There is a place called "Our House," which everybody knows of. The
sailor talks of it in his dreams at sea. The wounded soldier, turning in
his uneasy hospital-bed, brightens at the word,--it is like the dropping
of cool water in the desert, like the touch of cool fingers on a burning
brow. "Our house," he says feebly, and the light comes back into his dim
eyes,--for all homely charities, all fond thoughts, all purities, all
that man loves on earth or hopes for in heaven, rise with the word.
"Our house" may be in any style of architecture, low or high. It may be
the brown old farm-house, with its tall well-sweep, or the one-story
gambrel-roofed cottage, or the large, square, white house, with green
blinds, under the wind-swung elms of a century, or it may be the
log-cabin of the wilderness, with its one room,--still there is a spell
in the memory of it beyond all conjurations. Its stone and brick and
mortar are like no other; its very clapboards and shingles are dear to
us, powerful to bring back the memories of early days, and all that is
sacred in home-love.
* * * * *
"Papa is getting quite sentimental," whispered Jennie, loud enough for
me to hear. I shook my head at her impressively, and went on undaunted.
* * * * *
There is no one fact of our human existence that has a stronger
influence upon us than the house we dwell in,--especially that in which
our earlier and more impressible years are spent. The building and
arrangement of a house influence the health, the comfort, the morals,
the religion. There have been houses built so devoid of all
consideration for the occupants, so rambling and hap-hazard in the
disposal of rooms, so sunless and cheerless and wholly without snugness
or privacy, as to make it seem impossible to live a joyous, generous,
rational, religious family-life in them.
There are, we shame to say, in our cities _things_ called houses, built
and rented by people who walk erect and have the general air and manner
of civilized and Christianized men, which are so inhuman in their
building that they can only be called snares and traps for
souls,--places where children cannot well escape growing up filthy and
impure,--places where to form a home is impossible, and to live a
decent, Christian life would require miraculous strength.
A celebrated British philanthropist, who had devoted much study to the
dwellings of the poor, gave it as his opinion that temperance-societies
were a hopeless undertaking in London, unless these dwellings underwent
a transformation. They were so squalid, so dark, so comfortless, so
constantly pressing upon the senses foulness, pain, and inconvenience,
that it was only by being drugged with gin and opium that their
miserable inhabitants could find heart to drag on life from day to day.
He had himself tried the experiment of reforming a drunkard by taking
him from one of these loathsome dens and enabling him to rent a tenement
in a block of model lodging-houses which had been built under his
supervision. The young man had been a designer of figures for prints; he
was of a delicate frame, and a nervous, susceptible temperament. Shut in
one miserable room with his wife and little children, without the
possibility of pure air, with only filthy, fetid water to drink, with
the noise of other miserable families resounding through the thin
partitions, what possibility was there of doing anything except by the
help of stimulants, which for a brief hour lifted him above the
perception of these miseries? Changed at once to a neat flat, where, for
the same rent as his former den, he had three good rooms, with water for
drinking, house-service, and bathing freely supplied, and the blessed
sunshine and air coming in through windows well arranged for
ventilation, he became in a few weeks a new man. In the charms of the
little spot which he could call home, its quiet, its order, his former
talent came back to him, and he found strength, in pure air and pure
water and those purer thoughts of which they are the emblems, to abandon
burning and stupefying stimulants.
The influence of dwelling-houses for good or for evil--their influence
on the brain, the nerves, and, through these, on the heart and life--is
one of those things that cannot be enough pondered by those who build
houses to sell or rent.
Something more generous ought to inspire a man than merely the
percentage which he can get for his money. He who would build houses
should think a little on the subject. He should reflect what houses are
for,--what they may be made to do for human beings. The great majority
of houses in cities are not built by the indwellers themselves,--they
are built _for_ them, by those who invest their money in this way, with
little other thought than the percentage which the investment will
return.
For persons of ample fortune there are, indeed, palatial residences,
with all that wealth can do to render life delightful. But in that class
of houses which must be the lot of the large majority, those which must
be chosen by young men in the beginning of life, when means are
comparatively restricted, there is yet wide room for thought and the
judicious application of money.
In looking over houses to be rented by persons of moderate means, one
cannot help longing to build,--one sees so many ways in which the same
sum which built an inconvenient and unpleasant house might have been
made to build a delightful one.
* * * * *
"That's so!" said Bob, with emphasis. "Don't you remember, Marianne, how
many dismal, commonplace, shabby houses we trailed through?"
"Yes," said Marianne. "You remember those houses with such little
squeezed rooms and that flourishing staircase, with the colored-glass
china-closet window and no butler's sink?"
"Yes," said Bob; "and those astonishing, abominable stone abortions that
adorned the door-steps. People do lay out a deal of money to make houses
look ugly, it must be confessed."
"One would willingly," said Marianne, "dispense with frightful stone
ornaments in front, and with heavy mouldings inside, which are of no
possible use or beauty, and with showy plaster cornices and
centre-pieces in the parlor-ceilings, and even with marble mantels, for
the luxury of hot and cold water in each chamber, and a couple of
comfortable bath-rooms. Then, the disposition of windows and doors is so
wholly without regard to convenience! How often we find rooms, meant for
bed-rooms, where really there is no good place for either bed or
dressing-table!"
Here my wife looked up, having just finished re-drawing the plans to the
latest alteration.
"One of the greatest reforms that could be, in these reforming days,"
she observed, "would be to have women architects. The mischief with
houses built to rent is that they are all mere male contrivances. No
woman would ever plan chambers where there is no earthly place to set a
bed except against a window or door, or waste the room in entries that
might be made into closets. I don't see, for my part, _apropos_ to the
modern movement for opening new professions to the female sex, why there
should not be well-educated female architects. The planning and
arrangement of houses, and the laying-out of grounds, are a fair subject
of womanly knowledge and taste. It is the teaching of Nature. What would
anybody think of a bluebird's nest that had been built entirely by Mr.
Blue without the help of his wife?"
"My dear," said I, "you must positively send a paper on this subject to
the next Woman's-Rights Convention."
"I am of Sojourner Truth's opinion," said my wife,--"that the best way
to prove the propriety of one's doing anything is to go and _do it_. A
woman who should have energy to go through the preparatory studies and
set to work in this field would, I am sure, soon find employment."
"If she did as well as you would do, my dear," said I. "There are plenty
of young women in our Boston high-schools who are going through higher
fields of mathematics than are required by the architect, and the
schools for design show the flexibility and fertility of the female
pencil. The thing appears to me altogether more feasible than many other
openings which have been suggested to woman."
"Well," said Jennie, "isn't papa ever to go on with his paper?"