* * * * *
What ought "our house" to be? Could any other question be asked
admitting in its details of such varied answers,--answers various as the
means, the character, and situation of different individuals? But there
are great wants pertaining to every human being, into which all lesser
ones run. There are things in a house that every one, high or low, rich
or poor, ought, according to his means, to seek. I think I shall class
them according to the elemental division of the old philosophers,--Fire,
Air, Earth, and Water. These form the groundwork of this _need-be_,--the
_sine-qua-nons_ of a house.
* * * * *
"Fire, air, earth, and water! I don't understand," said Jennie.
"Wait a little till you do, then," said I. "I will try to make my
meaning plain."
* * * * *
The first object of a house is shelter from the elements. This object is
effected by a tent or wigwam which keeps off rain and wind. The first
disadvantage of this shelter is, that the vital air which you take into
your lungs, and on the purity of which depends the purity of blood and
brain and nerve, is vitiated. In the wigwam or tent you are constantly
taking in poison, more or less active, with every inspiration. Napoleon
had his army sleep without tents. He stated, that, from experience, he
found it more healthy; and wonderful have been the instances of delicate
persons gaining constantly in vigor from being obliged, in the midst of
hardships, to sleep constantly in the open air. Now the first problem in
house-building is to combine the advantage of shelter with the fresh
elasticity of out-door air. I am not going to give here a treatise on
ventilation, but merely to say, in general terms, that the first object
of a house-builder or contriver should be to make a healthy house, and
the first requisite of a healthy house is a pure, sweet, elastic air.
I am in favor, therefore, of those plans of house-building which have
wide central spaces, whether halls or courts, into which all the rooms
open, and which necessarily preserve a body of fresh air for the use of
them all. In hot climates this is the object of the central court which
cuts into the body of the house, with its fountain and flowers, and its
galleries, into which the various apartments open. When people are
restricted for space, and cannot afford to give up wide central portions
of the house for the mere purposes of passage, this central hall can be
made a pleasant sitting-room. With tables, chairs, bookcases, and sofas
comfortably disposed, this ample central room above and below is, in
many respects, the most agreeable lounging-room of the house; while the
parlors below and the chambers above, opening upon it, form agreeable
withdrawing-rooms for purposes of greater privacy.
It is customary with many persons to sleep with bed-room windows
open,--a very imperfect, and often dangerous mode of procuring that
supply of fresh air which a sleeping-room requires. In a house
constructed in the manner indicated, windows might be freely left open
in these central halls, producing there a constant movement of air, and
the doors of the bed-rooms placed ajar, when a very slight opening in
the windows would create a free circulation through the apartments.
In the planning of a house, thought should be had as to the general
disposition of the windows, and the quarters from which favoring breezes
may be expected should be carefully considered. Windows should be so
arranged that draughts of air can be thrown quite through and across the
house. How often have we seen pale mothers and drooping babes fanning
and panting during some of our hot days on the sunny side of a house,
while the breeze that should have cooled them beat in vain against a
dead wall! One longs sometimes to knock holes through partitions and let
in the air of heaven.
No other gift of God, so precious, so inspiring, is treated with such
utter irreverence and contempt in the calculations of us mortals as this
same air of heaven. A sermon on oxygen, if one had a preacher who
understood the subject, might do more to repress sin than the most
orthodox discourse to show when and how and why sin came. A minister
gets up in a crowded lecture-room, where the mephitic air almost makes
the candles burn blue, and bewails the deadness of the church,--the
church the while, drugged by the poisoned air, growing sleepier and
sleepier, though they feel dreadfully wicked for being so.
Little Jim, who, fresh from his afternoon's rambles in the fields, last
evening said his prayers dutifully, and lay down to sleep in a most
Christian frame, this morning sits up in bed with his hair bristling
with crossness, strikes at his nurse, and declares he won't say his
prayers,--that he don't want to be good. The simple difference is, that
the child, having slept in a close box of a room, his brain all night
fed by poison, is in a mild state of moral insanity. Delicate women
remark that it takes them till eleven or twelve o'clock to get up their
strength in the morning. Query,--Do they sleep with closed windows and
doors, and with heavy bed-curtains?
