<tution 
 
 THE WRITINGS OF 
 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 
 
 WITH BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTIONS 
 
 PORTRAITS, AND OTHER 
 
 ILL USTRA TIONS 
 
 IN SIXTEEN VOLUMES 
 VOLUME VIII 
 

wcctiet 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN & CO, 
 
HOUSEHOLD PAPERS 
 
 AND STORIES 
 
 BY 
 
 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 
 
 II 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
Copyright, 18G8, 
 BY TICKNOE & FIELDS. 
 
 Copyright, 1364, 1892, 1896, 
 BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 
 
 Copyright, 1896, 
 BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghtou & Co. 
 
CONTENTS /V> ft 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE .. ^f ...... vii 
 
 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS \^^f 
 
 I. THE RAVAGES OF A CARPET 1 
 
 * II. HOMEKEEPING VS. HOUSEKEEPING 16 
 
 ^TrTT^WHAT is A HOME ? 33 
 
 IV. THE ECONOMY OF THE BEAUTIFUL 54 
 
 V. RAKING UP THE FIRE 69 
 
 VI. THE LADY WHO DOES HER OWN WORK .... 85 
 
 VII. WHAT CAN BE GOT IN AMERICA 101 
 
 VIII. ECONOMY 112 
 
 IX. SERVANTS 133 
 
 X. COOKERY 153 
 
 XI. OUR HOUSE 182 
 
 XII. HOME RELIGION 212 
 
 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER ^\>"$ 
 
 ^ WHAT WILL You DO WITH HER ? OR, THE WOMAN QUES 
 TION 2.31 
 
 ^ft. WOMAN S SPHERE 249 
 
 III. A FAMILY TALK ON RECONSTRUCTION .... 274 
 
 "ir Is WOMAN A WORKER ? 300 
 
 V. THE TRANSITION 316 
 
 VI. BODILY RELIGION: A SERMON ON GOOD HEALTH . . 330 
 
 VII. HOW SHALL WE ENTERTAIN OUR COMPANY ? . . . 347 
 
 VIII. HOW SHALL WE BE AMUSED ? 362 
 
 IX. DKESS, OR WHO MAKES THE FASHIONS .... 374 
 
 X. WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF BEAUTY IN DRESS ? . . 395 
 
 XI. THE CATHEDRAL 412 
 
 XII. THE NEW YEAR 425 
 
 XIII. THE NOBLE ARMY OF MARTYRS 438 
 
 OUR SECOND GIRL 449 
 
 A SCHOLAR S ADVENTURES IN THE COUNTRY . . 473 
 
 TRIALS OF A HOUSEKEEPER 487 
 
 The frontispiece is from a photograph of Mrs. Stowe taken in 1884. The 
 vignette of Mrs. Stowe s later Hartford home is from a drawing by Charles 
 Copeland. 
 
INTEODUCTOKY NOTE 
 
 MKS. STOWE had early and very practical acquaintance 
 with the art of housekeeping. It strikes one at first as a 
 little incongruous that an author who devoted her great 
 powers to stirring the conscience of a nation should from 
 time to time, and at one period especially, give her mind 
 to the ordering of family life, but a moment s consideration 
 will show that the same woman was earnestly at the bottom 
 of each effort. In a letter to the late Lord Denman, written 
 in 1853, Mrs. Stowe, speaking of Uncle Tom s Cabin, said : 
 " I wrote what I did because, as a woman, as a mother, I 
 was oppressed and heartbroken with the sorrows and in 
 justice which I saw, and because, as a Christian, I felt the 
 dishonor to Christianity. " Not under the stress of pas 
 sionate emotion, yet largely from a sense of real responsi 
 bility as a woman, a mother, and a Christian, she occupied 
 herself with those concerns of every-day life which so dis 
 tinctly appeal to a woman s mind. How to order a house 
 hold, how to administer that little kingdom over which a 
 woman rules, and, above all, how to make family life stable, 
 pure, and conservative of the highest happiness, these were 
 the questions which she asked herself constantly, and which 
 she tried to solve, not only incidentally in her fiction, but 
 directly in her essays, and in that field of one tenth fiction 
 and nine tenths didacticism, which constitutes most of the 
 present volume. 
 
 A Scholar s Adventures in the Country and Trials of a 
 Housekeeper appeared in the miscellany to which she gave 
 the name of The Mayflower, and reflect humorously the 
 
viii INTRODUCTORY NOTE 
 
 Cincinnati experiences which again are playfully recounted 
 in letters published in her son s Life. The former, con 
 tributed in 1850 to The National Era, was drawn pretty 
 closely from the experiments of Professor Stowe. It is 
 noticeable that in this paper and in Our Second Girl, 
 which was contributed to The Atlantic Monthly for Janu 
 ary, 1868, the author poses as the masculine member of 
 the household, as if this assumption gave her some advan 
 tage in the point of view. At any rate, she adopted the 
 same role when she came more deliberately to survey a wide 
 field in a series of articles. 
 
 The House and Home Papers were contributed first to 
 The Atlantic Monthly, and afterward published in book 
 form as the production of one Christopher Crowfield, 
 though there was not the slightest attempt otherwise at 
 disguising the authorship. The immediate occasion of the 
 papers was no doubt the removal of the Stowes from 
 Andover and their establishment in Hartford, an event 
 which took place shortly before the papers began to appear 
 in The Atlantic. The years which followed during the 
 first Hartford residence saw also a marriage in the family 
 and new problems of daily life constantly presenting them 
 selves, so that a similar series appeared in the same maga 
 zine, purporting to be from the same householder, entitled 
 The Chimney Corner. This series, indeed, entered rather 
 more seriously into questions of social morality, and deep 
 ened in feeling as it proceeded. The eleventh section is a 
 \varm appreciation of the woman who figured so largely in 
 Mrs. Stowe s early life, and the last two papers rose, as the 
 reader will see, to the height of national memories. Mrs. 
 Fields has preserved for us, in her Days with Mrs. Stowe, 
 a striking record of the mingling of the great and the near 
 in this writer s mind. The period of which she writes is 
 that in which The Chimney Corner series was drawing to a 
 close : 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE ix 
 
 " In the autumn of 1864 she wrote : I feel I need to 
 write in these days, to keep me from thinking of things that 
 make me dizzy and blind, and fill my eyes with tears, so 
 that I cannot see the paper. I mean such things as are 
 being done where our heroes are dying as Shaw died. It 
 is not wise that all our literature should run in a rut cut 
 through our hearts and red with our blood. I feel the 
 need of a little gentle household merriment and talk of 
 common things, to indulge which I have devised the fol 
 lowing. 
 
 " Notwithstanding her view of the need, and her skill 
 fully devised plans to meet it, she soon sent another epistle, 
 showing how impossible it was to stem the current of her 
 thought : 
 
 " November 29, 1864. 
 " Mr DEAR FRIEND, 
 
 " * I have sent my New Year s article, the result of one of 
 those peculiar experiences which sometimes occur to us 
 writers. I had planned an article, gay, sprightly, wholly 
 domestic ; but as I began and sketched the pleasant home 
 and quiet fireside, an irresistible impulse wrote for me what 
 followed, an offering of sympathy to the suffering and 
 agonized, whose homes have forever been darkened. Many 
 causes united at once to force on me this vision, from which 
 generally I shrink, but which sometimes will not be denied, 
 will make itself felt. 
 
 " Just before I went to New York two of my earliest and 
 most intimate friends lost their oldest sons, captains and 
 majors, splendid fellows physically and morally, beautiful, 
 brave, religious, uniting the courage of soldiers to the faith of 
 martyrs, and when I went to Brooklyn it seemed as if I were 
 hearing some such thing almost every day ; and Henry, in his 
 profession as minister, has so many letters full of imploring 
 anguish, the cry of hearts breaking that ask help of him. "... 
 
HOUSEHOLD PAPERS AND STORIES 
 
 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 I 
 
 THE RAVAGES OF A CARPET 
 
 " MY dear, it 7 s so cheap ! " 
 
 These words were spoken by my wife, as she sat grace 
 fully on a roll of Brussels carpet which was spread out in 
 flowery lengths on the floor of Messrs. Ketchem & Co. 
 
 " It s so cheap ! 
 
 Milton says that the love of fame is the last infirmity of 
 noble minds. I think he had not rightly considered the 
 subject. I believe that last infirmity is the love of getting 
 things cheap ! Understand me, now. I don t mean the 
 love of getting cheap things, by which one understands 
 showy, trashy, ill-made, spurious articles, bearing certain 
 apparent resemblances to better things. All really sensible 
 people are quite superior to that sort of cheapness. But 
 those fortunate accidents, which put within the power of a 
 man things really good and valuable for half or a third of 
 their value, what mortal virtue and resolution can with 
 stand ? My friend Brown has a genuine Murillo, the joy 
 of his heart and the light of his eyes, but he never fails to 
 tell you, as its crowning merit, how he bought it in South 
 America for just nothing, how it hung smoky and 
 deserted in the back of a counting-room, and was thrown in 
 
2 HOUSE AND HOME TAPERS 
 
 as a makeweight to bind a bargain, and, upon being cleaned 
 turned out a genuine Murillo; and then he takes out his 
 cigar, and calls your attention to the points in it ; he adjusts 
 the curtain to let the sunlight fall just in the right spot ; 
 he takes you to this and the other point of view ; and all 
 this time you must confess that, in your mind as well as 
 his, the consideration that he got all this beauty for ten 
 dollars adds lustre to the painting. Brown has paintings 
 there for which he paid his thousands, and, being well 
 advised, they are worth the thousands he paid ; but this 
 ewe lamb that he got for nothing always gives him a secret 
 exaltation in ;hic own eyes. He seems to have credited to 
 himself .personally merit to the amount of what he should 
 have paid fer the picture. Then there is Mrs. Croesus, at 
 the party yesterday evening, expatiating to my wife on the 
 surprising cheapness of her point-lace set. " Got for just 
 nothing at all, my dear ! " and a circle of admiring listeners 
 echoes the sound. " Did you ever hear anything like it ? 
 I never heard of such a thing in my life ; " and away sails 
 Mrs. Croesus as if she had a collar composed of all the car 
 dinal virtues. In fact, she is buoyed up with a secret sense 
 of merit, so that her satin slippers scarcely touch the carpet. 
 Even I myself am fond of showing a first edition of " Para 
 dise Lost " for which I gave a shilling in a London book 
 stall, and stating that I would not take a hundred dollars 
 for it. Even I must confess there are points on which I 
 am mortal. 
 
 But all this while my wife sits on her roll of carpet, 
 looking into my face for approbation, and Marianne and 
 Jenny are pouring into my ear a running fire of " How 
 sweet ! How lovely ! Just like that one of Mrs. Twee- 
 dleum s ! " 
 
 " And she gave two dollars and seventy-five cents a yard 
 for hers, and this is " 
 
 My wife here put her hand to her mouth and pronounced 
 
THE RAVAGES OF A CARPET 3 
 
 the incredible sum in a whisper, with a species of sacred 
 awe, common, as I have observed, to females in such inter 
 esting crises. In fact Mr. Ketchem, standing smiling and 
 amiable by, remarked to me that really he hoped Mrs. Crow- 
 field would not name generally what she gave for the arti 
 cle, for positively it was so far below the usual rate of 
 prices that he might give offense to other customers ; but 
 this was the very last of the pattern, and they were anxious 
 to close off the old stock, and we had always traded with 
 them, and he had a great respect for my wife s father, who 
 had always traded with their firm, and so, when there were 
 any little bargains to be thrown in any one s way, why, 
 he naturally, of course And here Mr. Ketchem bowed 
 gracefully over the yardstick to my wife, and I consented. 
 
 Yes, I consented ; but whenever I think of myself at 
 that moment, I always am reminded, in a small way, of 
 Adam taking the apple ; and my wife, seated on that roll 
 of carpet, has more than once suggested to my mind the 
 classic image of Pandora opening her unlucky box. In 
 fact, from the moment I had blandly assented to Mr. 
 Ketchem s remarks, and said to my wife, with a gentle air 
 of dignity, " Well, my dear, since it suits you, I think you 
 had better take it," there came a load on my prophetic 
 soul which not all the fluttering and chattering of my 
 delighted girls and the more placid complacency of my 
 wife could entirely dissipate. I presaged I know not what 
 of coming woe, and all I presaged came to pass. 
 
 In order to know just what came to pass, I must give 
 you a view of the house and home into which this carpet 
 was introduced. 
 
 My wife and I were somewhat advanced housekeepers, 
 and our dwelling was first furnished by her father, in the 
 old-fashioned jog-trot days when furniture was made with 
 a view to its lasting from generation to generation. Every 
 thing was strong and comfortable, heavy mahogany, 
 
4 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 guiltless of the modern device of veneering, and hewed out 
 with a square solidity which had not an idea of change. It 
 was, so to speak, a sort of granite foundation of the house 
 hold structure. Then we commenced housekeeping with 
 the full idea that our house was a thing to he lived in, and 
 that furniture was made to be used. That most sensible 
 of women, Mrs. Crowfield, agreed fully with me that in 
 our house there was to be nothing too good for ourselves, 
 no room shut up in holiday attire to be enjoyed by strangers 
 for three or four days in the year, while we lived in holes 
 and corners ; no best parlor from which we were to be 
 excluded ; no silver plate to be kept in the safe in the 
 bank, and brought home only in case of a grand festival, 
 while our daily meals were served with dingy Britannia. 
 " Strike a broad, plain average," I said to my wife ; "have 
 everything abundant, serviceable, and give all our friends 
 exactly what we have ourselves, no better and no worse ; " 
 and my wife smiled approval on my sentiment. 
 
 Smile ? she did more than smile. My wife resembles one 
 of those convex mirrors I have sometimes seen. Every idea 
 I threw out, plain and simple, she reflected back upon me 
 in a thousand little glitters and twinkles of her own ; she 
 made my crude conceptions come back to me in such per 
 fectly dazzling performances that I hardly recognized them. 
 My mind warms up when I think what a home that wo 
 man made of our house from the very first day she moved 
 into it. The great, large, airy parlor, with its ample bow- 
 window, when she had arranged it, seemed a perfect trap to 
 catch sunbeams. There was none of that discouraging trim- 
 ness and newness that often repel a man s bachelor friends 
 after the first call, and make them feel, " Oh, well, one 
 cannot go in at Crowfield s now, unless one is dressed ; one 
 might put them out." The first thing our parlor said to 
 any one was, that we were not people to be put out, that we 
 were widespread, easy-going, and jolly folk. Even if Tom 
 
THE RAVAGES OF A CARPET 5 
 
 Brown brought in Ponto and his shooting-bag, there was 
 nothing in that parlor to strike terror into man and dog ; 
 for it was written on the face of things that everybody 
 there was to do just as he or she pleased. There were my 
 books and my writing-table spread out with all its miscella 
 neous confusion of papers on one side of the fireplace, and 
 there were my wife s great, ample sofa and work-table on 
 the other ; there I wrote my articles for the u North Ameri 
 can ; " and there she turned and ripped and altered her 
 dresses ; and there lay crochet and knitting and embroidery 
 side by side with a weekly basket of family mending, and 
 in neighborly contiguity with the last book of the season, 
 which my wife turned over as she took her after-dinner 
 lounge on the sofa. And in the bow-window were canaries 
 always singing, and a great stand of plants always fresh and 
 blooming, and ivy which grew and clambered and twined 
 about the pictures. Best of all, there was in our parlor 
 that household altar, the blazing wood fire, whose whole 
 some, hearty crackle is the truest household inspiration. I 
 quite agree with one celebrated American author who holds 
 that an open fireplace is an altar of patriotism. Would our 
 Revolutionary fathers have gone barefooted and bleeding 
 over snows to defend air-tight stoves and cooking-ranges ? 
 I trow not. It was the memory of the great open kitchen- 
 fire, with its back log and fore stick of cord-wood, its roaring, 
 hilarious voice of invitation, its dancing tongues of flame, 
 that called to them through the snows of that dreadful 
 winter to keep up their courage, that made their hearts 
 warm and bright with a thousand reflected memories. Our 
 neighbors said that it was delightful to sit by our fire, 
 but then, for their part, they could not afford it, wood was 
 so ruinously dear, and all that. Most of these people could 
 not, for the simple reason that they felt compelled, in order 
 to maintain the family dignity, to keep up a parlor with 
 great pomp and circumstance of upholstery, where they sat 
 
6 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 only on dress occasions, and of course the wood fire was out 
 of the question. 
 
 When children began to make their appearance in our 
 establishment, my wife, like a well-conducted housekeeper, 
 had the best of nursery arrangements, a room all warmed, 
 lighted, and ventilated, and abounding in every proper 
 resource of amusement to the rising race ; but it was 
 astonishing to see how, notwithstanding this, the centripetal 
 attraction drew every pair of little pattering feet to our 
 parlor. 
 
 " My dear, why don t you take your blocks upstairs ? " 
 
 " I want to be where oo are," said with a piteous under 
 lip, was generally a most convincing answer. 
 
 Then the small people could not be disabused of the idea 
 that certain chief treasures of their own would be safer 
 under papa s writing-table or mamma s sofa than in the 
 safest closet of their domains. My writing-table was dock 
 yard for Arthur s new ship, and stable for little Tom s 
 pepper-and-salt-colored pony, and carriage-house for Charley s 
 new wagon, while whole armies of paper dolls kept house in 
 the recess behind mamma s sofa. 
 
 And then, in due time, came the tribe of pets who 
 followed the little ones and rejoiced in the blaze of the fire 
 light. The boys had a splendid Newfoundland, which, 
 knowing our weakness, we warned them with awful gravity 
 was never to be a parlor dog ; but somehow, what with 
 little beggings and pleadings on the part of Arthur and Tom, 
 and the piteous melancholy with which Hover would look 
 through the window-panes when shut out from the blazing 
 warmth into the dark, cold veranda, it at last came to pass 
 that Rover gained a regular corner at the hearth, a regular 
 status in every family convocation. And then came a little 
 black-and-tan English terrier for the girls ; and then a fleecy 
 poodle, who established himself on the corner of my wife s 
 sofa ; and for each of these some little voice pleaded, and 
 
THE RAVAGES OF A CARPET 7 
 
 some little heart would be so near broken at any slight that 
 my wife and I resigned ourselves to live in a menagerie, the 
 more so as we were obliged to confess a lurking weakness 
 towards these four-footed children ourselves. 
 
