We have a custom at our house which we call _raking up the fire_. That
is to say, the last half-hour before bed-time, we draw in, shoulder to
shoulder, around the last brands and embers of our hearth, which we
prick up and brighten, and dispose for a few farewell flickers and
glimmers. This is a grand time for discussion. Then we talk over
parties, if the young people have been out of an evening,--a book, if we
have been reading one; we discuss and analyze characters,--give our
views on all subjects, æsthetic, theological, and scientific, in a way
most wonderful to hear; and, in fact, we sometimes get so engaged in our
discussions that every spark of the fire burns out, and we begin to feel
ourselves shivering around the shoulders, before we can remember that it
is bed-time.
So, after the reading of my last article, we had a "raking-up talk,"--to
wit, Jennie, Marianne, and I, with Bob Stephens;--my wife, still busy
at her work-basket, sat at the table a little behind us. Jennie, of
course, opened the ball in her usual incisive manner.
"But now, papa, after all you say in your piece there, I cannot help
feeling, that, if I had the taste and the money too, it would be better
than the taste alone with no money. I like the nice arrangements and the
books and the drawings; but I think all these would appear better still
with really elegant furniture."
"Who doubts that?" said I. "Give me a large tub of gold coin to dip
into, and the furnishing and beautifying of a house is a simple affair.
The same taste that could make beauty out of cents and dimes could make
it more abundantly out of dollars and eagles. But I have been speaking
for those who have not, and cannot get, riches, and who wish to have
agreeable houses; and I begin in the outset by saying that beauty is a
thing to be respected, reverenced, and devoutly cared for,--and then I
say that BEAUTY IS CHEAP, nay, to put it so that the shrewdest Yankee
will understand it, BEAUTY IS THE CHEAPEST THING YOU CAN HAVE, because
in many ways it is a substitute for expense. A few vases of flowers in a
room, a few blooming, well-kept plants, a few prints framed in fanciful
frames of cheap domestic fabric, a statuette, a bracket, an engraving, a
pencil-sketch, above all, a few choice books,--all these arranged by a
woman who has the gift in her finger-ends often produce such an illusion
on the mind's eye that one goes away without once having noticed that
the cushion of the arm-chair was worn out, and that some veneering had
fallen off the centre-table.
"I have a friend, a school-mistress, who lives in a poor little cottage
enough, which, let alone of the Graces, might seem mean and sordid, but
a few flower-seeds and a little weeding in the spring make it, all
summer, an object which everybody stops to look at. Her æsthetic soul
was at first greatly tried with the water-barrel which stood under the
eaves-spout,--a most necessary evil, since only thus could her scanty
supply of soft water for domestic purposes be secured. One of the
Graces, however, suggested to her a happy thought. She planted a row of
morning-glories round the bottom of her barrel, and drove a row of tacks
around the top, and strung her water-butt with twine, like a great
harpsichord. A few weeks covered the twine with blossoming plants, which
every morning were a mass of many-colored airy blooms, waving in
graceful sprays, and looking at themselves in the water. The
water-barrel, in fact, became a celebrated stroke of ornamental
gardening, which the neighbors came to look at."
"Well, but," said Jennie, "everybody hasn't mamma's faculty with
flowers. Flowers will grow for some people, and for some they won't.
Nobody can see what mamma does so very much, but her plants always look
fresh and thriving and healthy,--her things blossom just when she wants
them, and do anything else she wishes them to; and there are other
people that fume and fuss and try, and their things won't do anything at
all. There's Aunt Easygo has plant after plant brought from the
greenhouse, and hanging-baskets, and all sorts of things; but her plants
grow yellow and drop their leaves, and her hanging-baskets get dusty and
poverty-stricken, while mamma's go on flourishing as heart could
desire."
"I can tell you what your mother puts into her plants," said I,--"just
what she has put into her children, and all her other home-things,--her
_heart_. She _loves_ them; she lives in them; she has in herself a
plant-life and a plant-sympathy. She feels for them as if she herself
were a plant; she anticipates their wants,--always remembers them
without an effort, and so the care flows to them daily and hourly. She
hardly knows when she does the things that make them grow,--but she
gives them a minute a hundred times a day. She moves this nearer the
glass,--draws that back,--detects some thief of a worm on one,--digs at
the root of another, to see why it droops,--washes these leaves, and
sprinkles those,--waters, and refrains from watering, all with the
habitual care of love. Your mother herself doesn't know why her plants
grow; it takes a philosopher and a writer for the 'Atlantic' to tell her
what the cause is."