The houses built by our ancestors were better ventilated in certain
respects than modern ones, with all their improvements. The great
central chimney, with its open fireplaces in the different rooms,
created a constant current which carried off foul and vitiated air. In
these days, how common is it to provide rooms with only a flue for a
stove! This flue is kept shut in summer, and in winter opened only to
admit a close stove, which burns away the vital portion of the air quite
as fast as the occupants breathe it away. The sealing-up of fireplaces
and introduction of air-tight stoves may, doubtless, be a saving of
fuel: it saves, too, more than that; in thousands and thousands of cases
it has saved people from all further human wants, and put an end forever
to any needs short of the six feet of narrow earth which are man's only
inalienable property. In other words, since the invention of air-tight
stoves, thousands have died of slow poison. It is a terrible thing to
reflect upon, that our Northern winters last from November to May, six
long months, in which many families confine themselves to one room, of
which every window-crack has been carefully calked to make it air-tight,
where an air-tight stove keeps the atmosphere at a temperature between
eighty and ninety, and the inmates sitting there with all their winter
clothes on become enervated both by the heat and by the poisoned air,
for which there is no escape but the occasional opening of a door.
It is no wonder that the first result of all this is such a delicacy of
skin and lungs that about half the inmates are obliged to give up going
into the open air during the six cold months, because they invariably
catch cold, if they do so. It is no wonder that the cold caught about
the first of December has by the first of March become a fixed
consumption, and that the opening of the spring, which ought to bring
life and health, in so many cases brings death.
We hear of the lean condition in which the poor bears emerge from their
six-months' wintering, during which they subsist on the fat which they
have acquired the previous summer. Even so in our long winters,
multitudes of delicate people subsist on the daily waning strength which
they acquired in the season when windows and doors were open, and fresh
air was a constant luxury. No wonder we hear of spring fever and spring
biliousness, and have thousands of nostrums for clearing the blood in
the spring. All these things are the pantings and palpitations of a
system run down under slow poison, unable to get a step farther. Better,
far better, the old houses of the olden time, with their great roaring
fires, and their bed-rooms where the snow came in and the wintry winds
whistled. Then, to be sure, you froze your back while you burned your
face, your water froze nightly in your pitcher, your breath congealed
in ice-wreaths on the blankets, and you could write your name on the
pretty snow-wreath that had sifted in through the window-cracks. But you
woke full of life and vigor,--you looked out into whirling snow-storms
without a shiver, and thought nothing of plunging through drifts as high
as your head on your daily way to school. You jingled in sleighs, you
snowballed, you lived in snow like a snow-bird, and your blood coursed
and tingled, in full tide of good, merry, real life, through your
veins,--none of the slow-creeping, black blood which clogs the brain and
lies like a weight on the vital wheels!
* * * * *
"Mercy upon us, papa!" said Jennie, "I hope we need not go back to such
houses!"
"No, my dear," I replied. "I only said that such houses were better than
those which are all winter closed by double windows and burnt-out
air-tight stoves."
* * * * *
The perfect house is one in which there is a constant escape of every
foul and vitiated particle of air through one opening, while a constant
supply of fresh out-door air is admitted by another. In winter, this
out-door air must pass through some process by which it is brought up to
a temperate warmth.
Take a single room, and suppose on one side a current of out-door air
which has been warmed by passing through the air-chamber of a modern
furnace. Its temperature need not be above sixty-five,--it answers
breathing purposes better at that. On the other side of the room let
there be an open wood- or coal-fire. One cannot conceive the purposes of
warmth and ventilation more perfectly combined.
Suppose a house with a great central hall, into which a current of
fresh, temperately warmed air is continually pouring. Each chamber
opening upon this hall has a chimney up whose flue the rarefied air is
constantly passing, drawing up with it all the foul and poisonous gases.
That house is well ventilated, and in a way that need bring no dangerous
draughts upon the most delicate invalid. For the better securing of
privacy in sleeping-rooms, we have seen two doors employed, one of which
is made with slats, like a window-blind, so that air is freely
transmitted without exposing the interior.
When we speak of fresh air, we insist on the full rigor of the term. It
must not be the air of a cellar, heavily laden with the poisonous
nitrogen of turnips and cabbages, but good, fresh, out-door air from a
cold-air pipe so placed as not to get the lower stratum near the ground,
where heavy damps and exhalations collect, but high up in just the
clearest and most elastic region.