 So we grew and flourished together, children, dogs, 
 birds, flowers, and all ; and although my wife often, in 
 paroxysms of housewifeliness to which the best of women 
 are subject, would declare that we never were fit to be 
 seen, yet I comforted her with the reflection that there 
 were few people whose friends seemed to consider them 
 better worth seeing, judging by the stream of visitors and 
 loungers which was always setting towards our parlor. 
 People seemed to find it good to be there ; they said it was 
 somehow homelike and pleasant, and that there was a kind 
 of charm about it that made it easy to talk and easy to 
 live ; and as my girls and boys grew up, there seemed al 
 ways to be some merry doing or other going on there. 
 Arty and Tom brought home their college friends, who 
 straightway took root there and seemed to fancy themselves 
 a part of us. We had no reception-rooms apart, where the 
 girls were to receive young gentlemen ; all the courting and 
 flirting that were to be done had for their arena the ample 
 variety of surface presented by our parlor, which, with sofas 
 and screens and lounges and recesses, and writing and work 
 tables, disposed here and there, and the genuine laisser 
 alter of the whole menage, seemed, on the whole, to have 
 offered ample advantages enough ; for at the time I write 
 of, two daughters were already established in marriage, while 
 my youngest was busy, as yet, in performing that little 
 domestic ballet of the cat with the mouse, in the case of a 
 most submissive youth of the neighborhood. 
 
 All this time our parlor furniture, though of that grani 
 tic formation I have indicated, began to show marks of that 
 decay to which things sublunary are liable. I cannot say 
 that I dislike this look in a room. Take a fine, ample, 
 
8 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 hospitable apartment, where all things, freely and gener 
 ously used, softly and indefinably grow old together, there 
 is a sort of mellow tone and keeping which pleases my eye. 
 What if the seams of the great inviting armchair, where so 
 many friends have sat and lounged, do grow white ? What, 
 in fact, if some easy couch has an undeniable hole worn in 
 its friendly cover ? I regard with tenderness even these 
 mortal weaknesses of these servants and witnesses of our 
 good times and social fellowship. ISTo vulgar touch wore 
 them ; they may be called, rather, the marks and indenta 
 tions which the glittering in and out of the tide of social 
 happiness has worn in the rocks of our strand. I would 
 no more disturb the gradual toning-down and aging of a 
 well-used set of furniture by smart improvements than I 
 would have a modern dauber paint in emendations in a fine 
 old picture. 
 
 So we men reason, but women do not always think as 
 we do. There is a virulent demon of housekeeping not 
 wholly cast out in the best of them, and which often breaks 
 out in unguarded moments. In fact Miss Marianne, being 
 on the lookout for furniture wherewith to begin a new 
 establishment, and Jenny, who had accompanied her in her 
 peregrinations, had more than once thrown out little dispar 
 aging remarks on the time-worn appearance of our estab 
 lishment, suggesting comparison with those of more modern 
 furnished rooms. 
 
 " It is positively scandalous, the way our furniture looks," 
 I one day heard one of them declaring to her mother; "and 
 this old rag of a carpet ! " 
 
 My feelings were hurt, not the less so that I knew that 
 the large cloth which covered the middle of the floor, and 
 which the women call a booking, had been bought and 
 nailed down there, after a solemn family council, as the 
 best means of concealing the too evident darns which years 
 of good cheer had made needful in our stanch old house- 
 
THE EAVAGES OF A CAKPET 9 
 
 hold friend, the three-ply carpet, made in those days when 
 to be a three-ply was a pledge of continuance and service. 
 
 Well, it was a joyous and bustling day when, after one 
 of those domestic whirlwinds which the women are fond of 
 denominating house-cleaning, the new Brussels carpet was 
 at length brought in and nailed down, and its beauty 
 praised from mouth to mouth. Our old friends called in 
 and admired, and all seemed to be well, except that I had 
 that light and delicate presage of changes to come which 
 indefinitely brooded over me. 
 
 The first premonitory symptom was the look of appre 
 hensive suspicion with which the female senate regarded the 
 genial sunbeams that had always glorified our bow-window. 
 
 " This house ought to have inside blinds," said Mari 
 anne, with all the confident decision of youth ; " this carpet 
 will be ruined if that sun is allowed to come in like 
 that." 
 
 " And that dirty little canary must really be hung in the 
 kitchen," said Jenny ; " he always did make such a litter, 
 scattering his seed chippings about ; and he never takes 
 his bath without flirting out some water. And, mamma, it 
 appears to me it will never do to have the plants here. 
 Plants are always either leaking through the pots upon the 
 carpet, or scattering bits of blossoms and dead leaves, or 
 some accident upsets or breaks a pot. It was no matter, 
 you know, when we had the old carpet ; but this we really 
 want to have kept nice." 
 
 Mamma stood her ground for the plants, darlings of 
 her heart for many a year, but temporized, and showed 
 that disposition towards compromise which is most inviting 
 to aggression. 
 
 I confess I trembled ; for, of all radicals on earth, none 
 are to be compared to females that have once in hand a 
 course of domestic innovation and reform. The sacred fire, 
 the divine furor, burns in their bosoms ; they become perfect 
 
10 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 Pythonesses, and every chair they sit on assumes the magic 
 properties of the tripod. Hence the dismay that lodges in 
 the bosoms of us males at the fateful spring and autumn 
 seasons denominated house-cleaning. Who can say whither 
 the awful gods, the prophetic fates, may drive our fair 
 household divinities ; what sins of ours may be brought to 
 light ; what indulgences and compliances, which uninspired 
 woman has granted in her ordinary mortal hours, may be 
 torn from us ? He who has been allowed to keep a pair of 
 pet slippers in a concealed corner, and by the fireside in 
 dulged with a chair which he might ad libitum fill with 
 all sorts of pamphlets and miscellaneous literature, suddenly 
 finds himself reformed out of knowledge, his pamphlets 
 tucked away into pigeonholes and corners, and his slippers 
 put in their place in the hall, with, perhaps, a brisk insinu 
 ation about the shocking dust and disorder that men will 
 tolerate. 
 
 The fact was, that the very first night after the advent 
 of the new carpet I had a prophetic dream. Among our 
 treasures of art was a little etching, by an English artist 
 friend, the subject of which was the gambols of the house 
 hold fairies in a baronial library after the household were 
 in bed. The little people are represented in every attitude 
 of frolic enjoyment. Some escalade the great armchair, 
 and look down from its top as from a domestic Mont Blanc ; 
 some climb about the bellows ; some scale the shaft of the 
 shovel ; while some, forming in magic ring, dance festively 
 on the yet glowing hearth. Tiny troops promenade the 
 writing-table. One perches himself quaintly on the top of 
 the inkstand, and holds colloquy with another who sits 
 cross-legged on a paper weight, while a companion looks 
 down on them from the top of the sandbox. It was an 
 ingenious little device, and gave me the idea, which I often 
 expressed to my wife, that much of the peculiar feeling of 
 security, composure, and enjoyment which seems to be the 
 
THE RAVAGES OF A CARPET 11 
 
 atmosphere of some rooms and houses came from the unsus 
 pected presence of these little people, the household fairies, 
 so that the belief in their existence became a solemn article 
 of faith with me. 
 
 Accordingly, that evening, after the installation of the 
 carpet, when my wife and daughters had gone to bed, as I 
 sat with my slippered feet before the last coals of the fire, 
 I fell asleep in my chair, and, lo ! my own parlor presented 
 to my eye a scene of busy life. The little people in green 
 were tripping to and fro, but in great confusion. Evidently 
 something was wrong among them ; for they were fussing 
 and chattering with each other, as if preparatory to a general 
 movement. In the region of the bow-window I observed a 
 tribe of them standing with tiny valises and carpetbags in 
 their hands, as though about to depart on a journey. On 
 my writing-table another set stood around my inkstand and 
 pen-rack, who, pointing to those on the floor, seemed to 
 debate some question among themselves ; while others of 
 them appeared to be collecting and packing away in tiny 
 trunks certain fairy treasures, preparatory to a general de 
 parture. When I looked at the social hearth, at my wife s 
 sofa and work-basket, I saw similar appearances of dissatis 
 faction and confusion. It was evident that the household 
 fairies were discussing the question of a general and simul 
 taneous removal. I groaned in spirit, and, stretching out 
 my hand, began a conciliatory address, when whisk went 
 the whole scene from before my eyes, and I awaked to 
 behold the form of my wife asking me if I were ill, or had 
 had the nightmare, that I groaned so. I told her my dream, 
 and we laughed at it together. 
 
 " We must give way to the girls a little," she said. " It 
 is natural, you know, that they should wish us to appear a 
 little as other people do. The fact is, our parlor is some 
 what dilapidated ; think how many years we have lived in 
 it without an article of new furniture." 
 
12 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 " I hate new furniture/ 7 I remarked, in the bitterness of 
 my soul. " I hate anything new." 
 
 My wife answered me discreetly, according to approved 
 principles of diplomacy. I was right. She sympathized 
 with me. At the same time, it was not necessary, she 
 remarked, that we should keep a hole in our sofa-cover and 
 armchair, there would certainly be no harm in sending 
 them to the upholsterer s to be new-covered ; she did n t 
 much mind, for her part, moving her plants to the south 
 back room ; and the bird would do well enough in the 
 kitchen : I had often complained of him for singing vocifer 
 ously when I was reading aloud. 
 
 So our sofa went to the upholsterer s ; but the uphol 
 sterer was struck with such horror at its clumsy, antiquated, 
 unfashionable appearance that he felt bound to make repre 
 sentations to my wife and daughters : positively, it would 
 be better for them to get a new one, of a tempting pattern 
 which he showed them, than to try to do anything with 
 that. With a stitch or so here and there it might do for a 
 basement dining-room ; but, for a parlor, he gave it as his 
 disinterested opinion, he must say, if the case were his 
 own, he should get, etc., etc. In short, we had a new sofa 
 and new chairs, and the plants and the birds were banished, 
 and some dark-green blinds were put up to exclude the sun 
 from the parlor, and the blessed luminary was allowed there 
 only at rare intervals, when my wife and daughters were 
 out shopping, and I acted out my uncivilized male instincts 
 by pulling up every shade and vivifying the apartment as 
 in days of old. 
 
 But this was not the worst of it. The new furniture 
 and new carpet formed an opposition party in the room. I 
 believe in my heart that for every little household fairy 
 that went out with the dear old things there came in a tribe 
 of discontented brownies with the new ones. These little 
 wretches Avere always twitching at the gowns of my wife 
 
THE RAVAGES OF A CARPET 13 
 
 and daughters, jogging their elbows, and suggesting odious 
 comparisons between the smart new articles and what re 
 mained of the old ones. They disparaged my writing-table 
 in the corner ; they disparaged the old-fashioned lounge in 
 the other corner, which had been the maternal throne for 
 years ; they disparaged the work-table, the work-basket, 
 with constant suggestions of how such things as these 
 would look in certain well-kept parlors where new-fashioned 
 furniture of the same sort as ours existed. 
 
 "We don t have any parlor," said Jenny one day. "Our 
 parlor has always been a sort of log cabin, library, study, 
 nursery, greenhouse, all combined. We never have had 
 things like other people. 7 
 
 " Yes, and this open fire makes such a dust ; and this 
 carpet is one that shows every speck of dust ; it keeps one 
 always on the watch." 
 
 " I wonder why papa never had a study to himself ; I m 
 sure I should think he would like it better than sitting here 
 among us all. Now there s the great south room off the 
 dining-room ; if he would only move his things there and 
 have his open fire, we could then close up the fireplace and 
 put lounges in the recesses, and mamma could have her 
 things in the nursery, and then we should have a parlor 
 fit to be seen." 
 
 I overheard all this, though I pretended not to, the 
 little busy chits supposing me entirely buried in the recesses 
 of a German book over which I was poring. 
 
 There are certain crises in a man s life when the female 
 element in his household asserts itself in dominant forms 
 that seem to threaten to overwhelm him. The fair crea 
 tures, who in most matters have depended on his judgment, 
 evidently look upon him at these seasons as only a forlorn, 
 incapable male creature, to be cajoled and flattered and per 
 suaded out of his native blindness and absurdity into the 
 fairyland of their wishes. 
 
14 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 "Of course, mamma, 7 said the busy voices, "men can t 
 understand such things. What can men know of house 
 keeping, and how things ought to look ? Papa never goes 
 into company ; he don t know and don t care how the world 
 is doing, and don t see that nobody now is living as we 
 do." 
 
 "Aha, my little mistresses, are you there?" I thought; 
 and I mentally resolved on opposing a great force of what 
 our politicians call backbone to this pretty domestic con 
 spiracy. 
 
 " When you get my writing-table out of this corner, my 
 pretty dears, I d thank you to let me know it." 
 
 Thus spake I in my blindness, fool that I was. Jupiter 
 might as soon keep awake when Juno came in best bib and 
 tucker, and with the cestus of Venus, to get him to sleep. 
 Poor Slender might as well hope to get the better of pretty 
 Mistress Anne Page as one of us clumsy-footed men might 
 endeavor to escape from the tangled labyrinth of female 
 wiles. 
 
 In short, in less than a year it was all done, without any 
 quarrel, any noise, any violence, done, I scarce knew 
 when or how, but with the utmost deference to my wishes, 
 the most amiable hopes that I would not put myself out, 
 the most sincere protestations that, if I liked it better as it 
 was, my goddesses would give up and acquiesce. In fact I 
 seemed to do it of myself, constrained thereto by what the 
 Emperor Napoleon has so happily called the logic of events, 
 that old, well-known logic by which the man who has 
 once said A must say B, and he who has said B must say 
 the whole alphabet. In a year we had a parlor with two 
 lounges in decorous recesses, a fashionable sofa, and six 
 chairs and a looking-glass, and a grate always shut up, and 
 a hole in the floor which kept the parlor warm, and great, 
 heavy curtains that kept out all the light that was not 
 already excluded by the green shades. 
 
THE RAVAGES OF A CARPET 15 
 
 It was as proper and orderly a parlor as those of our 
 most fashionable neighbors ; and when our friends called, 
 we took them stumbling into its darkened solitude, and 
 opened a faint crack in one of the window-shades, and came 
 down in our best clothes and talked with them there. Our 
 old friends rebelled at this, and asked what they had done 
 to be treated so, and complained so bitterly that gradually 
 we let them into the secret that there was a great south 
 room, which I had taken for my study, where we all sat ; 
 where the old carpet was down ; where the sun shone in at 
 the great window ; where my wife s plants flourished, and 
 the canary-bird sang, and my wife had her sofa in the cor 
 ner, and the old brass andirons glistened, and the wood fire 
 crackled, in short, a room to which all the household 
 fairies had emigrated. 
 
 When they once had found that out, it was difficult to 
 get any of them to sit in our parlor. I had purposely 
 christened the new room my study, that I might stand on 
 my rights as master of ceremonies there, though I opened 
 wide arms of welcome to any who chose to come. So, then, 
 it would often come to pass that, when we were sitting 
 round the fire in my study of an evening, the girls would 
 say, 
 
 " Come, what do we always stay here for ? Why don t 
 we ever sit in the parlor ? " 
 
 And then there would be manifested among guests and 
 family friends a general unwillingness to move. 
 
 " Oh, hang it, girls ! " would Arthur say ; " the parlor is 
 well enough, all right ; let it stay as it is, and let a fellow 
 stay where he can do as he pleases and feels at home ; " and 
 to this view of the matter would respond divers of the 
 nice young bachelors who were Arthur s and Tom s sworn 
 friends. 
 
 In fact nobody wanted to stay in our parlor now. It 
 was a cold, correct, accomplished fact ; the household 
 
16 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 fairies had left it, and when the fairies leave a room, no 
 body ever feels at home in it. No pictures, curtains, no 
 wealth of mirrors, no elegance of lounges, can in the least 
 make up for their absence. They are a capricious little 
 set ; there are rooms where they will not stay, and rooms 
 where they will ; but no one can ever have a good time 
 without them. 
 
 II 
 
 HOMEKEEPING VERSUS HOUSEKEEPING 
 
 I am a frank-hearted man, as perhaps you have by this 
 time perceived, and you will not, therefore, be surprised to 
 know that I read my last article on the carpet to my wife 
 and the girls before I sent it to the " Atlantic," and we had 
 a hearty laugh over it together. My wife and the girls, in 
 fact, felt that they could afford to laugh, for they had car 
 ried their point, their reproach among women was taken 
 away, they had become like other folks. Like other folks 
 they had a parlor, an undeniable best parlor, shut up and 
 darkened, with all proper carpets, curtains, lounges, . and 
 marble-topped tables, too good for human nature s daily 
 food ; and being sustained by this consciousness, they cheer 
 fully went on receiving their friends in the study, and 
 having good times in the old free-and-easy way ; for did 
 not everybody know that this room was not their best ? 
 and if the furniture was old-fashioned and a little the worse 
 for antiquity, was it not certain that they had better, which 
 they could use if they would ? 
 
 " And supposing we wanted to give a party," said Jenny, 
 " how nicely our parlor would light up ! Not that we ever 
 do give parties, but if we should, and for a wedding- 
 reception, you know." 
 
 I felt the force of the necessity j it was evident that the 
 
HOMEKEEPING VERSUS HOUSEKEEPING 17 
 
 four or five hundred extra which we had expended was no 
 more than such solemn possibilities required. 
 
 a Now, papa thinks we have been foolish," said Mari 
 anne, " and he has his own way of making a good story of 
 it ; but, after all, I desire to know if people are never to 
 get a new carpet. Must we keep the old one till it actually 
 wears to tatters ? " 
 
 This is a specimen of the reductio ad absurdum which 
 our fair antagonists of the other sex are fond of employing. 
 They strip what we say of all delicate shadings and illusory 
 phrases, and reduce it to some bare question of fact, with 
 which they make a home-thrust at us. 
 
 " Yes, that s it ; are people never to get a new carpet ? " 
 echoed Jenny. 
 
 " My dears," I replied, " it is a fact that to introduce 
 anything new into an apartment hallowed by many home 
 associations, where all things have grown old together, 
 requires as much care and adroitness as for an architect to 
 restore an arch or niche in a fine old ruin. The fault of our 
 carpet was that it was in another style from everything 
 in our room, and made everything in it look dilapidated. 
 Its colors, material, and air belonged to another manner of 
 life, and were a constant plea for alterations ; and you see 
 it actually drove out and expelled the whole furniture of 
 the room, and I am not sure yet that it may not entail 
 on us the necessity of refurnishing the whole house." 
 
 " My dear ! " said my wife, in a tone of remonstrance ; 
 but Jane and Marianne laughed and colored. 
 
