"Of course, I couldn't say that I wished the whole set and system of
housekeeping women at the--what-'s-his-name? because Sophie would have
cried for a week, and been utterly forlorn and disconsolate. I know it's
not the poor girl's fault; I try sometimes to reason with her, but you
can't reason with the whole of your wife's family, to the third and
fourth generation backwards; but I'm sure it's hurting her
health,--wearing her out. Why, you know Sophie used to be the life of
our set; and now she really seems eaten up with care from morning to
night, there are so many things in the house that something dreadful is
happening to all the while, and the servants we get are so clumsy. Why,
when I sit with Sophie and Aunt Zeruah, it's nothing but a constant
string of complaints about the girls in the kitchen. We keep changing
our servants all the time, and they break and destroy so that now we are
turned out of the use of all our things. We not only eat in the
basement, but all our pretty table-things are put away, and we have all
the cracked plates and cracked tumblers and cracked teacups and old
buck-handled knives that can be raised out of chaos. I could use these
things and be merry, if I didn't know we had better ones; and I can't
help wondering whether there isn't some way that our table could be set
to look like a gentleman's table; but Aunt Zeruah says that 'it would
cost thousands, and what difference does it make as long as nobody sees
it but us?' You see, there's no medium in her mind between china and
crystal and cracked earthen-ware. Well, I'm wondering how all these laws
of the Medes and Persians are going to work when the children come
along. I'm in hopes the children will soften off the old folks, and make
the, house more habitable."
Well, children did come, a good many of them, in time. There was Tom, a
broad-shouldered, chubby-cheeked, active, hilarious son of mischief,
born in the very image of his father; and there was Charlie, and Jim,
and Louisa, and Sophie the second, and Frank,--and a better, brighter,
more joy-giving household, as far as temperament and nature were
concerned, never existed.
But their whole childhood was a long battle, children _versus_
furniture, and furniture always carried the day. The first step of the
housekeeping powers was to choose the least agreeable and least
available room in the house for the children's nursery, and to fit it up
with all the old, cracked, rickety furniture a neighboring auction-shop
could afford, and then to keep them in it. Now everybody knows that to
bring up children to be upright, true, generous, and religious, needs so
much discipline, so much restraint and correction, and so many rules and
regulations, that it is all that the parents can carry out, and all the
children can bear. There is only a certain amount of the vital force for
parents or children to use in this business of education, and one must
choose what It shall be used for. The Aunt-Zeruah faction chose to use
it for keeping the house and furniture, and the children's education
proceeded accordingly. The rules of right and wrong of which they heard
most frequently were all of this sort: Naughty children were those who
went up the front-stairs, or sat on the best sofa, or fingered any of
the books in the library, or got out one of the best teacups, or drank
out of the cut-glass goblets.
Why did they ever want to do it? If there ever is a forbidden fruit in
an Eden, will not our young Adams and Eves risk soul and body to find
out how it tastes? Little Tom, the oldest boy, had the courage and
enterprise and perseverance of a Captain Parry or Dr. Kane, and he used
them all in voyages of discovery to forbidden grounds. He stole Aunt
Zeruah's keys, unlocked her cupboards and closets, saw, handled, and
tasted everything for himself, and gloried in his sins.
"Don't you know, Tom," said the nurse to him once, "if you are so noisy
and rude, you'll disturb your dear mamma? She's sick, and she may die,
if you're not careful."
"Will she die?" said Tom, gravely.
"Why, she _may_."
"Then," says Tom, turning on his heel,--"then I'll go up the
front-stairs."
As soon as ever the little rebel was old enough, he was sent away to
boarding-school, and then there was never found a time when it was
convenient to have him come home again. He could not come in the spring,
for then they were house-cleaning, nor in the autumn, because _then_
they were house-cleaning; and so he spent his vacations at school,
unless, by good luck, a companion who was so fortunate as to have a home
invited him there. His associations, associates, habits, principles,
were as little known to his mother as if she had sent him to China. Aunt
Zeruah used to congratulate herself on the rest there was at home, now
he was gone, and say she was only living in hopes of the time when
Charlie and Jim would be big enough to send away too; and meanwhile
Charlie and Jim, turned out of the charmed circle which should hold
growing boys to the father's and mother's side, detesting the dingy,
lonely play-room, used to run the city-streets, and hang round the
railroad-depots or docks. Parents may depend upon it, that, if they do
not make an attractive resort for their boys, Satan will. There are
places enough, kept warm and light and bright and merry, where boys can
go whose mothers' parlors are too fine for them to sit in. There are
enough to be found to clap them on the back, and tell them stories that
their mothers must not hear, and laugh when they compass with their
little piping voices the dreadful litanies of sin and shame. In middle
life, our poor Sophie, who as a girl was so gay and frolicsome, so full
of spirits, had dried and sharpened into a hard-visaged, angular
woman,--careful and troubled about many things, and forgetful that one
thing is needful. One of the boys had run away to sea; I believe he has
never been heard of. As to Tom, the oldest, he ran a career wild and
hard enough for a time, first at school and then in college, and there
came a time when he came home, in the full might of six feet two, and
almost broke his mother's heart with his assertions of his home rights
and privileges. Mothers who throw away the key of their children's
hearts in childhood sometimes have a sad retribution. As the children
never were considered when they were little and helpless, so they do not
consider when they are strong and powerful. Tom spread wide desolation
among the household gods, lounging on the sofas, spitting tobacco-juice
on the carpets, scattering books and engravings hither and thither, and
throwing all the family-traditions into wild disorder, as he would never
have done, had not all his childish remembrances of them been embittered
by the association of restraint and privation. He actually seemed to
hate any appearance of luxury or taste or order,--he was a perfect
Philistine.
As for my friend Bill, from being the pleasantest and most genial of
fellows, he became a morose, misanthropic man. Dr. Franklin has a
significant proverb,--"Silks and satins put out the kitchen-fire." Silks
and satins--meaning by them the luxuries of housekeeping--often put out
not only the parlor-fire, but that more sacred flame, the fire of
domestic love. It is the greatest possible misery to a man and to his
children to be _homeless_; and many a man has a splendid house, but no
home.
"Papa," said Jennie, "you ought to write and tell what are your ideas of
keeping a _home_."
"Girls, you have only to think how your mother has brought you up."
Nevertheless, I think, being so fortunate a husband, I might reduce my
wife's system to an analysis, and my next paper shall be,--
_What is a home, and how to keep it?_
* * * * *