The conclusion of the whole matter is, that, as all of man's and woman's
peace and comfort, all their love, all their amiability, all their
religion, have got to come to them, while they live in this world,
through the medium of the brain,--and as black, uncleansed blood acts on
the brain as a poison, and as no other than black, uncleansed blood can
be got by the lungs out of impure air,--the first object of the man who
builds a house is to secure a pure and healthy atmosphere therein.
Therefore, in allotting expenses, set this down as a _must-be_: "Our
house must have fresh air,--everywhere, at all times, winter and
summer." Whether we have stone facings or no,--whether our parlor has
cornices or marble mantels or no,--whether our doors are machine-made or
hand-made. All our fixtures shall be of the plainest and simplest, but
we will have fresh air. We will open our door with a latch and string,
if we cannot afford lock and knob and fresh air too,--but in our house
we will live cleanly and Christianly. We will no more breathe the foul
air rejected from a neighbor's lungs than we will use a neighbor's
tooth-brush and hair-brush. Such is the first essential of "our
house,"--the first great element of human health and happiness,--AIR.
"I say, Marianne," said Bob, "have we got fireplaces in our chambers?"
"Mamma took care of that," said Marianne.
"You may be quite sure," said I, "if your mother has had a hand in
planning your house, that the ventilation is cared for."
It must be confessed that Bob's principal idea in a house had been a
Gothic library, and his mind had labored more on the possibility of
adapting some favorite bits from the baronial antiquities to modern
needs than on anything so terrestrial as air. Therefore he awoke as from
a dream, and taking two or three monstrous inhalations, he seized the
plans and began looking over them with new energy. Meanwhile I went on
with my prelection.
* * * * *
The second great vital element for which provision must be made in "our
house" is FIRE. By which I do not mean merely artificial fire, but fire
in all its extent and branches,--the heavenly fire which God sends us
daily on the bright wings of sunbeams, as well as the mimic fires by
which we warm our dwellings, cook our food, and light our nightly
darkness.
To begin, then, with heavenly fire or sunshine. If God's gift of vital
air is neglected and undervalued, His gift of sunshine appears to be
hated. There are many houses where not a cent has been expended on
ventilation, but where hundreds of dollars have been freely lavished to
keep out the sunshine. The chamber, truly, is tight as a box,--it has no
fireplace, not even a ventilator opening into the stove-flue; but, oh,
joy and gladness! it has outside blinds and inside folding-shutters, so
that in the brightest of days we may create there a darkness that may be
felt. To observe the generality of New-England houses, a spectator might
imagine that they were planned for the torrid zone, where the great
object is to keep out a furnace-draught of burning air.
But let us look over the months of our calendar. In which of them do we
not need fires on our hearths? We will venture to say that from October
to June all families, whether they actually have it or not, would be the
more comfortable for a morning and evening fire. For eight months in the
year the weather varies on the scale of cool, cold, colder, and
freezing; and for all the four other months what is the number of days
that really require the torrid-zone system of shutting up houses? We all
know that extreme heat is the exception, and not the rule.
Yet let anybody travel, as I did last year, through the valley of the
Connecticut, and observe the houses. All clean and white and neat and
well-to-do, with their turfy yards and their breezy great elms,--but all
shut up from basement to attic, as if the inmates had all sold out and
gone to China. Not a window-blind open above or below. Is the house
inhabited? No,--yes,--there is a faint stream of blue smoke from the
kitchen-chimney, and half a window-blind open in some distant back-part
of the house. They are living there in the dim shadows, bleaching like
potato-sprouts in the cellar.
* * * * *
"I can tell you why they do it, papa," said Jennie,--"it's the flies,
and flies are certainly worthy to be one of the plagues of Egypt. I
can't myself blame people that shut up their rooms and darken their
houses in fly-time,--do you, mamma?"
"Not in extreme cases; though I think there is but a short season when
this is necessary; yet the habit of shutting up lasts the year round,
and gives to New-England villages that dead, silent, cold, uninhabited
look which is so peculiar."