 " Confess, now," said I, looking at them ; " have you not 
 had secret designs on the hall and stair carpet ? " 
 
 " Now, papa, how could you know it ? I only said to 
 Marianne that to have Brussels in the parlor and that old 
 mean-looking ingrain carpet in the hall did not seem ex 
 actly the thing ; and in fact you know, mamma, Messrs. 
 Ketchem & Co. showed us such a lovely pattern, designed 
 to harmonize with our parlor carpet." 
 
18 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 " I know it, girls," said my wife ; " but you know I said 
 at once that such an expense was not to be thought of." 
 
 " Now, girls," said I, " let me tell you a story I heard 
 once of a very sensible old New England minister, who 
 lived, as our country ministers generally do, rather near to 
 the bone, but still quite contentedly. It was in the days 
 when knee-breeches and long stockings were worn, and 
 this good man was offered a present of a very nice pair of 
 black silk hose. He declined, saying he could not afford 
 to wear them. 
 
 " ( Not afford it ? said the friend ; e why, I give them to 
 you. 
 
 " Exactly ; but it will cost me not less than two hundred 
 dollars to take them, and I cannot do it. 
 
 " How is that ? 
 
 " Why, in the first place, I shall no sooner put them on 
 than my wife will say, " My dear, you must have a new 
 pair of knee-breeches," and I shall get them. Then my 
 wife will say, " My dear, how shabby your coat is ! You 
 must have a new one," and I shall get a new coat. Then 
 she will say, " Now, my dear, that hat will never do," and 
 then I shall have a new hat ; and then I shall say, " My 
 dear, it will never do for me to be so fine and you to wear 
 your old gown," and so my wife will get a new gown ; and 
 then the new gown will require a new shawl and a new 
 bonnet ; all of which we shall not feel the need of if I don t 
 take this pair of silk stockings, for, as long as we don t see 
 them, our old things seem very well suited to each other. 
 
 The girls laughed at this story, and I then added, in my 
 most determined manner, 
 
 " But I must warn you, girls, that I have compromised 
 to the utmost extent of my power, and that I intend to 
 plant myself on the old stair carpet in determined resistance. 
 I have no mind to be forbidden the use of the front stairs, 
 or condemned to get up into my bedroom by a private lad- 
 
HOMEKEEPING VERSUS HOUSEKEEPING 19 
 
 der, as I should be immediately if there were a new carpet 
 down." 
 
 " Why, papa ! " 
 
 " Would it not be so ? Can the sun shine in the parlor 
 now for fear of fading the carpet ? Can we keep a fire 
 there for fear of making dust, or use the lounges and sofas 
 for fear of wearing them out ? If you got a new entry and 
 stair carpet, as I said, I should have to be at the expense of 
 another staircase to get up to our bedroom. 7 
 
 " Oh no, papa," said Jane innocently ; " there are very 
 pretty druggets now for covering stair carpets, so that they 
 can be used without hurting them." 
 
 " Put one over the old carpet, then," said I, " and our 
 acquaintance will never know but it is a new one." 
 
 All the female senate laughed at this proposal, and said 
 it sounded just like a man. 
 
 " Well," said I, standing up resolutely for my sex, " a 
 man s ideas on woman s matters may be worth some atten 
 tion. I natter myself that an intelligent, educated man 
 does n t think upon and observe with interest any particular 
 subject for years of his life without gaining some ideas re 
 specting it that are good for something ; at all events, I 
 have written another article for the Atlantic, which I will 
 read to you." 
 
 " Well, wait one minute, papa, till we get our work," 
 said the girls, who, to say the truth, always exhibit a flat 
 tering interest in anything their papa writes, and who have 
 the good taste never to interrupt his readings with any con 
 versations in an undertone on cross-stitch and floss-silks, as 
 the manner of some is. Hence the little feminine bustle of 
 arranging all these matters beforehand. Jane, or Jenny, as 
 I call her in my good-natured moods, put on a fresh clear 
 stick of hickory, of that species denominated shagbark, 
 which is full of most charming slivers, burning with such a 
 clear flame, and emitting such a delicious perfume in burn- 
 
20 HOUSE AND HOME TAPERS 
 
 ing, that I would not change it with the millionaire who 
 kept up his fire with cinnamon. 
 
 You must know, my dear Mr. Atlantic, and you, my 
 confidential friends of the reading public, that there is a 
 certain magic or spiritualism which I have the knack of in 
 regard to these mine articles, in virtue of which my wife 
 and daughters never hear or see the little personalities 
 respecting them which form parts of my papers. By a 
 peculiar arrangement which I have made with the elves of 
 the inkstand and the familiar spirits of the quill, a sort of 
 glamour falls on their eyes and ears when I am reading, or 
 when they read the parts personal to themselves ; other 
 wise their sense of feminine propriety would be shocked at 
 the free way in which they and their most internal affairs 
 are confidentially spoken of between me and you, loving 
 readers. 
 
 Thus, in an undertone, I tell you that my little Jenny, 
 as she is zealously and systematically arranging the fire, and 
 trimly whisking every untidy particle of ashes from the 
 hearth, shows in every movement of her little hands, in the 
 cock of her head, in the knowing, observing glance of her 
 eye, and in all her energetic movements, that her small 
 person is endued and made up of the very expressed essence 
 of housewifeliness, she is the very attar, not of roses, but 
 of housekeeping. Care-taking and thrift and neatness are a 
 nature to her ; she is as dainty and delicate in her person 
 as a white cat, as everlastingly busy as a bee ; and all the 
 most needful faculties of time, weight, measure, and pro 
 portion ought to be fully developed in her skull, if there is 
 any truth in phrenology. Besides all this, she has a sort 
 of hard-grained little vein of common sense, against which 
 my fanciful conceptions and poetical notions are apt to hit 
 with just a little sharp grating, if they are not well put. 
 In fact, this kind of woman needs carefully to be idealized 
 in the process of education, or she will stiffen and dry, as 
 
HOMEKEEPING VERSUS HOUSEKEEPING 21 
 
 she grows old, into a veritable household Pharisee, a sort of 
 domestic tyrant. She needs to be trained in artistic values 
 and artistic weights and measures, to study all the arts and 
 sciences of the beautiful, and then she is charming. Most 
 useful, most needful, these little women : they have the 
 centripetal force which keeps all the domestic planets from 
 gyrating and frisking in unseemly orbits, and, properly 
 trained, they fill a house with the beauty of order, the har 
 mony and consistency of proportion, the melody of things 
 moving in time and tune, without violating the graceful 
 appearance of ease which Art requires. 
 
 So I had an eye to Jenny s education in my article which 
 I unfolded and read, and which was entitled 
 
 HOMEKEEPING VERSUS HOUSEKEEPING 
 
 There are many women who know how to keep a house, 
 but there are but few that know how to keep a home. To 
 keep a house may seem a complicated affair, but it is a thing 
 that may be learned ; it lies in the region of the material ; 
 in the region of weight, measure, color, and the positive 
 forces of life. To keep a home lies not merely in the 
 sphere of all these, but it takes in the intellectual, the 
 social, the spiritual, the immortal. 
 
 Here the hickory stick broke in two, and the two brands 
 fell controversially out and apart on the hearth, scattering 
 the ashes and coals, and calling for Jenny and the hearth- 
 brush. Your wood fire has this foible, that it needs some 
 thing to be done to it every five minutes ; but, after all, 
 these little interruptions of our bright-faced genius are like 
 the piquant sallies of a clever friend, they do not strike 
 us as unreasonable. 
 
 When Jenny had laid down her brush she said, 
 " Seems to me, papa, you are beginning to soar into 
 metaphysics." 
 
22 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 " Everything in creation is metaphysical in its abstract 
 terms," said I, with a look calculated to reduce her to a 
 respectful condition. " Everything has a subjective and an 
 objective mode of presentation. 7 
 
 "There papa goes with subjective and objective ! " said 
 Marianne. " For my part, I never can remember which is 
 which." 
 
 " I remember," said Jenny ; " it s what our old nurse 
 used to call internal and 0w-ternal, I always remember 
 by that." 
 
 " Come, my dears," said my wife, " let your father read ; " 
 so I went on as follows : 
 
 I remember in my bachelor days going with my boon 
 companion, Bill Carberry, to look at the house to which he 
 was in a few weeks to introduce his bride. Bill was a gal 
 lant, free-hearted, open-handed fellow, the life of our whole 
 set, and we felt that natural aversion to losing him that 
 bachelor friends would. How could we tell under what 
 strange aspects he might look forth upon us, when once 
 he had passed into " that undiscovered country " of matri 
 mony ? But Bill laughed to scorn our apprehensions. 
 
 "I ll tell you what, Chris," he said, as he sprang cheer 
 ily up the steps and unlocked the door of his future dwell 
 ing, " do you know what I chose this house for ? Because 
 it s a social-looking house. Look there, now," he said, as 
 he ushered me into a pair of parlors, " look at those long 
 south Avindows, the sun lies there nearly all day long ; see 
 what a capital corner there is for a lounging-chair ; fancy 
 us, Chris, with our books or our paper, spread out loose 
 and easy, and Sophie gliding in and out like a sunbeam. 
 I ? m getting poetical, you see. Then, did you ever see a 
 better, wider, airier dining-room ? What capital suppers 
 and things we 11 have there ! the nicest times, every 
 thing free and easy, you know, just what I ve always 
 
HOMEKEEPING VERSUS HOUSEKEEPING 23 
 
 wanted a house for. I tell you, Chris, you and Tom Innis 
 shall have latch-keys just like mine, and there is a capital 
 chamber there at the head of the stairs, so that you can be 
 free to come and go. And here now s the library, fancy 
 this full of books and engravings from the ceiling to the 
 floor ; here you shall come just as you please and ask no 
 questions, all the same as if it were your own, you 
 know. 7 
 
 " And Sophie, what will she say to all this ? " 
 
 " Why, you know Sophie is a prime friend to both of you, 
 and a capital girl to keep things going. Oh, Sophie 11 make 
 a house of this, you may depend ! " 
 
 A day or two after, Bill dragged me stumbling over boxes 
 and through straw and wrappings to show me the glories of 
 the parlor furniture, with which he seemed pleased as a child 
 with a new toy. 
 
 " Look here," he said ; " see these chairs, garnet-colored 
 satin, with a pattern on each ; well, the sofa s just like them, 
 and the curtains to match, and the carpets made for the 
 floor with centrepieces and borders. I never saw anything 
 more magnificent in my life. Sophie s governor furnishes 
 the house, and everything is to be A No. 1, and all that, 
 you see. Messrs. Curtain & Collamore are coming to make 
 the rooms up, and her mother is busy as a bee getting us in 
 order." 
 
 " Why, Bill," said I, " you are going to be lodged like 
 a prince. I hope you 11 be able to keep it up ; but law 
 business comes in rather slowly at first, old fellow." 
 
 " Well, you know it is n t the way I should furnish, if 
 my capital was the one to cash the bills ; but then, you see, 
 Sophie s people do it, and let them, a girl does n t want 
 to come down out of the style she has always lived in." 
 
 I said nothing, but had an oppressive presentiment that 
 social freedom would expire in that house, crushed under a 
 weight of upholstery. 
 
24 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 But there came in due time the wedding and the wedding- 
 reception, and we all went to see Bill in his new house, splen 
 didly lighted up and complete from top to toe, and every 
 body said what a lucky fellow he was ; but that was about 
 the end of it, so far as our visiting was concerned. The 
 running in, and dropping in, and keeping latch-keys, and 
 making informal calls, that had been forespoken, seemed 
 about as likely as if Bill had lodged in the Tuileries. 
 
 Sophie, who had always been one of your snapping, 
 sparkling, busy sort of girls, began at once to develop her 
 womanhood and show her principles, and was as different 
 from her former self as your careworn, mousing old cat is 
 from your rollicking, frisky kitten. Not but that Sophie 
 was a good girl. She had a capital heart, a good, true 
 womanly one, and was loving and obliging ; but still she 
 was one of the desperately painstaking, conscientious sort of 
 women whose very blood, as they grow older, is devoured 
 with anxiety, and she came of a race of women in whom 
 housekeeping was more than an art or a science, it was, 
 so to speak, a religion. Sophie s mother, aunts, and grand 
 mothers, for nameless generations back, were known and 
 celebrated housekeepers. They might have been genuine 
 descendants of the inhabitants of that Hollandic town of 
 Broeck, celebrated by Washington Irving, where the cows 
 tails are kept tied up with unsullied blue ribbons, and the 
 ends of the fire-wood are painted white. He relates how a 
 celebrated preacher, visiting this town, found it impossible 
 to draw these housewives from their earthly views and em 
 ployments, until he took to preaching on the neatness of the 
 celestial city, the unsullied crystal of its walls and the polish 
 of its golden pavement, when the faces of all the housewives 
 were set Zionward at once. 
 
 Now this solemn and earnest view of housekeeping is 
 onerous enough when a poor girl first enters on the care of 
 a moderately furnished house, where the articles are not too 
 
HOMEKEEPING VERSUS HOUSEKEEPING 25 
 
 expensive to be reasonably renewed as time and use wear 
 them ; but it is infinitely worse when a cataract of splendid 
 furniture is heaped upon her care, when splendid crystals 
 cut into her conscience, and mirrors reflect her duties, and 
 moth and rust stand ever ready to devour and sully in every 
 room and passageway. 
 
 Sophie was solemnly warned and instructed by all the 
 mothers and aunts, she was warned of moths, warned of 
 cockroaches, warned of flies, warned of dust ; all the articles 
 of furniture had their covers, made of cold Holland linen, 
 in which they looked like bodies laid out, even the curtain 
 tassels had each its little shroud, and bundles of receipts, 
 and of rites and ceremonies necessary for the preservation 
 and purification and care of all these articles, were stuffed 
 into the poor girl s head, before guiltless of cares as the 
 feathers that floated above it. 
 
 Poor Bill found very soon that his house and furniture 
 were to be kept at such an ideal point of perfection that he 
 needed another house to live in, for, poor fellow, he found 
 the difference between having a house and a home. It was 
 only a year or two after that my wife and I started our 
 menage on very different principles, and Bill would of ten drop 
 in upon us, wistfully lingering in the cosy armchair between 
 my writing-table and my wife s sofa, and saying with a sigh 
 how confoundedly pleasant things looked there, so plea 
 sant to have a bright, open fire, and geraniums and roses and 
 birds, and all that sort of thing, and to dare to stretch out 
 one s legs and move without thinking what one was going 
 to hit. " Sophie is a good girl ! " he would say, " and 
 wants to have everything right, but you see they won t let 
 her. They ve loaded her with so many things that have 
 to be kept in lavender that the poor girl is actually getting 
 thin and losing her health ; and then, you see, there s 
 Aunt Zeruah, she mounts guard at our house, and keeps up 
 such strict police regulations that a fellow can t do a thing. 
 
26 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 The parlors are splendid, but so lonesome and dismal ! 
 not a ray of sunshine, in fact not a ray of light, except when 
 a visitor is calling, and then they open a crack. They re 
 afraid of flies, and yet, dear knows, they keep every looking- 
 glass and picture-frame muffled to its throat from March to 
 December. I d like, for curiosity, to see what a fly would 
 do in our parlors ! " 
 
 " Well," said I, " can t you have some little family sit 
 ting-room where you can make yourselves cosy ? " 
 
 " Not a bit of it. Sophie and Aunt Zeruah have fixed 
 their throne up in our bedroom, and there they sit all day 
 long, except at calling-hours, and then Sophie dresses her 
 self and comes down. Aunt Zeruah insists upon it that the 
 way is to put the whole house in order, and shut all the 
 blinds, and sit in your bedroom, and then, she says, nothing 
 gets out of place ; and she tells poor Sophie the most hocus- 
 pocus stories about her grandmothers and aunts, who always 
 kept everything in their houses so that they could go and 
 lay their hands on it in the darkest night. I 11 bet they 
 could in our house. From end to end it is kept looking as 
 if we had shut it up and gone to Europe, not a book, not 
 a paper, not a glove, or any trace of a human being in sight ; 
 the piano shut tight, the bookcases shut and locked, the 
 engravings locked up, all the drawers and closets locked. 
 Why, if I want to take a fellow into the library, in the first 
 place it smells like a vault, and I have to unbarricade win 
 dows, and unlock and rummage for half an hour before I 
 can get at anything ; and I know Aunt Zeruah is standing 
 tiptoe at the door, ready to whip everything back and lock 
 up again. A fellow can t be social, or take any comfort in 
 showing his books and pictures that way. Then there s our 
 great, light dining-room, with its sunny south windows, 
 Aunt Zeruah got us out of that early in April, because she 
 said the flies would speck the frescoes and get into the china- 
 closet, and we have been eating in a little dingy den, with 
 
HOMEKEEPING VERSUS HOUSEKEEPING 27 
 
 a window looking out on a back alley, ever since ; and Aunt 
 Zeruah says that now the dining-room is always in perfect 
 order, and that it is such a care off Sophie s mind that I 
 ought to be willing to eat down cellar to the end of the 
 chapter. Now, you see, Chris, my position is a delicate 
 one, because Sophie s folks all agree that, if there is any 
 thing in creation that is ignorant and dreadful and must n t 
 be allowed his way anywhere, it s e a man. Why, you d 
 think, to hear Aunt Zeruah talk, that we were all like bulls 
 in a china-shop, ready to toss and tear and rend, if we are 
 not kept down cellar and chained ; and she worries Sophie, 
 and Sophie s mother comes in and worries, and if I try to 
 get anything done differently Sophie cries, and says she don t 
 know what to do, and so I give it up. Now, if I want to 
 ask a few of our set in sociably to dinner, I can t have them 
 where we eat down cellar, oh, that would never do ! Aunt 
 Zeruah and Sophie s mother and the whole family would 
 think the family honor was forever ruined and undone. We 
 must n t ask them unless we open the dining-room, and have 
 out all the best china, and get the silver home from the 
 bank ; and if we do that, Aunt Zeruah does n t sleep for a 
 week beforehand, getting ready for it, and for a week after, 
 getting things put away ; and then she tells me that, in So 
 phie s delicate state, it really is abominable for me to increase 
 her cares, and so I invite fellows to dine with me at Del- 
 monico s, and then Sophie cries, and Sophie s mother says it 
 does n t look respectable for a family man to be dining at pub 
 lic places ; but, hang it, a fellow wants a home somewhere ! " 
 My wife soothed the chafed spirit, and spake comfortably 
 unto him, and told him that he knew there was the old 
 lounging-chair always ready for him at our fireside. " And 
 you know," she said, " our things are all so plain that we 
 are never tempted to mount any guard over them ; our car 
 pets are nothing, and therefore we let the sun fade them, 
 and live on the sunshine and the flowers." 
 
