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 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:
_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
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 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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XII.
HOME RELIGION.
IT was Sunday evening, and our little circle were convened by my
study-fireside, where a crackling hickory fire proclaimed the fall of
the year to be coming on, and cold weather impending. Sunday evenings,
my married boys and girls are fond of coming home and gathering round
the old hearthstone, and “making believe” that they are children again.
We get out the old-fashioned music-books, and sing old hymns to very old
tunes, and my wife and her matron daughters talk about the babies in the
intervals; and we discourse of the sermon, and of the choir, and all the
general outworks of good pious things which Sunday suggests.
“Papa,” said Marianne, “you are closing up your House and Home Papers,
are you not?”
“Yes,—I am come to the last one, for this year at least.”
“My dear,” said my wife, “there is one subject you haven’t touched on
yet; you ought not to close the year without it; no house and home can
be complete without Religion: you should write a paper on Home
Religion.”
My wife, as you may have seen in these papers, is an old-fashioned
woman, something of a conservative. I am, I confess, rather given to
progress and speculation; but I feel always as if I were going on in
these ways with a string round my waist, and my wife’s hand steadily
pulling me back into the old paths. My wife is a steady, Bible-reading,
Sabbath-keeping woman, cherishing the memory of her fathers, and loving
to do as they did,—believing, for the most part, that the paths well
beaten by righteous feet are safest, even though much walking therein
has worn away the grass and flowers. Nevertheless, she has an indulgent
ear for all that gives promise of bettering anybody or anything, and
therefore is not severe on any new methods that may arise in our
progressive days of accomplishing old good objects.
“There must be a home religion,” said my wife.
“I believe in home religion,” said Bob Stephens,—“but not in the outward
show of it. The best sort of religion is that which one keeps at the
bottom of his heart, and which goes up thence quietly through all his
actions, and not the kind that comes through a certain routine of forms
and ceremonies. Do you suppose family prayers, now, and a blessing at
meals, make people any better?”
“Depend upon it, Robert,” said my wife,—she always calls him Robert on
Sunday evenings,—“depend upon it, we are not so very much wiser than our
fathers were, that we need depart from their good old ways. Of course I
would have religion in the heart, and spreading quietly through the
life; but does this interfere with those outward, daily acts of respect
and duty which we owe to our Creator? It is too much the slang of our
day to decry forms, and to exalt the excellency of the spirit in
opposition to them; but tell me, are you satisfied with friendship that
has none of the outward forms of friendship, or love that has none of
the outward forms of love? Are you satisfied of the existence of a
sentiment that has no outward mode of expression? Even the old heathen
had their pieties; they would not begin a feast without a libation to
their divinities, and there was a shrine in every well-regulated house
for household gods.”
“The trouble with all these things,” said Bob, “is that they get to be
mere forms. I never could see that family worship amounted to much more
in most families.”
“The outward expression of all good things is apt to degenerate into
mere form,” said I. “The outward expression of social good feeling
becomes a mere form; but for that reason must we meet each other like
oxen? not say, ‘Good morning,’ or ‘Good evening,’ or ‘I am happy to see
you’? Must we never use any of the forms of mutual good-will, except in
those moments when we are excited by a real, present emotion? What would
become of society? Forms are, so to speak, a daguerrotype of a past good
feeling, meant to take and keep the impression of it when it is gone.
Our best and most inspired moments are crystallized in them; and even
when the spirit that created them is gone, they help to bring it back.
Every one must be conscious that the use of the forms of social
benevolence, even towards those who are personally unpleasant to us,
tends to ameliorate prejudices. We see a man entering our door who is a
weary bore, but we use with him those forms of civility which society
prescribes, and feel far kinder to him than if we had shut the door in
his face, and said, ‘Go along, you tiresome fellow!’ Now why does not
this very obvious philosophy apply to better and higher feelings? The
forms of religion are as much more necessary than the forms of
politeness and social good-will as religion is more important than all
other things.”