"The one fact that a traveller would gather in passing through our
villages would be this," said I, "that the people live in their houses
and in the dark. Rarely do you see doors and windows open, people
sitting at them, chairs in the yard, and signs that the inhabitants are
living out-of-doors."
"Well," said Jennie, "I have told you why, for I have been at Uncle
Peter's in summer, and aunt does her spring-cleaning in May, and then
she shuts all the blinds and drops all the curtains, and the house stays
clean till October. That's the whole of it. If she had all her windows
open, there would be paint and windows to be cleaned every week,--and
who is to do it? For my part, I can't much blame her."
"Well," said I, "I have my doubts about the sovereign efficacy of living
in the dark, even if the great object of existence were to be rid of
flies. I remember, during this same journey, stopping for a day or two
at a country boarding-house which was dark as Egypt from cellar to
garret. The long, dim, gloomy dining-room was first closed by outside
blinds, and then by impenetrable paper curtains, notwithstanding which
it swarmed and buzzed like a beehive. You found where the cake-plate was
by the buzz which your hand made, if you chanced to reach in that
direction. It was disagreeable, because in the darkness flies could not
always be distinguished from huckleberries; and I couldn't help wishing,
that, since we must have the flies, we might at least have the light and
air to console us under them. People darken their rooms and shut up
every avenue of out-door enjoyment, and sit and think of nothing but
flies; in fact, flies are all they have left. No wonder they become
morbid on the subject."
"Well, now, papa talks just like a man,--doesn't he?" said Jennie. "He
hasn't the responsibility of keeping things clean. I wonder what he
would do, if he were a housekeeper."
"Do? I will tell you. I would do the best I could. I would shut my eyes
on fly-specks, and open them on the beauties of Nature. I would let the
cheerful sun in all day long, in all but the few summer days when
coolness is the one thing needful: those days may be soon numbered every
year. I would make a calculation in the spring how much it would cost to
hire a woman to keep my windows and paint clean, and I would do with one
less gown and have her; and when I had spent all I could afford on
cleaning windows and paint, I would harden my heart and turn off my
eyes, and enjoy my sunshine and my fresh air, my breezes, and all that
can be seen through the picture-windows of an open, airy house, and snap
my fingers at the flies. There you have it."
"Papa's hobby is sunshine," said Marianne.
"Why shouldn't it be? Was God mistaken, when He made the sun? Did He
make him for us to hold a life's battle with? Is that vital power which
reddens the cheek of the peach and pours sweetness through the fruits
and flowers of no use to us? Look at plants that grow without sun,--wan,
pale, long-visaged, holding feeble, imploring hands of supplication
towards the light. Can human beings afford to throw away a vitalizing
force so pungent, so exhilarating? You remember the experiment of a
prison, where one row of cells had daily sunshine, and the others none.
With the same regimen, the same cleanliness, the same care, the inmates
of the sunless cells were visited with sickness and death in double
measure. Our whole population in New England are groaning and suffering
under afflictions, the result of a depressed vitality,--neuralgia, with
a new ache for every day of the year, rheumatism, consumption, general
debility; for all these a thousand nostrums are daily advertised, and
money enough is spent on them to equip an army, while we are fighting
against, wasting, and throwing away with both hands that blessed
influence which comes nearest to pure vitality of anything God has
given.
"Who is it that the Bible describes as a sun, arising with healing in
his wings? Surely, that sunshine which is the chosen type and image of
His love must be healing through all the recesses of our daily life,
drying damp and mould, defending from moth and rust, sweetening ill
smells, clearing from the nerves the vapors of melancholy, making life
cheery. If I did not know Him, I should certainly adore and worship the
sun, the most blessed and beautiful image of Him among things visible.
In the land of Egypt, in the day of God's wrath, there was darkness, but
in the land of Goshen there was light. I am a Goshenite, and mean to
walk in the light, and forswear the works of darkness.--But to proceed
with our reading."
* * * * *
"Our house" shall be set on a southeast line, so that there shall not be
a sunless room in it, and windows shall be so arranged that it can be
traversed and transpierced through and through with those bright shafts
of life which come straight from God.
"Our house" shall not be blockaded with a dank, dripping mass of
shrubbery set plumb against the windows, keeping out light and air.