28 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 "That s it," said Bill bitterly. "Carpets fading, 
 that s Aunt Zeruah s monomania. These women think that 
 the great object of houses is to keep out sunshine. What a 
 fool I was when I gloated over the prospect of our sunny 
 south windows ! Why, man, there are three distinct sets of 
 fortifications against the sunshine in those windows : first, 
 outside blinds ; then solid, folding, inside shutters ; and, 
 lastly, heavy, thick, lined damask curtains, which loop quite 
 down to the floor. What s the use of my pictures, I de 
 sire to know ? They are hung in that room, and it s a reg 
 ular campaign to get light enough to see what they are." 
 
 " But, at all events, you can light them up with gas in 
 the evening." 
 
 " In the evening ! Why, do you know my wife never 
 wants to sit there in the evening ? She says she has so 
 much sewing to do that she and Aunt Zeruah must sit up 
 in the bedroom, because it wouldn t do to bring work into 
 the parlor. Didn t you know that ? Don t you know there 
 must n t be such a thing as a bit of real work ever seen in 
 a parlor ? What if some threads should drop on the carpet ? 
 Aunt Zeruah would have to open all the fortifications next 
 day, and search Jerusalem with candles to find them. No ; 
 in the evening the gas is lighted at half-cock, you know ; 
 and if I turn it up, and bring in my newspapers and spread 
 about me, and pull down some books to read, I can feel the 
 nervousness through the chamber floor. Aunt Zeruah looks 
 in at eight, and at a quarter past, and at half past, and at 
 nine, and at ten, to see if I am done, so that she may fold 
 up the papers and put a book on them, and lock up the books 
 in their cases. Nobody ever comes in to spend an evening. 
 They used to try it when we were first married, but I believe 
 the uninhabited appearance of our parlors discouraged them. 
 Everybody has stopped coming now, and Aunt Zeruah says 
 1 it is such a comfort, for now the rooms are always in order. 
 How poor Mrs. Crowfield lives, with her house such a thor- 
 
HOME KEEPING VERSUS HOUSEKEEPING 29 
 
 oughfare, she is sure she can t see. Sophie never would have 
 strength for it ; but then, to be sure, some folks ain t as 
 particular as others. Sophie was brought up in a family of 
 very particular housekeepers. 
 
 My wife smiled, with that calm, easy, amused smile that 
 has brightened up her sofa for so many years. 
 
 Bill added bitterly, - 
 
 " Of course, I could n t say that I wished the whole set 
 and system of housekeeping women at the what- s-his- 
 name ? because Sophie would have cried for a week, and 
 been utterly forlorn and disconsolate. I know it s not the 
 poor girl s fault ; I try sometimes to reason with her, but 
 you can t reason with the whole of your wife s family, to 
 the third and fourth generation backwards ; but I m sure 
 it s hurting her health, wearing her out. Why, you 
 know Sophie used to be the life of our set ; and now she 
 really seems eaten up with care from morning to night, 
 there are so many things in the house that something dread 
 ful is happening to all the while, and the servants we get 
 are so clumsy. Why, when I sit with Sophie and Aunt 
 Zeruah, it s nothing but a constant string of complaints 
 about the girls in the kitchen. We keep changing our ser 
 vants all the time, and they break and destroy so that now 
 we are turned out of the use of all our things. We not 
 only eat in the basement, but all our pretty table-things are 
 put away, and we have all the cracked plates and cracked 
 tumblers and cracked teacups and old buck-handled knives 
 that can be raised out of chaos. I could use these things 
 and be merry if I did n t know we had better ones ; and 
 I can t help wondering whether there is n t some way that 
 our table could be set to look like a gentleman s table ; but 
 Aunt Zeruah says that it would cost thousands, and what 
 difference does it make as long as nobody sees it but us ? 
 You see, there is no medium in her mind between china 
 and crystal and cracked earthenware. Well, I m wonder- 
 
30 HOUSE AND HOME PAFEKS 
 
 ing how all these laws of the Medes and Persians are going 
 to work when the children come along. I m in hopes the 
 children will soften off the old folks, and make the house 
 more habitable." 
 
 Well, children did come, a good many of them, in time. 
 There was Tom, a broad-shouldered, chubby -cheeked, active, 
 hilarious son of mischief, born in the very image of his 
 father ; and there was Charlie, and Jim, and Louisa, and 
 Sophie the second, and Frank, and a better, brighter, 
 more joy-giving household, as far as temperament and na 
 ture were concerned, never existed. 
 
 But their whole childhood was a long battle, children 
 versus furniture, and furniture always carried the day. The 
 first step of the housekeeping powers was to choose the 
 least agreeable and least available room in the house for the 
 children s nursery, and to fit it up with all the old, cracked, 
 rickety furniture a neighboring auction-shop could afford, 
 and then to keep them in it. Now everybody knows that 
 to bring up children to be upright, true, generous, and re 
 ligious needs so much discipline, so much restraint and cor 
 rection, and so many rules and regulations, that it is all 
 that the parents can carry out, and all the children can bear. 
 There is only a certain amount of the vital force for parents 
 or children to use in this business of education, and one 
 must choose what it shall be used for. The Aunt Zeruah 
 faction chose to use it for keeping the house and furniture, 
 and the children s education proceeded accordingly. The 
 rules of right and wrong of which they heard most fre 
 quently were all of this sort : Naughty children were those 
 who went up the front stairs, or sat on the best sofa, or fin 
 gered any of the books in the library, or got out one of the 
 best teacups, or drank out of the cut-glass goblets. 
 
 Why did they ever want to do it ? If there ever is a 
 forbidden fruit in an Eden, will not our young Adams and 
 Eves risk soul and body to find out how it tastes ? Little 
 
HOMEKEEPING VERSUS HOUSEKEEPING 31 
 
 Tom, the oldest boy, had the courage and enterprise and 
 perseverance of a Captain Parry or Dr. Kane, and he used 
 them all in voyages of discovery to forbidden grounds. He 
 stole Aunt Zeruah s keys, unlocked her cupboards and 
 closets, saw, handled, and tasted everything for himself, 
 and gloried in his sins. 
 
 "Don t you know, Tom," said the nurse to him once, 
 " if you are so noisy and rude, you 11 disturb your dear 
 mamma? She s sick, and she may die, if you re not 
 careful." 
 
 " Will she die ? " says Tom gravely. 
 
 " Why, she may." 
 
 " Then," said Tom, turning on his heel, " then I 11 
 go up the front stairs." 
 
 As soon as ever the little rebel was old enough, he was 
 sent away to boarding-school, and then there was never found 
 a time when it was convenient to have him come home again. 
 He could not come in the spring, for then they were house- 
 cleaning, nor in the autumn, because then they were house- 
 cleaning ; and so he spent his vacations at school, unless, by 
 good luck, a companion who was so fortunate as to have a 
 home invited him there. His associations, associates, habits, 
 principles, were as little known to his mother as if she had 
 sent him to China. Aunt Zeruah used to congratulate her 
 self on the rest there was at home, now he was gone, and 
 say she was only living in hopes of the time when Charlie 
 and Jim would be big enough to send away, too ; and mean 
 while Charlie and Jim, turned out of the charmed circle 
 which should hold growing boys to the father s and mother s 
 side, detesting the dingy, lonely playroom, used to run the 
 city streets, and hang round the railroad depots or docks. 
 Parents may depend upon it that, if they do not make an 
 attractive resort for their boys, Satan will. There are places 
 enough, kept warm and light and bright and merry, where 
 boys can go whose mothers parlors are too fine for them to 
 
32 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 sit in. There arc enough to be found to clap them on the 
 back, and tell them stories that their mothers must not hear, 
 and laugh when they compass with their little piping voices 
 the dreadful litanies of sin and shame. In middle life, our 
 poor Sophie, who as a girl was so gay and frolicsome, so full 
 of spirits, had dried and sharpened into a hard-visaged, 
 angular woman, careful and troubled about many things, 
 and forgetful that one thing is needful. One of the boys 
 had run away to sea ; I believe he has never been heard of. 
 As to Tom, the eldest, he ran a career wild and hard enough 
 for a time, first at school and then in college, and there came 
 a time when he came home, in the full might of six feet two, 
 and almost broke his mother s heart with his assertions of 
 his home rights and privileges. Mothers who throw away 
 the key of their children s hearts and childhood sometimes 
 have a sad retribution. As the children never were con 
 sidered when they were little and helpless, so they do not 
 consider when they are strong and powerful. Tom spread 
 wide desolation among the household gods, lounging on the 
 sofas, spitting tobacco juice on the carpets, scattering books 
 and engravings hither and thither, and throwing all the 
 family traditions into wild disorder, as he would never have 
 done had not all his childish remembrances of them been 
 embittered by the association of restraint and privation. 
 He actually seemed to hate any appearance of luxury or 
 taste or order, he was a perfect Philistine. 
 
 As for my friend Bill, from being the pleasantest and 
 most genial of fellows, he became a morose, misanthropic 
 man. Dr. Franklin has a significant proverb, " Silks and 
 satins put out the kitchen fire." Silks and satins mean 
 ing by them the luxuries of housekeeping often put out 
 not only the parlor fire, but that more sacred flame, the fire 
 of domestic love. It is the greatest possible misery to a 
 man and to his children to be homeless ; and many a man 
 has a splendid house, but no home. 
 
WHAT IS A HOME 33 
 
 "Papa," said Jenny, " you ought to write and tell what 
 are your ideas of keeping a home." 
 
 " Girls, you have only to think how your mother has 
 brought you up." 
 
 Nevertheless, I think, being so fortunate a husband, I 
 might reduce my wife s system to an analysis, and my next 
 paper shall be, What is a Home, and How to Keep it. 
 
 Ill 
 
 WHAT IS A HOME 
 
 It is among the sibylline secrets which lie mysteriously be 
 tween you and me, reader, that these papers, besides their 
 public aspect, have a private one proper to the bosom of 
 mine own particular family. They are not merely an ex 
 post facto protest in regard to that carpet and parlor of cele 
 brated memory, but they are forth-looking towards other 
 homes that may yet arise near us. For, among my other 
 confidences, you may recollect I stated to you that our Ma 
 rianne was busy in those interesting cares and details which 
 relate to the preparing and ordering of another dwelling. 
 
 Now, when any such matter is going on in a family, I 
 have observed that every feminine instinct is in a state of 
 fluttering vitality, every woman, old or young, is alive 
 with womanliness to the tips of her fingers ; and it becomes 
 us of the other sex, however consciously respected, to walk 
 softly and put forth our sentiments discreetly, and with due 
 reverence for the mysterious powers that reign in the femi 
 nine breast. 
 
 I had been too well advised to offer one word of direct 
 counsel on a subject where there were such charming 
 voices, so able to convict me of absurdity at every turn. I 
 
34 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 had merely so arranged my affairs as to put into the hands 
 of my bankers, subject to my wife s order, the very modest 
 marriage portion which I could place at my girl s disposal ; 
 and Marianne and Jenny, unused to the handling of 
 money, were incessant in their discussions with ever patient 
 mamma as to what was to be done with it. I say Mari 
 anne and Jenny, for, though the case undoubtedly is 
 Marianne s, yet, like everything else in our domestic pro 
 ceedings, it seems to fall, somehow or other, into Jenny s 
 hands, through the intensity and liveliness of her domes 
 ticity of nature. Little Jenny is so bright and wide awake, 
 and with so many active plans and fancies touching anything 
 in the housekeeping world, that, though the youngest sis 
 ter and second party in this affair, a stranger, hearkening 
 to the daily discussions, might listen a half -hour at a time 
 without finding out that it was not Jenny s future estab 
 lishment that was in question. Marianne is a soft, thought 
 ful, quiet girl, not given to many words ; and though, 
 when you come fairly at it, you will find that, like most 
 quiet girls, she has a will five times as inflexible as one 
 who talks more, yet in all family counsels it is Jenny and 
 mamma that do the discussion, and her own little well-con 
 sidered " Yes " or " No " that finally settles each case. 
 
 I must add to this family tableau the portrait of the ex 
 cellent Bob Stephens, who figured as future proprietor and 
 householder in these consultations. So far as the question 
 of financial possibilities is concerned, it is important to re 
 mark that Bob belongs to the class of young Edmunds cel 
 ebrated by the poet : 
 
 "Wisdom and worth were all he had." 
 
 He is, in fact, an excellent-hearted and clever fellow, 
 with a world of agreeable talents, a good tenor in a parlor 
 duet, a good actor at a charade, a lively, off-hand conversa 
 tionist, well up in all the current literature of the day, and 
 
WHAT IS A HOME 35 
 
 what is more, in my eyes, a well-read lawyer, just admitted 
 to the bar, and with as fair business prospects as usually 
 fall to the lot of young aspirants in that profession. 
 
 Of course, he and my girl are duly and truly in love, in 
 all the proper moods and tenses; but as to this work they 
 have in hand of being householders, managing fuel, rent, 
 provision, taxes, gas and water rates, they seem to my 
 older eyes about as sagacious as a pair of this year s robins. 
 Nevertheless, as the robins of each year do somehow learn 
 to build nests as well as their ancestors, there is reason to 
 hope as much for each new pair of human creatures. But 
 it is one of the fatalities of our ill-jointed life that houses 
 are usually furnished for future homes by young people in 
 just this state of blissful ignorance of what they are really 
 wanted for, or what is likely to be done with the things in 
 them. 
 
 Now, to people of large incomes, with ready wealth for 
 the rectification of mistakes, it does n t much matter how 
 the menage is arranged at first ; they will, if they have 
 good sense, soon rid themselves of the little infelicities and 
 absurdities of their first arrangements, and bring their estab 
 lishment to meet their more instructed tastes. 
 
 But to that greater class who have only a modest invest 
 ment for this first start in domestic life, mistakes are far 
 more serious. I have known people go on for years groan 
 ing under the weight of domestic possessions they did not 
 want, and pining in vain for others which they did, simply 
 from the fact that all their first purchases were made in this 
 time of blissful ignorance. 
 
 I had been a quiet auditor to many animated discussions 
 among the young people as to what they wanted and were 
 to get, in which the subject of prudence and economy was 
 discussed, with quotations of advice thereon given in serious 
 good faith by various friends and relations who lived easily 
 on incomes four or five times larger than our own. Who 
 
36 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 can show the ways of elegant economy more perfectly than 
 people thus at ease in their possessions ? From what serene 
 heights do they instruct the inexperienced beginners ! Ten 
 thousand a year gives one leisure for reflection, and elegant 
 leisure enables one to view household economies dispassion 
 ately ; hence the unction with which these gifted daughters 
 of upper air delight to exhort young neophytes. 
 
 " Depend upon it, my dear/ Aunt Sophia Easygo had 
 said, " it s always the best economy to get the best things. 
 They cost more in the beginning, but see how they last ! 
 These velvet carpets on my floor have been in constant wear 
 for ten years, and look how they wear ! I never have an in 
 grain carpet in my house, not even on the chambers. Vel 
 vet and Brussels cost more to begin with, but then they last. 
 Then I cannot recommend the fashion that is creeping in 
 of having plate instead of solid silver. Plate wears off, and 
 has to be renewed, which comes to about the same thing in 
 the end as if you bought all solid at first. If I were begin 
 ning as Marianne is, I should just set aside a thousand 
 dollars for my silver, and be content with a few plain arti 
 cles. She should buy all her furniture at Messrs. David & 
 Saul s. People call them dear, but their work will prove 
 cheapest in the end, and there is an air and style about their 
 things that can be told anywhere. Of course, you won t go 
 to any extravagant lengths, simplicity is a grace of itself." 
 
 The waters of the family council were troubled when 
 Jenny, flaming with enthusiasm, brought home the report 
 of this conversation. When my wife proceeded, with her 
 well-trained business knowledge, to compare the prices of 
 the simplest elegancies recommended by Aunt Easygo with 
 the sum total to be drawn on, faces lengthened perceptibly. 
 
 " How are people to go to housekeeping," said Jenny, 
 " if everything costs so much ? " 
 
 My wife quietly remarked that we had had great comfort 
 in our own home, had entertained unnumbered friends, and 
 
WHAT IS A HOME 37 
 
 had only ingrain carpets on our chambers and a three-ply on 
 our parlor, and she doubted if any guest had ever thought of 
 it, if the rooms had been a shade less pleasant ; and as 
 to durability, Aunt Easygo had renewed her carpets oftener 
 than we. Such as ours were, they had worn longer than hers. 
 
 " But, mamma, you know everything has gone on since 
 your day. Everybody must at least approach a certain style 
 nowadays. One can t furnish so far behind other people. 7 
 
 My wife answered in her quiet way, setting forth her doc 
 trine of a plain average to go through the whole establish 
 ment, placing parlors, chambers, kitchen, pantries, and the 
 unseen depths of linen-closets in harmonious relations of 
 just proportion, and showed by calm estimates how far the 
 sum given could go towards this result. There the limits 
 were inexorable. There is nothing so damping to the ardor 
 of youthful economies as the hard, positive logic of figures. 
 It is so delightful to think in some airy way that the things 
 we like best are the cheapest, and that a sort of rigorous 
 duty compels us to get them at any sacrifice. There is no 
 remedy for this illusion but to show by the multiplication 
 and addition tables what things are and are not possible. 
 My wife s figures met Aunt Easygo s assertions, and there 
 was a lull among the high contracting parties for a season ; 
 nevertheless, I could see Jenny was secretly uneasy. I 
 began to hear of journeys made to far places, here and there, 
 where expensive articles of luxury were selling at reduced 
 prices. Now a gilded mirror was discussed, and now a 
 velvet carpet which chance had brought down temptingly 
 near the sphere of financial possibility. I thought of our 
 parlor, and prayed the good fairies to avert the advent of 
 ill-assorted articles. 
 
 " Pray keep common sense uppermost in the girls heads, 
 if you can," said I to Mrs. Crowfield, " and don t let the 
 poor little puss spend her money for what she won t care a 
 button about by and by." 
 
38 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 " I shall try," she said ; " but you know Marianne is 
 inexperienced, and Jenny is so ardent and active, and so 
 confident, too. Then they both, I think, have the impres 
 sion that we are a little behind the age. To say the truth, 
 my dear, I think your papers afford a good opportunity of 
 dropping a thought now and then in their minds. Jenny 
 was asking last night when you were going to write your 
 next paper. The girl has a bright, active mind, and thinks 
 of what she hears." 
 