“Besides,” said my wife, “a form of worship, kept up from year to year
in a family,—the assembling of parents and children for a few sacred
moments each day, though it may be a form many times, especially in the
gay and thoughtless hours of life,—often becomes invested with deep
sacredness in times of trouble, or in those crises that rouse our deeper
feelings. In sickness, in bereavement, in separation, the daily prayer
at home has a sacred and healing power. Then we remember the scattered
and wandering ones; and the scattered and wandering think tenderly of
that hour when they know they are remembered. I know, when I was a young
girl, I was often thoughtless and careless about family-prayers; but now
that my father and mother are gone forever, there is nothing I recall
more often. I remember the great old Family Bible, the hymn-book, the
chair where father used to sit. I see him as he looked bending over that
Bible more than in any other way; and expressions and sentences in his
prayers which fell unheeded on my ears in those days have often come
back to me like comforting angels. We are not aware of the influence
things are having on us till we have left them far behind in years. When
we have summered and wintered them, and look back on them from changed
times and other days, we find that they were making their mark upon us,
though we knew it not.”
“I have often admired,” said I, “the stateliness and regularity of
family worship in good old families in England,—the servants, guests,
and children all assembled,—the reading of the Scriptures and the daily
prayers by the master or mistress of the family, ending with the united
repetition of the Lord’s Prayer by all.”
“No such assemblage is possible in our country,” said Bob. “Our servants
are for the most part Roman Catholics, and forbidden by their religion
to join with us in acts of worship.”
“The greater the pity,” said I. “It is a pity that all Christians who
can conscientiously repeat the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer
together should for any reason be forbidden to do so. It would do more
to harmonize our families, and promote good feeling between masters and
servants, to meet once a day on the religious ground common to both,
than many sermons on reciprocal duties.”
“But while the case is so,” said Marianne, “we can’t help it. Our
servants cannot unite with us; our daily prayers are something forbidden
to them.”
“We cannot in this country,” said I, “give to family prayer that solemn
stateliness which it has in a country where religion is a civil
institution, and masters and servants, as a matter of course, belong to
one church. Our prayers must resemble more a private interview with a
father than a solemn act of homage to a king. They must be more intimate
and domestic. The hour of family devotion should be the children’s
hour,—held dear as the interval when the busy father drops his business
and cares, and, like Jesus of old, takes the little ones in his arms and
blesses them. The child should remember it as the time when the father
always seemed most accessible and loving. The old family worship of New
England lacked this character of domesticity and intimacy,—it was
stately and formal, distant and cold; but whatever were its defects, I
cannot think it an improvement to leave it out altogether, as too many
good sort of people in our day are doing. There may be practical
religion where its outward daily forms are omitted, but there is
assuredly no more of it for the omission. No man loves God and his
neighbor _less_, is a _less_ honest and good man, for daily prayers in
his household,—the chances are quite the other way; and if the spirit of
love rules the family hour, it may prove the source and spring of all
that is good through the day. It seems to be a solemn duty in the
parents thus to make the Invisible Fatherhood real to their children,
who can receive this idea at first only through outward forms and
observances. The little one thus learns that his father has a Father in
heaven, and that the earthly life he is living is only a sacrament and
emblem,—a type of the eternal life which infolds it, and of more lasting
relations there. Whether, therefore, it be the silent grace and silent
prayer of the Friends, or the form of prayer of ritual churches, or the
extemporaneous outpouring of those whose habits and taste lead them to
extempore prayer,—in one of these ways there should be daily outward and
visible acts of worship in every family.”
“Well, now,” said Bob, “about this old question of Sunday-keeping,
Marianne and I are much divided. I am always for doing something that
she thinks isn’t the thing.”
“Well, you see,” said Marianne, “Bob is always talking against our old
Puritan fathers, and saying all manner of hard things about them. He
seems to think that all their ways and doings must of course have been
absurd. For my part, I don’t think we are in any danger of being too
strict about anything. It appears to me that in this country there is a
general tendency to let all sorts of old forms and observances float
down-stream, and yet nobody seems quite to have made up his mind what
shall come next.”