There shall be room all round it for breezes to sweep, and sunshine to
sweeten and dry and vivify; and I would warn all good souls who begin
life by setting out two little evergreen-trees within a foot of each of
their front-windows, that these trees will grow and increase till their
front-rooms will be brooded over by a sombre, stifling shadow fit only
for ravens to croak in.
One would think, by the way some people hasten to convert a very narrow
front-yard into a dismal jungle, that the only danger of our New-England
climate was sunstroke. Ah, in those drizzling months which form at least
one-half of our life here, what sullen, censorious, uncomfortable,
unhealthy thoughts are bred of living in dark, chilly rooms, behind such
dripping thickets! Our neighbors' faults assume a deeper hue,--life
seems a dismal thing,--our very religion grows mouldy.
My idea of a house is, that, as far as is consistent with shelter and
reasonable privacy, it should give you on first entering an open,
breezy, out-door freshness of sensation. Every window should be a
picture; sun and trees and clouds and green grass should seem never to
be far from us. "Our house" may shade, but not darken us. "Our house"
shall have bow-windows, many, sunny, and airy,--not for the purpose of
being cleaned and shut up, but to be open and enjoyed. There shall be
long verandas above and below, where invalids may walk dry-shod, and
enjoy open-air recreation in wettest weather. In short, I will try to
have "our house" combine as far as possible the sunny, joyous, fresh
life of a gypsy in the fields and woods with the quiet and neatness and
comfort and shelter of a roof, rooms, floors, and carpets.
After heavenly fire, I have a word to say of earthly, artificial fires.
Furnaces, whether of hot water, steam, or hot air, are all healthy and
admirable provisions for warming our houses during the eight or nine
months of our year that we must have artificial heat, if only, as I have
said, fireplaces keep up a current of ventilation.
The kitchen-range with its water-back I humbly salute. It is a great
throbbing heart, and sends its warm tides of cleansing, comforting fluid
all through the house. One could wish that this friendly dragon could be
in some way moderated in his appetite for coal,--he does consume without
mercy, it must be confessed,--but then, great is the work he has to do.
At any hour of day or night in the most distant part of your house, you
have but to turn a stop-cock and your red dragon sends you hot water for
your needs; your washing-day becomes a mere play-day; your pantry has
its ever-ready supply; and then, by a little judicious care in arranging
apartments and economizing heat, a range may make two or three chambers
comfortable in winter weather. A range with a water-back is among the
_must-bes_ in "our house."
Then, as to the evening light,--I know nothing as yet better than gas,
where it can be had. I would certainly not have a house without it. The
great objection to it is the danger of its escape through imperfect
fixtures. But it must not do this: a fluid that kills a tree or a plant
with one breath must certainly be a dangerous ingredient in the
atmosphere, and if admitted into houses, must be introduced with every
safeguard.
There are families living in the country who make their own gas by a
very simple process. This is worth an inquiry from those who build.
There are also contrivances now advertised, with good testimonials, of
domestic machines for generating gas, said to be perfectly safe, simple
to be managed, and producing a light superior to that of the city
gas-works. This also is worth an inquiry, when "our house" is to be in
the country.
* * * * *
And now I come to the next great vital element for which "our house"
must provide,--WATER. "Water, water everywhere,"--it must be plentiful,
it must be easy to get at, it must be pure. Our ancestors had some
excellent ideas in home-living and house-building. Their houses were,
generally speaking, very sensibly contrived,--roomy, airy, and
comfortable; but in their water-arrangements they had little mercy on
womankind. The well was out in the yard; and in winter one must flounder
through snow and bring up the ice-bound bucket, before one could fill
the tea-kettle for breakfast. For a sovereign princess of the republic
this was hardly respectful or respectable. Wells have come somewhat
nearer in modern times; but the idea of a constant supply of fresh water
by the simple turning of a stop-cock has not yet visited the great body
of our houses. Were we free to build "our house" just as we wish it,
there should be a bath-room to every two or three inmates, and the hot
and cold water should circulate to every chamber.