 So flattered, by the best of flatterers, I sat down to write 
 on my theme ; and that evening, at firelight time, I read 
 to my little senate as follows : 
 
 WHAT IS A HOME, AXD HOW TO KEKP IT 
 
 I have shown that a dwelling, rented or owned by a 
 man, in which his own wife keeps house, is not always, or 
 of course, a home. AYhat is it, then, that makes a home ? 
 All men and women have the indefinite knowledge of 
 what they want and long for when that word is spoken. 
 " Home ! " sighs the disconsolate bachelor, tired of boarding- 
 house fare and but tonless shirts. " Home !* says the wan 
 derer in foreign lands, and thinks of mother s love, of wife 
 and sister and child. ^ay> the word has in it a higher 
 meaning hallowed by religion ; and when the Christian 
 would express the highest of his hopes for a better life, he 
 speaks of his home beyond the grave. The word "home" has 
 in it the elements of love, rest, permanency, and liberty ; 
 but, besides these, it has in it the idea of an education by 
 which all that is purest within us is developed into nobler 
 forms, fit for a higher life. The little child by the home- 
 fireside was taken on the Master s knee when he would 
 explain to his disciples the mysteries of the kingdom. 
 
 Of so great dignity and worth is this holy and sacred 
 thing, that the power to create a HOME ought to be ranked 
 above all creative faculties. The sculptor who brings out 
 
WHAT IS A HOME 39 
 
 the breathing statue from cold marble, the painter who 
 warms the canvas into a deathless glow of beauty, the archi 
 tect who built cathedrals and hung the world-like dome of 
 St. Peter s in midair, is not to be compared, in sanctity and 
 worthiness, to the humblest artist who, out of the poor 
 materials afforded by this shifting, changing, selfish world, 
 creates the secure Eden of a home. 
 
 A true home should be called the noblest work of art 
 possible to human creatures, inasmuch as it is the very 
 image chosen to represent the last and highest rest of the 
 soul, the consummation of man s blessedness. 
 
 Not without reason does the oldest Christian church re 
 quire of those entering on marriage the most solemn review 
 of all the past life, the confession and repentance of every 
 sin of thought, word, and deed, and the reception of the 
 holy sacrament ; for thus the man and woman who approach 
 the august duty of creating a home are reminded of the 
 sanctity and beauty of what they undertake. 
 
 In this art of homemaking I have set down in my mind 
 certain first principles, like the axioms of Euclid, and the 
 first is, * 
 
 No home is possible without love. 
 
 All business marriages and marriages of convenience, all 
 mere culinary marriages and marriages of mere animal 
 passion, make the creation of a true home impossible in the 
 outset. Love is the jeweled foundation of this New Jeru 
 salem descending from God out of heaven, and takes as 
 many bright forms as the amethyst, topaz, and sapphire of 
 that mysterious vision. In this range of creative art all 
 things are possible to him that loveth, but without love 
 nothing is possible. 
 
 We hear of most convenient marriages in foreign lands, 
 which may better be described as commercial partnerships. 
 The money on each side is counted ; there is enough be 
 tween the parties to carry on the firm, each having the 
 
40 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 appropriate sum allotted to each. No love is pretended, but 
 there is great politeness. All is so legally and thoroughly 
 arranged that there seems to be nothing left for future 
 quarrels to fasten on. Monsieur and Madame have each their 
 apartments, their carriages, their servants, their income, their 
 friends, their pursuits, understand the solemn vows of 
 marriage to mean simply that they are to treat each other 
 with urbanity in those few situations where the path of life 
 must necessarily bring them together. 
 
 We are sorry that such an idea of marriage should be 
 gaining foothold in America. It has its root in an ignoble 
 view of life, an utter and pagan darkness as to all that 
 man and woman are called to do in that highest relation 
 where they act as one. It is a mean and low contrivance 
 on both sides, by which all the grand work of home-building, 
 all the noble pains and heroic toils of home education 
 that education where the parents learn more than they 
 teach shall be (let us use the expressive Yankee idiom) 
 shirked. 
 
 It is a curious fact that, in those countries where this sys 
 tem of marriages is the general rXile, there is no word corre 
 sponding to our English word "home." In many polite lan 
 guages of Europe it would be impossible neatly to translate 
 the sentiment with which we began this essay, that a man s 
 house is not always his home. 
 
 Let any one try to render the song, " Sweet Home," into 
 French, and one finds how Anglo-Saxon is the very genius 
 of the word. The structure of life, in all its relations, in 
 countries where marriages are matter of arrangement and 
 not of love, excludes the idea of home. 
 
 How does life run in such countries ? The girl is re 
 called from her convent or boarding-school, and told that 
 her father has found a husband for her. No objection on 
 her part is contemplated or provided for ; none generally 
 occurs, for the child is only too happy to obtain the fine 
 
WHAT IS A HOME 41 
 
 clothes and the liberty which she has been taught come only 
 with marriage. Be the man handsome or homely, interesting 
 or stupid, still he brings these. 
 
 Plow intolerable such a marriage ! we say, with the close 
 intimacies of Anglo-Saxon life in our minds. They are not 
 intolerable, because they are provided for by arrangements 
 which make it possible for each to go his or her several way, 
 seeing very little of the other. The son or daughter, which 
 in due time makes its appearane in this menage, is sent out 
 to nurse in infancy, sent to boarding-school in youth, and 
 in maturity portioned and married, to repeat the same process 
 for another generation. Meanwhile father and mother keep 
 a quiet establishment and pursue their several pleasures. 
 Such is the system. 
 
 Houses built for this kind of life become mere sets of re 
 ception-rooms, such as are the greater proportion of apart 
 ments to let in Paris, where a hearty English or American 
 family, with their children about them, could scarcely find 
 room to establish themselves. Individual character, it is 
 true, does something to modify this programme. There are 
 charming homes in France and Italy, where warm and noble 
 natures, thrown together perhaps by accident, or mated by 
 wise paternal choice, infuse warmth into the coldness of the 
 system under which they live. There are in all states of 
 society some of such domesticity of nature that they will 
 create a home around themselves under any circumstances, 
 however barren. Besides, so kindly is human nature, that 
 Love, uninvited before marriage, often becomes a guest after, 
 and with Love always conies a home. 
 
 My next axiom is, 
 
 There can be no true home without liberty. 
 
 The very idea of home is of a retreat where we shall be 
 free to act out personal and individual tastes and peculiari 
 ties, as we cannot do before the wide world. We are to 
 have our meals at what hour we will, served in what style 
 
42 HOUSE AND HOME PAPEKS 
 
 suits us. Our hours of going and coming are to be as we 
 please. Our favorite haunts are to be here or there ; our 
 pictures and books so disposed as seems to us good ; and our 
 whole arrangements the expression, so far as our means can 
 compass it, of our own personal ideas of what is pleasant 
 and desirable in life. This element of liberty, if we think 
 of it, is the chief charm of home. " Here I can do as I 
 please," is the thought with which the tempest-tossed 
 earth-pilgrim blesses himself or herself, turning inward from 
 the crowded ways of the world. This thought blesses the 
 man of business, as he turns from his day s care and crosses 
 the sacred threshold. It is as restful to him as the slippers 
 and gown and easy-chair by the fireside. Everybody under 
 stands him here. Everybody is well content that he should 
 take his ease in his own way. Such is the case in the ideal 
 home. That such is not always the case in the real home 
 comes often from the mistakes in the house-furnishing. 
 Much house-furnishing is too fine for liberty. 
 
 In America there is no such thing as rank and station 
 which impose a sort of prescriptive style on people of certain 
 income. The consequence is that all sorts of furniture and 
 belongings, which in the Old World have a recognized relation 
 to certain possibilities of income, and which require certain 
 other accessories to make them in good keeping, are thrown 
 in the way of all sorts of people. 
 
 Young people who cannot expect by any reasonable possi 
 bility to keep more than two or three servants, if they hap 
 pen to have the means in the outset furnish a house with 
 just such articles as in England would suit an establishment 
 of sixteen. We have seen houses in England having two 
 or three housemaids, and tables served by a butler and 
 two waiters, where the furniture, carpets, china, crystal, and 
 silver were in one and the same style with some establish 
 ments in America where the family was hard pressed to keep 
 three Irish servants. 
 
WHAT IS A HOME 43 
 
 This want of servants is the one thing that must modify 
 everything in American life ; it is, and will long continue 
 to be, a leading feature in the life of a country so rich in 
 openings for man and woman that domestic service can be 
 only the stepping-stone to something higher. Nevertheless 
 we Americans are great travelers ; we are sensitive, apprecia 
 tive, fond of novelty, apt to receive and incorporate into 
 our own life what seems fair and graceful in that of other 
 people. Our women s wardrobes are made elaborate with 
 the thousand elegancies of French toilet, our houses filled 
 with a thousand knick-knacks of which our plain ancestors 
 never dreamed. Cleopatra did not set sail on the Nile in 
 more state and beauty than that in which our young American 
 bride is often ushered into her new home, her wardrobe 
 all gossamer lace and quaint frill and crimp and embroidery, 
 her house a museum of elegant and costly gewgaws, and, 
 amid the whole collection of elegancies and fragilities, she, 
 perhaps, the frailest. 
 
 Then comes the tug of war. The young wife becomes 
 a mother, and while she is retired to her chamber, blunder 
 ing Biddy rusts the elegant knives, or takes off the ivory 
 handles by soaking in hot water ; the silver is washed in 
 greasy soapsuds, and refreshed now and then with a thump, 
 which cocks the nose of the teapot awry, or makes the 
 handle assume an air of drunken defiance. The fragile 
 china is chipped here and there around its edges with those 
 minute gaps so vexatious to a woman s soul ; the handles 
 fly hither and thither in the wild confusion of Biddy s 
 washing-day hurry, when cook wants her to help hang out 
 the clothes. Meanwhile Bridget sweeps the parlor with a 
 hard broom, and shakes out showers of ashes from the grate, 
 forgetting to cover the damask lounges, and they directly 
 look as rusty and time-worn as if they had come from an 
 auction-store ; and all together unite in making such havoc 
 of the delicate ruffles and laces of the bridal outfit and baby 
 
44 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 layette that, when the poor young wife comes out of her 
 chamber after her nurse has left her, and, weakened and 
 embarrassed with the demands of the newcomer, begins 
 to look once more into the affairs of her little world, she 
 is ready to sink with vexation and discouragement. Poor 
 little princess ! Her clothes are made as princesses wear 
 them, her baby s clothes like a young duke s, her house 
 furnished like a lord s, and only Bridget and Biddy and 
 Polly to do the work of cook, scullery-maid, butler, foot 
 man, laundress, nursery-maid, house-maid, and lady s maid. 
 Such is the array that in the Old Country would be deemed 
 necessary to take care of an establishment got up like hers. 
 Everything in it is too fine, not too fine to be pretty, not 
 in bad taste in itself, but too fine for the situation, too fine 
 for comfort or liberty. 
 
 What ensues in a house so furnished ? Too often, cease 
 less fretting of the nerves, in the wife s despairing, con 
 scientious efforts to keep things as they should be. There 
 is no freedom in a house where things are too expensive 
 and choice to be freely handled and easily replaced. Life 
 becomes a series of petty embarrassments and restrictions, 
 something is always going wrong, and the man finds his 
 fireside oppressive, the various articles of his parlor and 
 table seem like so many temper-traps and spring-guns, men 
 acing explosion and disaster. 
 
 There may be, indeed, the most perfect home-feeling, the 
 utmost cosiness and restfulness, in apartments crusted with 
 gilding, carpeted with velvet, and upholstered with satin. 
 I have seen such, where the home-like look and air of free 
 use was as genuine as in a Western log cabin ; but this was 
 in a range of princely income that made all these things as 
 easy to be obtained or replaced as the most ordinary of our 
 domestic furniture. But so long as articles must be shrouded 
 from use, or used with fear and trembling, because their 
 cost is above the general level of our means, we had better 
 
WHAT IS A HOME 45 
 
 be without them, even though the most lucky of accidents 
 may put their possession in our power. 
 
 But it is not merely by the effort to maintain too much 
 elegance that the sense of home liberty is banished from a 
 house. It is sometimes expelled in another way, with all 
 painstaking and conscientious strictness, by the worthiest 
 and best of human beings, the blessed followers of Saint 
 Martha. Have we not known them, the dear, worthy crea 
 tures, up before daylight, causing most scrupulous lustra 
 tions of every pane of glass and inch of paint in our parlors, 
 in consequence whereof every shutter and blind must be 
 kept closed for days to come, lest the flies should speck the 
 freshly washed windows and wainscoting ? Dear shade of 
 Aunt Mehitabel, forgive our boldness ! Have we not been 
 driven for days, in our youth, to read our newspaper in the 
 front veranda, in the kitchen, out in the barn, anywhere, 
 in fact, where sunshine could be found, because there was 
 not a room in the house that was not cleaned, shut up, and 
 darkened ? Have we not shivered with cold, all the glow 
 ering, gloomy month of May, because, the august front parlor 
 having undergone the spring cleaning, the andirons were 
 snugly tied up in the tissue-paper, and an elegant frill of 
 the same material was trembling before the mouth of the 
 once glowing fireplace ? Even so, dear soul, full of loving- 
 kindness and hospitality as thou wast, yet ever making our 
 house seem like a tomb ! And with what patience wouldst 
 thou sit sewing by a crack in the shutters an inch wide, 
 rejoicing in thy immaculate paint and clear glass ! But 
 was there ever a thing of thy spotless and unsullied belong 
 ings which a boy might use? How I trembled to touch 
 thy scoured tins, that hung in appalling brightness ! with 
 what awe I asked for a basket to pick strawberries ! and 
 where in the house could I find a place to eat a piece of 
 gingerbread ? How like a ruffian, a Tartar, a pirate, I al 
 ways felt when I entered thy domains ! and how, from day 
 
46 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 to day, I wondered at the immeasurable depths of depravity 
 which were always leading me to upset something, or break 
 or tear or derange something, in thy exquisitely kept pre 
 mises ! Somehow the impression was burned with over 
 powering force into my mind that houses and furniture, 
 scrubbed floors, white curtains, bright tins and brasses, were 
 the great, awful, permanent facts of existence ; and that 
 men and women, and particularly children, were the med 
 dlesome intruders upon this divine order, every trace of 
 whose intermeddling must be scrubbed out and obliterated 
 in the quickest way possible. It seemed evident to me 
 that houses would be far more perfect if nobody lived in 
 them at all, but that, as men had really and absurdly taken 
 to living in them, they must live as little as possible. My 
 only idea of a house was a place full of traps and pitfalls 
 for boys, a deadly temptation to sins which beset one every 
 moment ; and when I read about a sailor s free life on the 
 ocean, I felt an untold longing to go forth and be free in 
 like manner. 
 
 But a truce to these fancies, and back again to our essay. 
 
 If liberty in a house is a comfort to a husband, it is a 
 necessity to children. When we say liberty, we do not 
 mean license. We do not mean that Master Johnny be 
 allowed to handle elegant volumes with bread-and-butter 
 fingers, or that little Miss be suffered to drum on the piano, 
 or practice line-drawing with a pin on varnished furniture. 
 Still it is essential that the family parlors be not too fine 
 for the family to sit in, too fine for the ordinary acci 
 dents, haps and mishaps of reasonably well-trained children. 
 The elegance of the parlor where papa and mamma sit and 
 receive their friends should wear an inviting, not a hostile 
 and bristling, aspect to little people. Its beauty and its 
 order gradually form in the little mind a love of beauty and 
 order, and the insensible carefulness of regard. 
 
 Nothing is worse for a child than to shut him up in a 
 
WHAT IS A HOME 47 
 
 room which he understands is his, because he is disorderly, 
 where he is expected, of course, to maintain and keep dis 
 order. We have sometimes pitied the poor little victims 
 who show their faces longingly at the doors of elegant par 
 lors, and are forthwith collared by the domestic police and 
 consigned to some attic apartment, called a playroom, where 
 chaos continually reigns. It is a mistake to suppose, be 
 cause children derange a well-furnished apartment, that 
 they like confusion. Order and beauty are always pleasant 
 to them as to grown people, and disorder and defacement 
 are painful ; but they know neither how to create the one 
 nor to prevent the other, their little lives are a series of 
 experiments, often making disorder by aiming at some new 
 form of order. Yet, for all this, I am not one of those who 
 feel that in a family everything should bend to the sway 
 of these little people. They are the worst of tyrants in 
 such houses : still, where children are, though the fact must 
 not appear to them, nothing must be done without a wise 
 thought of them. 
 
 Here, as in all high art, the old motto is in force, " Ars 
 est celare artem" Children who are taught too plainly, by 
 every anxious look and word of their parents, by every 
 family arrangement, by the impressment of every chance 
 guest into the service, that their parents consider their edu 
 cation as the one important matter in creation, are apt to 
 grow up fantastical, artificial, and hopelessly self-conscious. 
 The stars cannot stop in their courses, even for our personal 
 improvement, and the sooner children learn this the better. 
 The great art is to organize a home which shall move on 
 with a strong, wide, generous movement, where the little 
 people shall act themselves out as freely and impulsively as 
 can consist with the comfort of the whole, and where the 
 anxious watching and planning for them shall be kept as 
 secret from them as possible. 
 
 It is well that one of the sunniest and airiest rooms in 
 
48 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 the house be the children s nursery. It is good philosophy, 
 too, to furnish it attractively, even if the sum expended 
 lower the standard of parlor luxuries. It is well that the 
 children s chamber, which is to act constantly on their im 
 pressible natures for years, should command a better prospect, 
 a sunnier aspect, than one which serves for a day s occu 
 pancy of the transient guest. It is well that journeys should 
 be made or put off in view of the interests of the children ; 
 that guests should be invited with a view to their improve 
 ment; that some intimacies should be chosen and some re 
 jected on their account. But it is not well that all this 
 should, from infancy, be daily talked out before the child, 
 and he grow up in egotism from moving in a sphere where 
 everything from first to last is calculated and arranged with 
 reference to himself. A little appearance of wholesome 
 neglect combined with real care and never ceasing watchful 
 ness has often seemed to do wonders in this work of setting 
 human beings on their own feet for the life journey. 
 
 Education is the highest object of home, but education in 
 the widest sense, education of the parents no less than of 
 the children. In a true home the man and the woman re 
 ceive, through their cares, their watchings, their hospitality, 
 their charity, the last and highest finish that earth can put 
 upon them. From that they must pass upward, for earth 
 can teach them no more. 
 
