* * * * *
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 Jenny.
"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 nerves, 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 rigor from being
obliged, in the midst of hardships, to sleep constantly in the open
air. Now the first problem in housebuilding is to combine the
advantage of shelter with the fresh elasticity of outdoor 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 housebuilding 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 bedroom 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 bedrooms 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 ramble 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 bedrooms 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 the whirling snowstorms 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 snowbird, 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 Jenny, "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 outdoor air is admitted by another. In
winter, this outdoor 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 outdoor 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, outdoor 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 mantles 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 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 Jenny. "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 traveler would gather in passing through our
villages would be this," said I, "that the people live in their houses
and in the dark. Barely 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 Jenny, "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 last have the light and air to console us
under them. People darken their rooms and shut up every avenue of
outdoor 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 Jenny. "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 light 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, outdoor 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 need; 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-be's_ 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 housebuilding. 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-be's_, 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 finishing 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 skillfully 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 Jenny, "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 escape 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 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 farmhouse 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 Jenny. "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 water-works, 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 Jenny. "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: House Blueprint]
"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 unblessed 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
housebuilding,--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 have 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 combinations 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 housebuilding 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 housemaids: 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.