Among our _must-bes_, we would lay by a generous sum for plumbing. Let
us have our bath-rooms, and our arrangements for cleanliness and health
in kitchen and pantry; and afterwards let the quality of our lumber and
the style of our finishings be according to the sum we have left. The
power to command a warm bath in a house at any hour of day or night is
better in bringing up a family of children than any amount of ready
medicine. In three-quarters of childish ailments the warm bath is an
almost immediate remedy. Bad colds, incipient fevers, rheumatisms,
convulsions, neuralgias innumerable, are washed off in their first
beginnings, and run down the lead pipes into oblivion. Have, then, O
friend, all the water in your house that you can afford, and enlarge
your ideas of the worth of it, that you _may_ afford a great deal. A
bathing-room is nothing to you that requires an hour of lifting and
fire-making to prepare it for use. The apparatus is too cumbrous,--you
do not turn to it. But when your chamber opens upon a neat, quiet little
nook, and you have only to turn your stop-cocks and all is ready, your
remedy is at hand,--you use it constantly. You are waked in the night by
a scream, and find little Tom sitting up, wild with burning fever. In
three minutes he is in the bath, quieted and comfortable; you get him
back, cooled and tranquil, to his little crib, and in the morning he
wakes as if nothing had happened.
Why should not so invaluable and simple a remedy for disease, such a
preservative of health, such a comfort, such a stimulus, be considered
as much a matter-of-course in a house as a kitchen-chimney? At least
there should be one bath-room always in order, so arranged that all the
family can have access to it, if one cannot afford the luxury of many.
A house in which water is universally and skilfully distributed is so
much easier to take care of as almost to verify the saying of a friend,
that his house was so contrived that it did its own work: one had better
do without carpets on the floors, without stuffed sofas and
rocking-chairs, and secure this.
* * * * *
"Well, papa," said Marianne, "you have made out all your four elements
in your house except one. I can't imagine what you want of _earth_."
"I thought," said Jennie, "that the less of our common mother we had in
our houses, the better housekeepers we were."
"My dears," said I, "we philosophers must give an occasional dip into
the mystical, and say something apparently absurd for the purpose of
explaining that we mean nothing in particular by it. It gives common
people an idea of our sagacity, to find how clear we come out of our
apparent contradictions and absurdities. Listen."
* * * * *
For the fourth requisite of "our house," EARTH, let me point you to your
mother's plant-window, and beg you to remember the fact that through our
long, dreary winters we are never a month without flowers, and the vivid
interest which always attaches to growing things. The perfect house, as
I conceive it, is to combine as many of the advantages of living out of
doors as may be consistent with warmth and shelter, and one of these is
the sympathy with green and growing things. Plants are nearer in their
relations to human health and vigor than is often imagined. The
cheerfulness that well-kept plants impart to a room comes not merely
from gratification of the eye,--there is a healthful exhalation from
them, they are a corrective of the impurities of the atmosphere. Plants,
too, are valuable as tests of the vitality of the atmosphere; their
drooping and failure convey to us information that something is amiss
with it. A lady once told me that she could never raise plants in her
parlors on account of the gas and anthracite coal. I answered, "Are you
not afraid to live and bring up your children in an atmosphere which
blights your plants?" If the gas escapes from the pipes, and the red-hot
anthracite coal or the red-hot air-tight stove burns out all the vital
part of the air, so that healthy plants in a few days wither and begin
to drop their leaves, it is a sign that the air must be looked to and
reformed. It is a fatal augury for a room that plants cannot be made to
thrive in it. Plants should not turn pale, be long-jointed, long-leaved,
and spindling; and where they grow in this way, we may be certain that
there is a want of vitality for human beings. But where plants appear as
they do in the open air, with vigorous, stocky growth, and
short-stemmed, deep-green leaves, we may believe the conditions of that
atmosphere are healthy for human lungs.
It is pleasant to see how the custom of plant-growing has spread through
our country. In how many farm-house windows do we see petunias and
nasturtiums vivid with bloom while snows are whirling without, and how
much brightness have those cheap enjoyments shed on the lives of those
who cared for them! We do not believe there is a human being who would
not become a passionate lover of plants, if circumstances once made it
imperative to tend upon, and watch the growth of one. The history of
Picciola for substance has been lived over and over by many a man and
woman who once did not know that there was a particle of plant-love in
their souls. But to the proper care of plants in pots there are many
hindrances and drawbacks. The dust chokes the little pores of their
green lungs, and they require constant showering; and to carry all one's
plants to a sink or porch for this purpose is a labor which many will
not endure. Consequently plants often do not get a showering once a
month. We should try to imitate more closely the action of Mother
Nature, who washes every green child of hers nightly with dews, which
lie glittering on its leaves till morning.