 The home education is incomplete unless it include the 
 idea of hospitality and charity. Hospitality is a Biblical 
 and apostolic virtue, and not so often recommended in Holy 
 Writ without reason. Hospitality is much neglected in 
 America for the very reasons touched upon above. We 
 have received our ideas of propriety and elegance of living 
 from old countries, where labor is cheap, where domestic 
 service is a well-understood, permanent occupation, adopted 
 cheerfully for life, and where of course there is such a sub 
 division of labor as insures great thoroughness in all its 
 
WHAT IS A HOME 49 
 
 branches. We are ashamed or afraid to conform honestly 
 and hardily to a state of things purely American. We have 
 not yet accomplished what our friend the Doctor calls " our 
 weaning," and learned that dinners with circuitous courses 
 and divers other Continental and English refinements, well 
 enough in their way, cannot be accomplished in families 
 with two or three untrained servants, without an expense 
 of care and anxiety which makes them heart-withering to 
 the delicate wife, and too severe a trial to occur often. 
 America is the land of subdivided fortunes, of a general 
 average of wealth and comfort, and there ought to be, there 
 fore, an understanding in the social basis far more simple 
 than in the Old World. 
 
 Many families of small fortunes know this, they are 
 quietly living so, but they have not the steadiness to 
 share their daily average living with a friend, a traveler, or 
 guest, just as the Arab shares his tent and the Indian his 
 bowl of succotash. They cannot have company, they say. 
 Why ? Because it is such a fuss to get out the best things, 
 and then to put them back again. But why get out the 
 best things ? Why not give your friend what he would 
 like a thousand times better, a bit of your average home 
 life, a seat at any time at your board, a seat at your fire ? 
 If he sees that there is a handle off your teacup, and that 
 there is a crack across one of your plates, he only thinks, 
 with a sigh of relief, " Well, mine are n t the only things 
 that meet with accidents," and he feels nearer to you ever 
 after ; he will let you come to his table and see the cracks 
 in his teacups, and you will condole with each other on the 
 transient nature of earthly possessions. If it become appar 
 ent in these entirely undressed rehearsals that your children 
 are sometimes disorderly, and that your cook sometimes 
 overdoes the meat, and that your second girl sometimes is 
 awkward in waiting, or has forgotten a table propriety, your 
 friend only feels, " Ah, well, other people have trials as 
 
50 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 well as I," and he thinks, if you come to see him, he shall 
 feel easy with you. 
 
 " Having company " is an expense that may always be 
 felt ; but easy daily hospitality, the plate always on your 
 table for a friend, is an expense that appears on no account- 
 book, and a pleasure that is daily and constant. 
 
 Under this head of hospitality, let us suppose a case. 
 A traveler comes from England ; he comes in good faith 
 and good feeling to see how Americans live. He merely 
 wants to penetrate into the interior of domestic life, to see 
 what there is genuinely and peculiarly American about it. 
 Now here is Smilax, who is living, in a small, neat way, 
 on his salary from the daily press. He remembers hospi 
 talities received from our traveler in England, and wants to 
 return them. He remembers, too, with dismay, a well-kept 
 establishment, the well-served table, the punctilious, orderly 
 servants. Smilax keeps two, a cook and chambermaid, who 
 divide the functions of his establishment between them. 
 What shall he do ? Let him say, in a fair, manly way, 
 " My dear fellow, I m delighted to see you. I live in a 
 small way, but I 11 do my best for you, and Mrs. Smilax 
 will be delighted. Come and dine with us, so and so, and 
 we 11 bring in one or two friends." So the man comes, and 
 Mrs. Smilax serves up such a dinner as lies within the 
 limits of her knowledge and the capacities of her servants. 
 All plain, good of its kind, unpretending, without an at 
 tempt to do anything English or French, to do anything 
 more than if she were furnishing a gala dinner for her father 
 or returned brother. Show him your house freely, just as 
 it is, talk to him freely of it, just as he in England showed 
 you his larger house and talked to you of his finer things. 
 If the man is a true man, he will thank you for such unpre 
 tending, sincere welcome ; if he is a man of straw, then he 
 is not worth wasting Mrs. Smilax s health and spirits for, in 
 unavailing efforts to get up a foreign dinner-party. 
 
WHAT IS A HOME 51 
 
 A man who has any heart in him values a genuine, little 
 bit of home more than anything else you can give him. 
 He can get French cooking at a restaurant ; he can buy ex 
 pensive wines at first-class hotels, if he wants them ; but the 
 traveler, though ever so rich and ever so well-served at 
 home, is, after all, nothing but a man as you are, and he is 
 craving something that does n t seem like an hotel, some 
 bit of real, genuine heart life. Perhaps he would like bet 
 ter than anything to show you the last photograph of his 
 wife, or to read to you the great, round-hand letter of his 
 ten-year-old which he has got to-day. He is ready to cry 
 when he thinks of it. In this mood he goes to see you, 
 hoping for something like home, and you first receive him 
 in a parlor opened only on state occasions, and that has been 
 circumstantially and exactly furnished, as the upholsterer 
 assures you, as every other parlor of the kind in the city is 
 furnished. You treat him to a dinner got up for the occa 
 sion, with hired waiters, a dinner which it has taken Mrs. 
 Smilax a week to prepare for, and will take her a week to 
 recover from, for which the baby has been snubbed and 
 turned off, to his loud indignation, and your young four- 
 year-old sent to his aunts. Your traveler eats your dinner, 
 and finds it inferior, as a work of art, to other dinners, a 
 poor imitation. He goes away and criticises ; you hear of 
 it, and resolve never to invite a foreigner again. But if 
 you had given him a little of your heart, a little home 
 warmth and feeling, if you had shown him your baby, 
 and let him romp with your four-year-old, and eat a genuine 
 dinner with you, would he have been false to that ? Not 
 so likely. He wanted something real and human, you 
 gave him a bad dress rehearsal, and dress rehearsals always 
 provoke criticism. 
 
 Besides hospitality, there is, in a true home, a mission of 
 charity. It is a just law which regulates the possession of 
 great or beautiful works of art in the Old World, that they 
 
52 HOUSE AND HOME TAPERS 
 
 shall in some sense be considered the property of all who 
 can appreciate. Fine grounds have hours when the public 
 may be admitted ; pictures and statues may be shown to 
 visitors : and this is a noble charity. In the same manner 
 the fortunate individuals who have achieved the greatest of 
 all human works of art should employ it as a sacred charity. 
 How many, morally wearied, wandering, disabled, are healed 
 and comforted by the warmth of a true home ! When a 
 mother has sent her son to the temptations of a distant 
 city, what news is so glad to her heart as that he has found 
 some quiet family where he visits often and is made to feel 
 at HOME ? How many young men have good women saved 
 from temptation and shipwreck by drawing them often to 
 the sheltered corner by the fireside ! The poor artist ; 
 the wandering genius who has lost his way in this world, 
 and stumbles like a child among hard realities ; the many 
 men and women who, while they have houses, have no 
 homes, see from afar, in their distant, bleak life journey, 
 the light of a true home fire, and, if made welcome there, 
 warm their stiffened limbs, and go forth stronger to their 
 pilgrimage. Let those who have accomplished this beau 
 tiful and perfect work of divine art be liberal of its in 
 fluence. Let them not seek to bolt the doors and draw the 
 curtains ; for they know not, and will never know till the 
 future life, of the good they may do by the ministration of 
 this great charity of home. 
 
 We have heard much lately of the restricted sphere of 
 woman. We have been told how many spirits among wo 
 men are of a wider, stronger, more heroic mould than befits 
 the mere routine of housekeeping. It may be true that 
 there are many women far too great, too wise, too high, for 
 mere housekeeping. But where is the woman in any way 
 too great, or too high, or too wise, to spend herself in creat 
 ing a home ? What can any woman make diviner, higher, 
 better ? From such homes go forth all heroisms, all in- 
 
WHAT IS A HOME 53 
 
 spirations, all great deeds. Such mothers and such homes 
 have made the heroes and martyrs, faithful unto death, who 
 have given their precious lives to us during these three 
 years of our agony ! 
 
 Homes are the work of art peculiar to the genius of wo- 
 man. Man helps in this work, but woman leads ; the hive 
 is always in confusion without the queen bee. But what a 
 woman must she be who does this work perfectly ! She 
 comprehends all, she balances and arranges all ; all different 
 tastes and temperaments find in her their rest, and she can 
 unite at one hearthstone the most discordant elements. In 
 her is order, yet an order ever veiled and concealed by in 
 dulgence. None are checked, reproved, abridged of privi 
 leges by her love of system ; for she knows that order was 
 made for the family, and not the family for order. Quietly 
 she takes on herself what all others refuse or overlook. 
 What the unwary disarrange she silently rectifies. Every 
 body in her sphere breathes easy, feels free ; and the driest 
 twig begins in her sunshine to put out buds and blos 
 soms. So quiet are her operations and movements that 
 none sees that it is she who holds all things in harmony ; 
 only, alas, when she is gone, how many things suddenly 
 appear disordered, inharmonious, neglected ! All these 
 threads have been smilingly held in her weak hand. Alas, 
 if that is no longer there ! 
 
 Can any woman be such a housekeeper without inspira 
 tion ? No. In the words of the old church service, " her 
 soul must ever have affiance in God." The New Jerusa 
 lem of a perfect home cometh down from God out of hea 
 ven. But to make such a home is ambition high and wor 
 thy enough for any woman, be she what she may. 
 
 One thing more. Right on the threshold of all perfec 
 tion lies the cross to be taken up. No one can go over or 
 around that cross in science or in art. Without labor and 
 self-denial neither R/aphael nor Michel Angelo nor Newton 
 
54 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 was made perfect. Nor can man or woman create a true 
 home who is not willing in the outset to embrace life he 
 roically, to encounter labor and sacrifice. Only to such 
 shall this divinest power be given to create on earth that 
 which is the nearest image of heaven. 
 
 IV 
 
 THE ECONOMY OF THE BEAUTIFUL 
 
 Talking to you in this way once a month, my confi 
 dential reader, there seems to be danger, as in all intervals 
 of friendship, that we shall not readily be able to take up 
 our strain of conversation just where we left off. Suffer 
 me, therefore, to remind you that the month past left us 
 seated at the fireside, just as we had finished reading of what 
 a home was, and how to make one. 
 
 The fire had burned low, and great, solid hickory coals 
 were winking dreamily at us from out their fluffy coats of 
 white ashes, just as if some household sprite there were 
 opening now one eye and then the other, and looking in a 
 sleepy, comfortable way at us. 
 
 The close of my piece about the good house mother had 
 seemed to tell on my little audience. Marianne had nestled 
 close to her mother, and laid her head on her knee ; and 
 though Jenny sat up straight as a pin, yet her ever busy 
 knitting was dropped in her lap, and I saw the glint of a 
 tear in her quick, sparkling eye, yes, actually a little bright 
 bead fell upon her work ; whereupon she started up actively, 
 and declared that the fire wanted just one more stick to make 
 a blaze before bedtime ; and then there was such a raking 
 among the coals, such an adjusting of the andirons, such 
 vigorous arrangement of the wood, and such a brisk whisk 
 ing of the hearth-brush, that it was evident Jenny had some 
 thing on her mind. When all was done, she sat down again 
 
THE ECONOMY OF THE BEAUTIFUL 55 
 
 and looked straight into the blaze, which went dancing and 
 crackling up, casting glances and flecks of light on our pic 
 tures and books, and making all the old, familiar furniture 
 seem full of life and motion. 
 
 " I think that s a good piece," she said decisively. " I 
 think those are things that should be thought about." 
 
 Now Jenny was the youngest of our flock, and therefore, 
 in a certain way, regarded by my wife and me as perennially 
 " the baby ; " and these little, old-fashioned, decisive ways 
 of announcing her opinions seemed so much a part of her 
 nature, so peculiarly " Jenriyish," as I used to say, that my 
 wife and I only exchanged amused glances over her head 
 when they occurred. 
 
 In a general way, Jenny, standing in the full orb of her 
 feminine instincts like Diana in the moon, rather looked 
 down on all masculine views of women s matters as tole- 
 rabiles inept-ice; but towards her papa she had gracious 
 turns of being patronizing to the last degree ; and one of 
 these turns was evidently at its flood-tide, as she proceeded 
 to say, 
 
 "/think papa is right, that keeping house and having 
 a home, and all that, is a very serious thing, and that peo 
 ple go into it with very little thought about it. I really 
 think those things papa has been saying there ought to be 
 thought about." 
 
 " Papa," said Marianne, " I wish you would tell me ex 
 actly how you would spend that money you gave me for 
 house-furnishing. I should like just your views." 
 
 " Precisely," said Jenny with eagerness ; " because it is 
 just as papa says, a sensible man, who has thought and 
 had experience, can t help having some ideas, even about 
 women s affairs, that are worth attending to. I think so, 
 decidedly." 
 
 I acknowledged the compliment for my sex and myself 
 with my best bow. 
 
56 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 " But then, papa," said Marianne, " I can t help feeling 
 sorry that one can t live in such a way as to have beautiful 
 things around one. I m sorry they must cost so much, and 
 take so much care, for I am made so that I really want 
 them. I do so like to see pretty things ! I do like rich 
 carpets and elegant carved furniture, and fine china and cut- 
 glass and silver. I can t bear mean, common-looking rooms. 
 I should so like to have my house look beautiful ! " 
 
 " Your house ought not to look mean and common, 
 your house ought to look beautiful," I replied. " It would 
 be a sin and a shame to have it otherwise. No house ought 
 to be fitted up for a future home without a strong and a 
 leading reference to beauty in all its arrangements. If I 
 were a Greek, I should say that the first household libation 
 should be made to beauty ; but, being an old-fashioned 
 Christian, I would say that he who prepares a home with 
 no eye to beauty neglects the example of the great Father 
 who has filled our earth home with such elaborate orna 
 ment." 
 
 " But then, papa, there s the money ! " said Jenny, 
 shaking her little head wisely. " You men don t think of 
 that. You want us girls, for instance, to be patterns of 
 economy, but we must always be wearing fresh, nice things ; 
 you abhor soiled gloves and worn shoes ; and yet how is 
 all this to be done without money ? And it s just so in 
 housekeeping. You sit in your armchairs, and conjure up 
 visions of all sorts of impossible things to be done ; but 
 when mamma there takes out that little account-book, and 
 figures away on the cost of things, where do the visions go ? " 
 
 " You are mistaken, my little dear, and you talk just like 
 a woman," this was my only way of revenging myself ; 
 " that is to say, you jump to conclusions, without suffi 
 cient knowledge. I maintain that in house-furnishing, as 
 well as woman-furnishing, there s nothing so economical as 
 beauty." 
 
THE ECONOMY OF THE BEAUTIFUL 57 
 
 " There s one of papa s paradoxes ! " said Jenny. 
 
 " Yes," said I, " that is my thesis, which I shall nail up 
 over the mantelpiece there, as Luther nailed his to the 
 church door. It is time to rake up the fire now ; but to 
 morrow night I will give you a paper on the Economy of 
 the Beautiful." 
 
 "Come, now we are to have papa s paradox," said Jenny, 
 as soon as the tea-things had been carried out. 
 
 Entre nous, I must tell you that insensibly we had fallen 
 into the habit of taking our tea by my study fire. Tea, you 
 know, is a mere nothing in itself, its only merit being its 
 social and poetic associations, its warmth and fragrance ; 
 and the more socially and informally it can be dispensed, 
 the more in keeping with its airy and cheerful nature. 
 
 Our circle was enlightened this evening by the cheery 
 visage of Bob Stephens, seated, as of right, close to Mari 
 anne s work-basket. 
 
 " You see, Bob," said Jenny, " papa has undertaken to 
 prove that the most beautiful things are always the cheap 
 est." 
 
 " I m glad to hear that," said Bob ; " for there s a carved 
 antique bookcase and study-table that I have my eye on, and 
 if this can in any way be made to appear " 
 
 " Oh, it won t be made to appear," said Jenny, settling 
 herself at her knitting, " only in some transcendental, poetic 
 sense, such as papa can always make out. Papa is more 
 than half a poet, and his truths turn out to be figures of 
 rhetoric when one comes to apply them to matters of fact." 
 
 " Now, Miss Jenny, please remember my subject and 
 thesis," I replied, " that in house-furnishing there is no 
 thing so economical as beauty ; and I will make it good 
 against all comers, not by figures of rhetoric, but by figures 
 of arithmetic. I am going to be very matter-of-fact and 
 commonplace in my details, and keep ever in view the 
 
58 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 addition table. I will instance a case which has occurred 
 under my own observation. 7 
 
 THE ECONOMY OF THE BEAUTIFUL 
 
 Two of the houses lately built on the new land in Boston 
 were bought by two friends, Philip and John. Philip had 
 plenty of money, and paid the cash down for his house, 
 without feeling the slightest vacancy in his pocket. John, 
 who was an active, rising young man, just entering on a 
 nourishing business, had expended all his moderate savings 
 for years in the purchase of his dwelling, and still had a 
 mortgage remaining, which he hoped to clear off by his 
 future successes. Philip begins the work of furnishing as 
 people do with whom money is abundant, and who have 
 simply to go from shop to shop and order all that suits their 
 fancy and is considered "the thing" in good society. John 
 begins to furnish with very little money. He has a wife 
 and two little ones, and he wisely deems that to insure to 
 them a well-built house, in an open, airy situation, with con 
 veniences for warming, bathing, and healthy living, is a wise 
 beginning in life ; but it leaves him little or nothing beyond. 
 
