she will
say, "Now, my dear, that hat will never do," and then I shall have a new
hat; and then I shall say, "My dear, it will never do for me to be so
fine and you to wear your old gown," and so my wife will get a new gown;
and then the new gown will require a new shawl and a new bonnet; all of
which we shall not feel the need of, if I don't take this pair of silk
stockings, for, as long as we don't see them, our old things seem very
well suited to each other.'"
The girls laughed at this story, and I then added, in my most determined
manner,--
"But I must warn you, girls, that I have compromised to the utmost
extent of my power, and that I intend to plant myself on the old
stair-carpet in determined resistance. I have no mind to be forbidden
the use of the front-stairs, or condemned to get up into my bedroom by a
private ladder, as I should be immediately, if there were a new carpet
down."
"Why, papa!"
"Would it not be so? Can the sun shine in the parlor now for fear of
fading the carpet? Can we keep a fire there for fear of making dust, or
use the lounges and sofas for fear of wearing them out? If you got a new
entry- and stair-carpet, as I said, I should have to be at the expense
of another staircase to get up to our bedroom."
"Oh, no, papa," said Jane, innocently; "there are very pretty druggets,
now, for covering stair-carpets, so that they can be used without
hurting them."
"Put one over the old carpet, then," said I, "and our acquaintance will
never know but it is a new one."
All the female senate laughed at this proposal, and said it sounded just
like a man.
"Well," said I, standing up resolutely for my sex, "a man's ideas on
woman's matters may be worth some attention. I flatter myself that an
intelligent, educated man doesn't think upon and observe with interest
any particular subject for years of his life without gaining some ideas
respecting it that are good for something; at all events, I have written
another article for the 'Atlantic,' which I will read to you."
"Well, wait one minute, papa, till we get our work," said the girls,
who, to say the truth, always exhibit a flattering interest in anything
their papa writes, and who have the good taste never to interrupt his
readings with any conversations in an undertone on cross-stitch and
floss-silks, as the manner of some is. Hence the little feminine bustle
of arranging all these matters beforehand. Jane, or Jennie, as I call
her in my good-natured moods, put on a fresh clear stick of hickory, of
that species denominated shag-bark, which is full of most charming
slivers, burning with such a clear flame, and emitting such a delicious
perfume in burning, that I would not change it with the millionnaire who
kept up his fire with cinnamon.
You must know, my dear Mr. Atlantic, and you, my confidential friends of
the reading public, that there is a certain magic or spiritualism which
I have the knack of in regard to these mine articles, in virtue of which
my wife and daughters never hear or see the little personalities
respecting _them_ which form parts of my papers. By a particular
arrangement which I have made with the elves of the inkstand and the
familiar spirits of the quill, a sort of glamour falls on their eyes
and ears when I am reading, or when they read the parts personal to
themselves; otherwise their sense of feminine propriety would be shocked
at the free way in which they and their most internal affairs are
confidentially spoken of between me and you, O loving readers.
Thus, in an undertone, I tell you that my little Jennie, as she is
zealously and systematically arranging the fire, and trimly whisking
every untidy particle of ashes from the hearth, shows in every movement
of her little hands, in the cock of her head, in the knowing, observing
glance of her eye, and in all her energetic movements, that her small
person is endued and made up of the very expressed essence of
housewifeliness,--she is the very attar, not of roses, but of
housekeeping. Care-taking and thrift and neatness are a nature to her;
she is as dainty and delicate in her person as a white cat, as
everlastingly busy as a bee; and all the most needful faculties of time,
weight, measure, and proportion out to be fully developed in her skull,
if there is any truth in phrenology. Besides all this, she has a sort of
hard-grained little vein of common sense, against which my fanciful
conceptions and poetical notions are apt to hit with just a little sharp
grating, if they are not well put. In fact, this kind of woman needs
carefully to be idealized in the process of education, or she will
stiffen and dry, as she grows old, into a veritable household Pharisee,
a sort of domestic tyrant. She needs to be trained in artistic values
and artistic weights and measures, to study all the arts and sciences of
the beautiful, and then she is charming. Most useful, most needful,
these little women: they have the centripetal force which keeps all the
domestic planets from gyrating and frisking in unseemly orbits,--and
properly trained, they fill a house with the beauty of order, the
harmony and consistency of proportion, the melody of things moving in
time and tune, without violating the graceful appearance of ease which
Art requires.
So I had an eye to Jennie's education in my article which I unfolded and
read, and which was entitled,
HOME-KEEPING _vs._ HOUSE-KEEPING.
There are many women who know how to keep a house, but there are but few
that know how to keep a _home_. To keep a house may seem a complicated
affair, but it is a thing that may be learned; it lies in the region of
the material, in the region of weight, measure, color, and the positive
forces of life. To keep a home lies not merely in the sphere of all
these, but it takes in the intellectual, the social, the spiritual, the
immortal.
Here the hickory-stick broke in two, and the two brands fell
controversially out and apart on the hearth, scattering the ashes and
coals, and calling for Jennie and the hearth-brush. Your wood-fire had
this foible, that it needs something to be done to it every five
minutes; but, after all, these little interruptions of our bright-faced
genius are like the piquant sallies of a clever friend,--they do not
strike us as unreasonable.