* * * * *
"Yes, there it is!" said Jennie. "I think I could manage with plants, if
it were not for this eternal showering and washing they seem to require
to keep them fresh. They are always tempting one to spatter the carpet
and surrounding furniture, which are not equally benefited by the
libation."
"It is partly for that very reason," I replied, "that the plan of 'our
house' provides for the introduction of Mother Earth, as you will see."
* * * * *
A perfect house, according to my idea, should always include in it a
little compartment where plants can be kept, can be watered, can be
defended from the dust, and have the sunshine and all the conditions of
growth.
People have generally supposed a conservatory to be one of the last
trappings of wealth,--something not to be thought of for those in modest
circumstances. But is this so? You have a bow-window in your parlor.
Leave out the flooring, fill the space with rich earth, close it from
the parlor by glass doors, and you have room for enough plants and
flowers to keep you gay and happy all winter. If on the south side,
where the sunbeams have power, it requires no heat but that which warms
the parlor, and the comfort of it is incalculable, and the expense a
mere trifle greater than that of the bow-window alone.
In larger houses a larger space might be appropriated in this way. We
will not call it a conservatory, because that name suggests ideas of
gardeners and mysteries of culture and rare plants which bring all sorts
of care and expense in their train. We would rather call it a greenery,
a room floored with earth, with glass sides to admit the sun,--and let
it open on as many other rooms of the house as possible.
Why should not the dining-room and parlor be all winter connected by a
spot of green and flowers, with plants, mosses, and ferns for the
shadowy portions, and such simple blooms as petunias and nasturtiums
garlanding the sunny portion near the windows? If near the waterworks,
this greenery might be enlivened by the play of a fountain, whose
constant spray would give that softness to the air which is so often
burned away by the dry heat of the furnace.
* * * * *
"And do you really think, papa, that houses built in this way are a
practical result to be aimed at?" said Jennie. "To me it seems like a
dream of the Alhambra."
"Yet I happen to have seen real people in our day living in just such a
house," said I. "I could point you, this very hour, to a cottage, which
in style of building is the plainest possible, which unites many of the
best ideas of a true house. My dear, can you sketch the ground-plan of
that house we saw in Brighton?"
"Here it is," said my wife, after a few dashes with her pencil,--"an
inexpensive house, yet one of the pleasantest I ever saw."
[Illustration: _c_, China-closet. _p_, Passage. _d_, Kitchen-closet.]
"This cottage, which might, at the rate of prices before the war, have
been built for five thousand dollars, has many of the requirements which
I seek for a house. It has two stories, and a tier of very pleasant
attic-rooms, two bathing-rooms, and the water carried into each story.
The parlor and dining-room both look into a little bower, where a
fountain is ever playing into a little marble basin, and which all the
year through has its green and bloom. It is heated simply from the
furnace by a register, like any other room of the house, and requires no
more care than a delicate woman could easily give. The brightness and
cheerfulness it brings during our long, dreary winters is incredible."
* * * * *
But one caution is necessary in all such appendages. The earth must be
thoroughly underdrained to prevent the vapors of stagnant water, and
have a large admixture of broken charcoal to obviate the consequences of
vegetable decomposition. Great care must be taken that there be no
leaves left to fall and decay on the ground, since vegetable exhalations
poison the air. With these precautions such a plot will soften and
purify the air of a house.
Where the means do not allow even so small a conservatory, a recessed
window might be fitted with a deep box, which should have a drain-pipe
at the bottom, and a thick layer of broken charcoal and gravel, with a
mixture of fine wood-soil and sand for the top stratum. Here ivies may
be planted, which will run and twine and strike their little tendrils
here and there, and give the room in time the aspect of a bower; the
various greenhouse nasturtiums will make winter gorgeous with blossoms.