 Behold, then, Philip and his wife, well pleased, going the 
 rounds of shops and stores in fitting up their new dwelling, 
 and let us follow step by step. To begin with the wall 
 paper. Imagine a front and back parlor, with folding-doors, 
 with two south windows on the front, and two looking on 
 a back court, after the general manner of city houses. AVe 
 will suppose they require about thirty rolls of wall-paper. 
 Philip buys the heaviest French velvet, with gildings and 
 traceries, at four dollars a roll. This, by the time it has 
 been put on, with gold mouldings, according to the most 
 established taste of the best paper-hangers, will bring the 
 wall-paper of the two rooms to a figure something like two 
 hundred dollars. Now they proceed to the carpet stores, 
 and there are thrown at their feet by obsequious clerks 
 
THE ECONOMY OF THE BEAUTIFUL 59 
 
 velvets and Axminsters, with flowery convolutions and 
 medallion centres, as if the flower gardens of the tropics 
 were whirling in waltzes, with graceful lines of arabesque, 
 roses, callas, lilies, knotted, wreathed, twined, with blue 
 and crimson and golden ribbons, dazzling marvels of color 
 and tracery. There is no restraint in price, four or six 
 dollars a yard, it is all the same to them, and soon a 
 magic flower garden blooms on the floors, at a cost of five 
 hundred dollars. A pair of elegant rugs, at fifty dollars 
 apiece, complete the inventory, and bring our rooms to the 
 mark of eight hundred dollars for papering and carpeting 
 alone. Now come the great mantel-mirrors for four hundred 
 more, and our rooms progress. Then comes the upholsterer ? 
 and measures our four windows, that he may skillfully bar 
 ricade them from air and sunshine. The fortifications against 
 heaven, thus prepared, cost, in the shape of damask, cord, 
 tassels, shades, laces, and cornices, about two hundred dollars 
 per window. To be sure, they make the rooms close and 
 sombre as the grave, but they are of the most splendid 
 staffs ; and if the sun would only reflect, he would see, 
 himself, how foolish it was for him to try to force himself 
 into a window guarded by his betters. If there is anything 
 cheap and plebeian, it is sunshine and fresh air ! Behold us, 
 then, with our two rooms papered, carpeted, and curtained 
 for two thousand dollars ; and now are to be put in them 
 sofas, lounges, etageres, centre-tables, screens, chairs of every 
 pattern and device, for which it is but moderate to allow a 
 thousand more. We have now two parlors furnished at an 
 outlay of three thousand dollars, without a single picture, a 
 single article of statuary, a single object of art of any kind, 
 and without any light to see them by if they were there. 
 We must say for our Boston upholsterers and furniture- 
 makers that such good taste generally reigns in their estab 
 lishments that rooms furnished at haphazard from them 
 cannot fail of a certain air of good taste, so far as the indi- 
 
60 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 vidual things are concerned. But the different articles we 
 have supposed, having been ordered without reference to 
 one another or the rooms, have, when brought together, no 
 unity of effect, and the general result is scattering and con 
 fused. If asked how Philip s parlors look, your reply is, 
 " Oh, the usual way of such parlors, everything that such 
 people usually get, medallion carpets, carved furniture, 
 great mirrors, bronze mantel ornaments, and so on." The 
 only impression a stranger receives, while waiting in the 
 dim twilight of these rooms, is that their owner is rich, and 
 able to get good, handsome things, such as all other rich 
 people get. 
 
 Now our friend John, as often happens in America, is 
 moving in the same social circle with Philip, visiting the 
 same people, his house is the twin of the one Philip has 
 been furnishing, and how shall he, with a few hundred 
 dollars, make his rooms even presentable beside those which 
 Philip has fitted up elegantly at three thousand ? 
 
 Now for the economy of beauty. Our friend must make 
 his prayer to the Graces, for, if they cannot save him, 
 nobody can. One thing John has to begin with, that rare 
 gift to man, a wife with the magic cestus of Venus, not 
 around her waist, but, if such a thing could be, in her 
 finger-ends. All that she touches falls at once into har 
 mony and proportion. Her eye for color and form is intui 
 tive : let her arrange a garret, with nothing but boxes, 
 barrels, and cast-off furniture in it, and ten to one she makes 
 it seem the most attractive place in the house. It is a 
 veritable " gift of good faerie," this tact of beautifying and 
 arranging, that some women have ; and, on the present oc 
 casion, it has a real, material value, that can be estimated 
 in dollars and cents. Come with us and you can see the 
 pair taking their survey of the yet unfurnished parlors, as 
 busy and happy as a couple of bluebirds picking up the first 
 sticks and straws for their nest. 
 
THE ECONOMY OF THE BEAUTIFUL 61 
 
 <e There are two sunny windows to begin with," says the 
 good fairy, with an appreciative glance. " That insures 
 flowers all winter." 
 
 " Yes," says John ; "I never would look at a house 
 without a good sunny exposure. Sunshine is the best orna 
 ment of a house, and worth an extra thousand a year." 
 
 "Now for our wall-paper," says she. "Have you looked 
 at wall-papers, John ? " 
 
 " Yes ; we shall get very pretty ones for thirty-seven 
 cents a roll ; all you want of a paper, you know, is to make 
 a ground-tint to throw out your pictures and other matters, 
 and to reflect a pleasant tone of light." 
 
 " Well, John, you know Uncle James says that a stone 
 color is the best, but I can t bear those cold blue grays." 
 
 " Nor I," says John. " If we must have gray, let it at 
 least be a gray suffused with gold or rose color, such as you 
 see at evening in the clouds." 
 
 " So I think," responds she ; " but, better, I should like 
 a paper with a tone of buff, something that produces 
 warm yellowish reflections, and will almost make you think 
 the sun is shining in cold gray weather ; and then there is 
 nothing that lights up so cheerfully in the evening. In 
 short, John, I think the color of a zafferano rose will be 
 just about the shade we want." 
 
 " Well, I can find that, in good American paper, as I said 
 before, at from thirty-seven to forty cents a roll. Then 
 our bordering : there s an important question, for that must 
 determine the carpet, the chairs, and everything else. Now 
 what shall be the ground-tint of our rooms ? " 
 
 " There are only two to choose between," says the lady, 
 " green and maroon : which is the best for the pic 
 ture ? " 
 
 " I think," says John, looking above the mantelpiece, as 
 if he saw a picture there, "I think a border of maroon 
 velvet, with maroon furniture, is the best for the picture." 
 
G2 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 " I think so, too/ said she ; " and then we will have that 
 lovely marroon and crimson carpet that I saw at Lowe s ; 
 it is an ingrain, to be sure, but has a Brussels pattern, a 
 mossy, mixed figure, of different shades of crimson ; it has 
 a good warm, strong color, and when I come to cover the 
 lounges and our two old armchairs with maroon rep, it 
 will make such a pretty effect." 
 
 " Yes," said John ; " and then, you know, our picture is 
 so bright, it will light up the whole. Everything depends 
 on the picture." 
 
 Now as to " the picture," it has a story which must be 
 told. John, having been all his life a worshiper and adorer 
 of beauty and beautiful things, had never passed to or from 
 his business without stopping at the print-shop windows, 
 and seeing a little of what was there. 
 
 On one of these occasions he was smitten to the heart 
 with the beauty of an autumn landscape, where the red 
 maples and sumachs, the purple and crimson oaks, all 
 stood swathed and harmonized together in the hazy Indian 
 summer atmosphere. There was a great yellow chestnut 
 tree, on a distant hill, which stood out so naturally that 
 John instinctively felt his fingers tingling for a basket, and 
 his heels alive with a desire to bound over on to the rus 
 tling hillside and pick up the glossy brown nuts. Every 
 thing was there of autumn, even to the goldenrod and 
 purple asters and scarlet creepers in the foreground. 
 
 John went in and inquired. It was by an unknown 
 French artist, without name or patrons, who had just come 
 to our shores to study our scenery, and this was the first 
 picture he had exposed for sale. John had just been paid 
 a quarter s salary ; he bethought him of board-bill and 
 washerwoman, sighed, and faintly offered fifty dollars. 
 
 To his surprise he was taken up at once, and the picture 
 became his. John thought himself dreaming. He exam 
 ined his treasure over and over, and felt sure that it was 
 
THE ECONOMY OF THE BEAUTIFUL 63 
 
 the work of no amateur beginner, but of a trained hand 
 and a true artist soul. So he found his way to the studio 
 of the stranger, and apologized for having got such a gem 
 for so much less than its worth. " It was all I could give, 
 though," he said ; " and one who paid four times as much 
 could not value it more." And so John took one and 
 another of his friends, with longer purses than his own, 
 to the studio of the modest stranger ; and now his pieces 
 command their full worth in the market, and he works with 
 orders far ahead of his ability to execute, giving to the 
 canvas the traits of American scenery as appreciated and 
 felt by the subtile delicacy of the French mind, our 
 rural summer views, our autumn glories, and the dreamy, 
 misty delicacy of our snowy winter landscapes. Whoso 
 would know the truth of the same, let him inquire for the 
 modest studio of Morvillier, at Maiden, scarce a bowshot 
 from our Boston. 
 
 This picture had always been the ruling star of John s 
 house, his main dependence for brightening up his bach 
 elor apartments ; and when he came to the task of furbish 
 ing those same rooms for a fair occupant, the picture was 
 still his mine of gold. For a picture painted by a real 
 artist, who studies Nature minutely and conscientiously, 
 has something of the charm of the good Mother herself, 
 something of her faculty of putting on different aspects 
 under different lights. John and his wife had studied 
 their picture at all hours of the day : they had seen how 
 it looked when the morning sun came aslant the scarlet 
 maples and made a golden shimmer over the blue moun 
 tains, how it looked toned down in the cool shadows of 
 afternoon, and how it warmed up in the sunset and died 
 off mysteriously into the twilight; and now, when larger 
 parlors were to be furnished, the picture was still the tower 
 of strength, the rallying-point of their hopes. 
 
 " Do you know, John," said the wife, hesitating, " I am 
 
64 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 really in doubt whether Ave shall not have to get at least a 
 few new chairs and a sofa for our parlors ? They are put 
 ting in such splendid things at the other door that I am 
 positively ashamed of ours ; the fact is, they look almost 
 disreputable, like a heap of rubbish." 
 
 " Well," said John, laughing, " I don t suppose all to 
 gether sent to an auction-room would bring us fifty dollars, 
 and yet, such as they are, they answer the place of better 
 things for us ; and the fact is, Mary, the hard impassable 
 barrier in the case is that there really is no money to get 
 any more." 
 
 "Ah, well, then, if there isn t, we must see what we 
 can do with these, and summon all the good fairies to our 
 aid," said Mary. " There s your little cabinet-maker, John, 
 will look over the things and furbish them up ; there s 
 that broken arm of the chair must be mended, and every 
 thing re-varnished ; then I have found such a lovely rep, 
 of just the richest shade of maroon, inclining to crimson, 
 and when we come to cover the lounges and armchairs and 
 sofas and ottomans all alike, you know they will be quite 
 another thing." 
 
 " Trust you for that, Mary ! By the bye, I ve found 
 a nice little woman, who has worked on upholstery, who 
 will come in by the day, and be the hands that shall exe 
 cute the decrees of your taste." 
 
 " Yes, I am sure we shall get on capitally. Do you 
 know that I m almost glad we can t get new things ? It s 
 a sort of enterprise to see what we can do with old ones." 
 
 " Now, you see, Mary," said John, seating himself on a 
 lime-cask which the plasterers had left, and taking out his 
 memorandum-book, " you see, I ve calculated this thing 
 all over ; I ve found a way by which I can make our 
 rooms beautiful and attractive without a cent expended on 
 new furniture." 
 
 "Well, let shear." 
 
THE ECONOMY OF THE BEAUTIFUL 65 
 
 " Well, my way is short and simple. We must put 
 things into our rooms that people will look at, so that they 
 will forget to look at the furniture, and never once trouble 
 their heads about it. People never look at furniture so 
 long as there is anything else to look at ; just as Napoleon, 
 when away on one of his expeditions, being told that the 
 French populace were getting disaffected, wrote back, t Gild 
 the dome des Invalides, and so they gilded it, and the peo 
 ple, looking at that, forgot everything else. 7 
 
 " But I m not clear yet," said Mary, " what is coming 
 of this rhetoric. 7 
 
 " Well, then, Mary, I 11 tell you. A suit of new carved 
 black-walnut furniture, severe in taste and perfect in style, 
 such as I should choose at David & Saul s, could not be 
 got under three hundred dollars, and I have n t the three 
 hundred to give. What, then, shall we do ? We must fall 
 back on our resources ; we must look over our treasures. 
 We have our proof cast of the great glorious head of the 
 Venus di Milo ; we have those six beautiful photographs of 
 Rome, that Brown brought to us ; we have the great Ger 
 man lithograph of the San Sisto Mother and Child, and we 
 have the two angel heads, from the same ; we have that 
 lovely golden twilight sketch of Heade s ; we have some 
 sea photographs of Bradford s ; we have an original pen-and- 
 ink sketch by Billings ; and then, as before, we have our 
 picture. What has been the use of our watching at the gates 
 and waiting at the doors of Beauty all our lives, if she has n t 
 thrown us out a crust now and then, so that we might have 
 it for time of need ? Now, you see, Mary, we must make 
 the toilet of our rooms just as a pretty woman makes hers 
 when money runs low, and she sorts and freshens her rib 
 bons, and matches them to her hair and eyes, and, with a 
 bow here and a bit of fringe there, and a button somewhere 
 else, dazzles us into thinking that she has an infinity of 
 beautiful attire. Our rooms are new and pretty of them- 
 
66 HOUSE AND HOME TAPERS 
 
 selves, to begin with ; the tint of the paper, and the rich 
 coloring of the border, corresponding with the furniture and 
 carpets, will make them seem prettier. And now for ar 
 rangement. Take this front room. I propose to fill those 
 two recesses each side of the fireplace with my books, in 
 their plain pine cases, just breast-high from the floor : they 
 are stained a good dark color, and nobody need stick a pin 
 in them to find out that they are not rosewood. The top 
 of these shelves on either side to be covered with the same 
 stuff as the furniture, finished with a crimson fringe. On 
 top of the shelves on one side of the fireplace I shall set our 
 noble Venus di Milo, and I shall buy at Cicci s the lovely 
 Clytie, and put it the other side. Then I shall get of Wil 
 liams & Everett two of their chromo lithographs, which 
 give you all the style and charm of the best English water- 
 color school. I will have the lovely Bay of Amalfi over my 
 Venus, because she came from those suns and skies of south 
 ern Italy, and I will hang Lake Como over my Clytie. 
 Then, in the middle, over the fireplace, shall be f our pic 
 ture. Over each door shall hang one of the lithographed 
 angel heads of the San Sisto, to watch our going out and 
 coming in ; and the glorious Mother and Child shall hang 
 opposite the Venus di Milo, to show how Greek and Chris 
 tian unite in giving the noblest type to womanhood. And 
 then, when we have all our sketches and lithographs framed 
 and hung here and there, and your flowers blooming as they 
 always do, and your ivies wandering and rambling as they 
 used to, and hanging in the most graceful ways and places, 
 and all those little shells and ferns and vases, which you are 
 always conjuring with, tastefully arranged, I 11 venture to 
 say that our rooms will be not only pleasant, but beautiful, 
 and that people will oftener say, How beautiful ! when 
 they enter, than if we spent three times the money on new 
 furniture." 
 
 In the course of a year after this conversation, one and 
 
THE ECONOMY OF THE BEAUTIFUL 07 
 
 another of my acquaintances were often heard speaking of 
 John Morton s house. " Such beautiful rooms, so charm 
 ingly furnished, you must go and see them. What does 
 make them so much pleasanter than those rooms in the 
 other house, which have everything in them that money can 
 buy ? " So said the folk ; for nine people out of ten only 
 feel the effect of a room, and never analyze the causes from 
 which it flows : they know that certain rooms seem dull and 
 heavy and confused, but they don t know why ; that certain 
 others seem cheerful, airy, and beautiful, but they know not 
 why. The first exclamation, on entering John s parlors, was 
 so often " How beautiful ! " that it became rather a by 
 word in the family. Estimated by their mere money value, 
 the articles in the rooms were of very trifling worth ; but, as 
 they stood arranged and combined, they had all the effect of 
 a lovely picture. Although the statuary was only plaster, 
 and the photographs and lithographs such as were all within 
 the compass of limited means, yet every one of them was a 
 good thing of its own kind, or a good reminder of some of 
 the greatest works of art. A good plaster cast is a daguer 
 reotype, so to speak, of a great statue, though it may be 
 bought for five or six dollars, while its original is not to be 
 had for any namable sum. A chromo lithograph of the best 
 sort gives all the style and manner and effect of Turner or 
 Stanfield, or any of the best of modern artists, though you 
 buy it for five or ten dollars, and though the original would 
 command a thousand guineas. The lithographs from Ra 
 phael s immortal picture give you the results of a whole 
 age of artistic culture, in a form within the compass of very 
 humble means. There is now selling for five dollars at 
 Williams & Everett s a photograph of Cheney s crayon 
 drawing of the San Sisto Madonna and Child, which has the 
 very spirit of the glorious original. Such a picture, hung 
 against the wall of a child s room, would train its eye from 
 infancy ; and yet how many will freely spend five dollars in 
 
68 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 embroidery on its dress, that say they cannot afford works 
 of art ! 
 
 There was one advantage which John and his wife found, 
 in the way in which they furnished their house, that I have 
 hinted at before: it gave freedom to their children. Though 
 their rooms were beautiful, it was not with the tantaliz 
 ing beauty of expensive and frail knick-knacks. Pictures 
 hung against the wall, and statuary safely lodged on brack 
 ets, speak constantly to the childish eye, but are out of 
 the reach of childish fingers, and are not upset by childish 
 romps. They are not, like china and crystal, liable to be 
 used and abused by servants ; they do not wear out ; they 
 are not spoiled by dust, nor consumed by moths. The 
 beauty once there is always there ; though the mother be 
 ill and in her chamber, she has no fears that she shall find it 
 all wrecked and shattered. And this style of beauty, inex 
 pensive as it is, compared with luxurious furniture, is a 
 means of cultivation. No child is ever stimulated to draw 
 or to read by an Axminster carpet or a carved centre-table ; 
 but a room surrounded with photographs and pictures and 
 fine casts suggests a thousand inquiries, stimulates the little 
 eye and hand. The child is found with its pencil, drawing, 
 or he asks for a book on Venice, or wants to hear the his 
 tory of the Eoman Forum. 
 
 But I have made my article too long. I will write 
 another on the moral and intellectual effects of house-fur 
 nishing. 
 
 " I have proved my point, Miss Jenny, have I not ? 
 In house-furnishing nothing is more economical than 
 beauty." 
 
 " Yes, papa," said Jenny ; " I give it up." 
 
RAKING UP THE FIRE 69 
 
 RAKING UP THE FIRE 
 
 WE have a custom at our house which we call raking up 
 the fire. That is to say, the last half hour before bedtime, 
 we draw in, shoulder to shoulder, around the last brands 
 and embers of our hearth, which we prick up and brighten, 
 and dispose for a few farewell flickers and glimmers. This 
 is a grand time for discussion. Then we talk over parties, 
 if the young people have been out of an evening, a book, 
 if we have been reading one ; we discuss and analyze char 
 acters, give our views on all subjects, aesthetic, theological, 
 and scientific, in a way most wonderful to hear; and, in 
 fact, we sometimes get so engaged in our discussions that 
 every spark of the fire burns out, and we begin to feel our 
 selves shivering around the shoulders, before we can remem 
 ber that it is bedtime. 
 
 So, after the reading of my last article, we had a " raking- 
 up talk," - to wit, Jenny, Marianne, and I, with Bob 
 Stephens : my wife, still busy at her work-basket, sat at 
 the table a little behind us. Jenny, of course, opened the 
 ball in her usual incisive manner. 
 