In windows unblest by sunshine--and, alas, such are many!--one can
cultivate ferns and mosses; the winter-growing ferns, of which there are
many varieties, can be mixed with mosses and woodland flowers.
Early in February, when the cheerless frosts of winter seem most
wearisome, the common blue violet, wood-anemone, hepatica, or
rock-columbine, if planted in this way, will begin to bloom. The common
partridge-berry, with its brilliant scarlet fruit and dark green leaves,
will also grow finely in such situations, and have a beautiful effect.
These things require daily showering to keep them fresh, and the
moisture arising from them will soften and freshen the too dry air of
heated winter rooms.
* * * * *
Thus I have been through my four essential elements in
house-building,--air, fire, water, and earth. I would provide for these
before anything else. After they are secured, I would gratify my taste
and fancy as far as possible in other ways. I quite agree with Bob in
hating commonplace houses, and longing for some little bit of
architectural effect, and I grieve profoundly that every step in that
direction must cost so much. I have also a taste for niceness of finish.
I have no objection to silver-plated door-locks and hinges, none to
windows which are an entire plate of clear glass; I congratulate
neighbors who are so fortunate as to be able to get them, and after I
had put all the essentials into a house, I would have these too, if I
had the means.
But if all my wood-work were to be without groove or moulding, if my
mantels were to be of simple wood, if my doors were all to be
machine-made, and my lumber of the second quality, I would have my
bath-rooms, my conservatory, my sunny bow-windows, and my perfect
ventilation,--and my house would then be so pleasant, and every one in
it in such a cheerful mood, that it would verily seem to be ceiled with
cedar.
Speaking of ceiling with cedar, I have one thing more to say. We
Americans have a country abounding in beautiful timber, of whose
beauties we know nothing, on account of the pernicious and stupid habit
of covering it with white paint.
The celebrated zebra-wood with its golden stripes cannot exceed in
quaint beauty the grain of unpainted chestnut, prepared simply with a
coat or two of oil. The butternut has a rich golden brown, the very
darling color of painters,--a shade so rich, and grain so beautiful,
that it is of itself as charming to look at as a rich picture. The
black-walnut, with its heavy depth of tone, works in well as an adjunct;
and as to oak, what can we say enough of its quaint and many shadings?
Even common pine, which has been considered not decent to look upon till
hastily shrouded in a friendly blanket of white paint, has, when oiled
and varnished, the beauty of satin-wood. The second quality of pine,
which has what are called _shakes_ in it, under this mode of treatment
often shows clouds and veins equal in beauty to the choicest woods. The
cost of such a finish is greatly less than that of the old method, and
it saves those days and weeks of cleaning which are demanded by white
paint, while its general tone is softer and more harmonious. Experiments
in color may be tried in the combination of these woods, which at small
expense produce the most charming effects.
As to paper-hangings, we are proud to say that our American
manufacturers now furnish all that can be desired. There are some
branches of design where artistic, ingenious France must still excel
us,--but whoso has a house to fit up, let him first look at what his own
country has to show, and he will be astonished.
There is one topic in house-building on which I would add a few words.
The difficulty of procuring and keeping good servants, which must long
be one of our chief domestic troubles, warns us so to arrange our houses
that we shall need as few as possible. There is the greatest conceivable
difference in the planning and building of houses as to the amount of
work which will be necessary to keep them in respectable condition. Some
houses require a perfect staff of house-maids;--there are plated hinges
to be rubbed, paint to be cleaned, with intricacies of moulding and
carving which daily consume hours of dusting to preserve them from a
slovenly look. Simple finish, unpainted wood, a general distribution of
water through the dwelling, will enable a very large house to be cared
for by one pair of hands, and yet maintain a creditable appearance.
In kitchens one servant may perform the work of two by a close packing
of all the conveniences for cooking and such arrangements as shall save
time and steps. Washing-day may be divested of its terrors by suitable
provisions for water, hot and cold, by wringers, which save at once the
strength of the linen and of the laundress, and by drying-closets
connected with ranges, where articles can in a few moments be perfectly
dried. These, with the use of a small mangle, such as is now common in
America, reduce the labors of the laundry one-half.
There are many more things which might be said of "our house," and
Christopher may, perhaps, find some other opportunity to say them. For
the present his pen is tired and ceaseth.