 " But now, papa, after all you say in your piece there, I 
 cannot help feeling that, if I had the taste and the money 
 too, it would be better than the taste alone with no money. 
 I like the nice arrangements and the books and the draw 
 ings, but I think all these would appear better still with 
 really elegant furniture." 
 
 " Who doubts that ? " said I. " Give me a large tub of 
 gold coin to dip into, and the furnishing and beautifying 
 of a house is a simple affair. The same taste that could 
 make beauty out of cents and dimes could make it more 
 abundantly out of dollars and eagles. But I have been 
 
70 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 speaking for those who have not and cannot get riches, and 
 who wish to have agreeable houses ; and I begin in the 
 outset by saying that beauty is a thing to be respected, 
 reverenced, and devoutly cared for, and then I say that 
 BEAUTY is CHEAP, nay, to put it so that the shrewdest 
 Yankee will understand it, BEAUTY is THE CHEAPEST 
 THING YOU CAN HAVE, because in many ways it is a sub 
 stitute for expense. A few vases of flowers in a room, a 
 few blooming, well-kept plants, a few prints framed in 
 fanciful frames of cheap domestic fabric, a statuette, a 
 bracket, an engraving, a pencil-sketch, above all, a few 
 choice books, all these arranged by a woman who has the 
 gift in her finger-ends, often produce such an illusion on 
 the mind s eye that one goes away without once having 
 noticed that the cushion of the armchair was worn out, and 
 that some veneering had fallen off the centre -table. 
 
 " I have a friend, a schoolmistress, who lives in a poor 
 little cottage enough, which, let alone of the Graces, might 
 seem mean and sordid, but a few flower-seeds and a little 
 weeding in the spring make it, all summer, an object which 
 everybody stops to look at. Her aesthetic soul was at first 
 greatly tried with the water-barrel which stood under the 
 eaves spout, a most necessary evil, since only thus could 
 her scanty supply of soft water for domestic purposes be 
 secured. One of the Graces, however, suggested to her 
 a happy thought. She planted a row of morning-glories 
 round the bottom of her barrel, and drove a row of tacks 
 around the top, and strung her water-butt with twine, like 
 a great harpsichord. A few weeks covered the twine with 
 blossoming plants, which every morning were a mass of 
 many-colored airy blooms, waving in graceful sprays, and 
 looking at themselves in the water. The water-barrel, in 
 fact, became a celebrated stroke of ornamental gardening, 
 which the neighbors came to look at." 
 
 " Well, but," said Jenny, " everybody has n t mamma s 
 
EARING UP THE FIRE 71 
 
 faculty with flowers. Flowers will grow for some people, 
 and for some they won t. Nobody can see what mamma 
 does so very much, but her plants always look fresh and 
 thriving and healthy, her things blossom just when she 
 wants them, and do anything else she wishes them to ; and 
 there are other people that fume and fuss and try, and their 
 things won t do anything at all. There s Aunt Easygo 
 has plant after plant brought from the greenhouse, and 
 hanging - baskets, and all sorts of things ; but her plants 
 grow yellow and drop their leaves, and her hanging-baskets 
 get dusty and poverty-stricken, while mamma s go on nour 
 ishing as heart could desire." 
 
 " I can tell you what your mother puts into her plants," 
 said I, "just what she has put into her children, and all 
 her other home-things, her heart. She loves them ; she 
 lives in them ; she has in herself a plant-life and a plant- 
 sympathy. She feels for them as if she herself were a 
 plant ; she anticipates their wants, always remembers 
 them without an effort, and so the care flows to them daily 
 and hourly. She hardly knows when she does the things 
 that make them grow, but she gives them a minute a hun 
 dred times a day. She moves this nearer the glass, 
 draws that back, detects some thief of a worm on one, 
 digs at the root of another, to see why it droops, washes 
 these leaves and sprinkles those, waters, and refrains 
 from watering, all with the habitual care of love. Your 
 mother herself does n t know why her plants grow ; it 
 takes a philosopher and a writer for the ( Atlantic to tell 
 her what the cause is." 
 
 Here I saw my wife laughing over her work-basket as 
 she answered, 
 
 " Girls, one of these days / will write an article for the 
 ( Atlantic, that your papa need not have all the say to him 
 self ; however, I believe he has hit the nail on the head 
 this time." 
 
72 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 " Of course he has/ said Marianne. " But, mamma, I 
 am afraid to begin to depend much on plants for the beauty 
 of my rooms, for fear I should not have your gift, and, 
 of all forlorn and hopeless things in a room, ill-kept plants 
 are the most so."* 
 
 "I would not recommend," said I, "a young house 
 keeper, just beginning, to rest much for her home orna 
 ment on plant-keeping, unless she has an experience of her 
 own love and talent in this line which makes her sure of 
 success ; for plants will not thrive if they are forgotten or 
 overlooked, and only tended in occasional intervals ; and, 
 as Marianne says, neglected plants are the most forlorn of 
 all things." 
 
 "But, papa," said Marianne anxiously, "there, in those 
 patent parlors of John s that you wrote of, flowers acted a 
 great part." 
 
 " The charm of those parlors of John s may be chemi 
 cally analyzed," I said. " In the first place, there is sun 
 shine, a thing that always affects the human nerves of hap 
 piness. Why else is it that people are always so glad to 
 see the sun after a long storm ? why are bright days mat 
 ters of such congratulation ? Sunshine fills a house with 
 a thousand beautiful and fanciful effects of light and shade, 
 with soft, luminous, reflected radiances, that give pictur 
 esque effects to the pictures, books, statuettes of an interior. 
 John, happily, had no money to buy brocatelle curtains, 
 and, besides this, he loved sunshine too much to buy them, 
 if he could. He had been enough with artists to know 
 that heavy damask curtains darken precisely that part of the 
 window where the light proper for pictures and statuary 
 should come in, namely, the upper part. The fashionable 
 system of curtains lights only the legs of the chairs and the 
 carpets, and leaves all the upper portion of the room in 
 shadow. John s windows have shades which can at pleas 
 ure be drawn down from the top or up from the bottom, 
 
RAKING UP THE FIRE 73 
 
 so that the best light to be had may always be arranged for 
 his little interior." 
 
 " Well, papa/ 7 said Marianne, " in your chemical analysis 
 of John s rooms, what is the next thing to the sunshine ? " 
 
 " The next/ 7 said I, " is harmony of color. The wall 
 paper, the furniture, the carpets, are of tints that harmo 
 nize with one another. This is a grace in rooms always, 
 and one often neglected. The French have an expressive 
 phrase with reference to articles which are out of accord, 
 they say that they swear at each other. I have been in 
 rooms where I seemed to hear the wall-paper swearing at 
 the carpet, and the carpet swearing back at the wall-paper, 
 and each article of furniture swearing at the rest. These 
 appointments may all of them be of the most expensive 
 kind, but with such dis-harmony no arrangement can ever 
 produce anything but a vulgar and disagreeable effect. On 
 the other hand, I have been in rooms where all the material 
 was cheap and the furniture poor, but where, from some in 
 stinctive knowledge of the reciprocal effect of colors, every 
 thing was harmonious, and produced a sense of elegance. 
 
 " I recollect once traveling on a Western canal through 
 a long stretch of wilderness, and stopping to spend the 
 night at an obscure settlement of a dozen houses. We 
 were directed to lodgings in a common frame house at a 
 little distance, where, it seemed, the only hotel was kept. 
 When we entered the parlor, we were struck with utter 
 amazement at its prettiness, which affected us before we 
 began to ask ourselves how it came to be pretty. It was, 
 in fact, only one of the miracles of harmonious color work 
 ing with very simple materials. Some woman had been 
 busy there, who had both eyes and ringers. The sofa, the 
 common wooden rocking-chairs, and some ottomans, proba 
 bly made of old soap-boxes, Avere all covered with American 
 nankeen of a soft yellowish-brown, with a bordering of 
 blue print. The window-shades, the table-cover, and the 
 
74 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 piano-cloth all repeated the same colors, in the same cheap 
 material. A simple straw matting was laid over the floor, 
 and, with a few books, a vase of flowers, and one or two 
 prints, the room had a home-like and even elegant air, that 
 struck us all the more forcibly from its contrast with the 
 usual tawdry, slovenly style of such parlors. 
 
 " The means used for getting up this effect were the 
 most inexpensive possible, simply the following out, in 
 cheap material, a law of uniformity and harmony, which 
 always will produce beauty. In the same manner, 1 have 
 seen a room furnished, whose effect was really gorgeous in 
 color, where the only materials used were Turkey-red cotton 
 and a simple ingrain carpet of corresponding color. 
 
 "Now, you girls have been busy lately in schemes for 
 buying a velvet carpet for the new parlor that is to be, and 
 the only points that have seemed to weigh in the council 
 were that it was velvet, that it was cheaper than velvets 
 usually are, and that it was a genteel pattern. 7 
 
 " Now, papa," said Jenny, " what ears you have ! We 
 thought you were reading all the time ! " 
 
 " I see what you are going to say," said Marianne. 
 "You think that we have not once mentioned the con 
 sideration which should determine the carpet, whether it 
 will harmonize with our other things. But you see, papa, 
 we don t really know what our other things are to be." 
 
 " Yes," said Jenny, " and Aunt Easy go said it was an 
 unusually good chance to get a velvet carpet." 
 
 " Yet, good as the chance is, it costs just twice as much 
 as an ingrain." 
 
 " Yes, papa, it does." 
 
 " And you are not sure that the effect of it, after you 
 get it down, will be as good as a well-chosen ingrain one." 
 
 " That s true," said Marianne reflectively. 
 
 " But then, papa," said Jenny, " Aunt Easygo said she 
 never heard of such a bargain ; only think, two dollars a 
 yard for a velvet ! " 
 
RAKING UP THE FIRE 75 
 
 " And why is it two dollars a yard ? Is the man a per 
 sonal friend, that he wishes to make you a present of a 
 dollar on the yard, or is there some reason why it is unde 
 sirable ? " said I. 
 
 " Well, you know, papa, he said those large patterns 
 were not so salable." 
 
 "To tell the truth," said Marianne, "I never did like 
 the pattern exactly ; as to uniformity of tint, it might 
 match with anything, for there s every color of the rainbow 
 in it." 
 
 " You see, papa, it s a gorgeous flower-pattern," said 
 Jenny. 
 
 " Well, Marianne, how many yards of this wonderfully 
 cheap carpet do you want ? " 
 
 " We want sixty yards for both rooms," said Jenny, 
 always primed with statistics. 
 
 " That will be a hundred and twenty dollars," I said. 
 
 " Yes," said Jenny ; " and we went over the figures 
 together, and thought we could make it out by economizing 
 in other things. Aunt Easygo said that the carpet was 
 half the battle, that it gave the air to everything else." 
 
 " Well, Marianne, if you want a man s advice in the 
 case, mine is at your service." 
 
 "That is just what I want, papa." 
 
 " Well, then, my dear, choose your wall-papers and bor- 
 derings, and, when they are up, choose an ingrain carpet to 
 harmonize with them, and adapt your furniture to the same 
 idea. The sixty dollars that you save on your carpet spend 
 on engravings, chromo lithographs, or photographs of some 
 good works of art, to adorn your walls." 
 
 " Papa, I 11 do it," said Marianne. 
 
 " My little dear," said I, " your papa may seem to be a 
 sleepy old book-worm, yet he has his eyes open. Do you 
 think I don t know why my girls have the credit of being 
 the best-dressed girls on the street ? " 
 
76 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 " Oh papa ! " cried out both girls in a breath. 
 
 " Fact, that ! " said Bob, with energy, pulling at his 
 mustache. " Everybody talks about your dress, and won 
 ders how you make it out." 
 
 " Well," said I, " I presume you do not go into a shop 
 and buy a yard of ribbon because it is selling at half price, 
 and put it o-n without considering complexion, eyes, hair, 
 and shade of the dress, do you ? " 
 
 " Of course we don t ! " chimed in the duo with energy. 
 
 " Of course you don t. Have n t I seen you mincing 
 downstairs, with all your colors harmonized, even to your 
 gloves and gaiters ? Now, a room must be dressed as care 
 fully as a lady." 
 
 " Well, I m convinced," said Jenny, " that papa knows 
 how to make rooms prettier than Aunt Easygo ; but then 
 she said this was cheap, because it would outlast two com 
 mon carpets." 
 
 " But, as you pay double price," said I, " I don t see that. 
 Besides, I would rather, in the course of twenty years, have 
 two nice, fresh ingrain carpets, of just the color and pattern 
 that suited my rooms, than labor along with one ill-chosen 
 velvet that harmonized with nothing." 
 
 " I give it up," said Jenny ; " I give it up." 
 
 "Now, understand me," said I; "I am not traducing 
 velvet or Brussels or Axminster. I admit that more beauti 
 ful effects can be found in those goods than in the humbler 
 fabrics of the carpet rooms. Nothing would delight me 
 more than to put an unlimited credit to Marianne s account, 
 and let her work out the problems of harmonious color in 
 velvet and damask. All I have to say is, that certain uni 
 ties of color, certain general arrangements, will secure very 
 nearly as good general effects in either material. A library 
 with a neat, mossy green carpet on the floor, harmonizing 
 with wall-paper and furniture, looks generally as well, whe 
 ther the mossy green is made in Brussels or in ingrain. In 
 
RAKING UP THE FIRE 77 
 
 the carpet stores, these two materials stand side by side in 
 the very same pattern, and one is often as good for the pur 
 pose as the other. A lady of my acquaintance, some years 
 since, employed an artist to decorate her parlors. The 
 walls being frescoed and tinted to suit his ideal, he imme 
 diately issued his decree that her splendid velvet carpets 
 must be sent to auction, and others bought of certain col 
 ors harmonizing with the walls. Unable to find exactly 
 the color and pattern he wanted, he at last had the carpets 
 woven in a neighboring factory, where, as yet, they had only 
 the art of weaving ingrains. Thus was the material sacri 
 ficed at once to the harmony." 
 
 I remarked, in passing, that this was before Bigelow s 
 mechanical genius had unlocked for America the higher 
 secrets of carpet-weaving, and made it possible to have one s 
 desires accomplished in Brussels or velvet. In those days, 
 English carpet-weavers did not send to America for their 
 looms, as they now do. 
 
 " But now to return to my analysis of John s rooms. 
 
 " Another thing which goes a great way towards giving 
 them their agreeable air is the books in them. Some peo 
 ple are fond of treating books as others do children. One 
 room in the house is selected, and every book driven into it 
 and kept there. Yet nothing makes a room so home-like, 
 so companionable, and gives it such an air of refinement, as 
 the presence of books. They change the aspect of a parlor 
 from that of a mere reception-room, where visitors perch for 
 a transient call, and give it the air of a room where one 
 feels like taking off one s things to stay. It gives the ap 
 pearance of permanence and repose and quiet fellowship ; 
 and, next to pictures on the walls, the many-colored bind 
 ings and gildings of books are the most agreeable adornment 
 of a room." 
 
 " Then, Marianne," said Bob, " we have something to 
 start with, at all events. There are my English Classics 
 
78 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 and English Poets, and my uniform editions of Scott and 
 Thackeray and Macaulay and Prescott and Irving and Long 
 fellow and Lowell and Hawthorne and Holmes and a host 
 more. We really have something pretty there." 
 
 " You are a lucky girl," I said, " to have so much 
 secured. A girl brought up in a house full of books, al 
 ways able to turn to this or that author and look for any 
 passage or poem when she thinks of it, does n t know what 
 a blank a house without books might be." 
 
 " Well," said Marianne, " mamma and I were counting 
 over my treasures the other day. Do you know, I have 
 one really fine old engraving, that Bob says is quite a gen 
 uine thing ; and then there is that pencil-sketch that poor 
 Scheme made for me the month before he died, it is truly 
 artistic." 
 
 " And I have a couple of capital things of Landseer s," 
 said Bob. 
 
 "There s no danger that your rooms will not be pretty," 
 said I, " now you are fairly on the right track." 
 
 " But, papa," said Marianne, " I am troubled about one 
 thing. My love of beauty runs into everything. I want 
 pretty things for my table ; and yet, as you say, servants 
 are so careless, one cannot use such things freely without 
 great waste." 
 
 " For my part," said my wife, " I believe in best china, 
 to be kept carefully on an upper shelf, and taken down for 
 high-days and holidays ; it may be a superstition, but I be 
 lieve in it. It must never be taken out except when the 
 mistress herself can see that it is safely cared for. My 
 mother always washed her china herself ; and it was a very 
 pretty social ceremony, after tea was over, while she sat 
 among us washing her pretty cups, and wiping them on a 
 fine damask towel." 
 
 " With all my heart," said I ; " have your best china 
 and venerate it, it is one of the loveliest of domestic super- 
 
RAKING UP THE FIRE 79 
 
 stitions ; only do not make it a bar to hospitality, and 
 shrink from having a friend to tea with you, unless you 
 feel equal to getting up to the high shelf where you keep 
 it, getting it down, washing, and putting it up again. 
 
 " But in serving a table, I say, as I said of a house, 
 beauty is a necessity, and beauty is cheap. Because you 
 cannot afford beauty in one form, it does not follow that 
 you cannot have it in another. Because one cannot afford 
 to keep up a perennial supply of delicate china and crystal, 
 subject to the accidents of raw, untrained servants, it does 
 not follow that the every-day table need present a sordid 
 assortment of articles chosen simply for cheapness, while 
 the whole capacity of the purse is given to the set forever 
 locked away for state occasions. 
 
 " A table-service all of simple white, of graceful forms, 
 even though not of china, if arranged with care, with snowy, 
 well - kept table-linen, clear glasses, and bright American 
 plate in place of solid silver, may be made to look invit 
 ing ; add a glass of flowers every day, and your table may 
 look pretty : and it is far more important that it should 
 look pretty for the family every day than for company once 
 in two weeks." 
 
 " I tell my girls," said my wife, " as the result of my 
 experience, you may have your pretty china and your lovely 
 fanciful articles for the table only so long as you can take all 
 the care of them yourselves. As soon as you get tired of 
 doing this, and put them into the hands of the trustiest ser 
 vants, some good, well-meaning creature is sure to break her 
 heart and your own and your very pet darling china pitcher 
 all in one and the same minute, and then her frantic de 
 spair leaves you not even the relief of scolding." 
 
 " I have become perfectly sure," said I " that there are 
 spiteful little brownies, intent on seducing good women to 
 sin, who mount guard over the special idols of the china 
 closet. If you hear a crash, and a loud Irish wail from 
 
80 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 the inner depths, you never think of its being a yellow pie- 
 plate, or that dreadful one-handled tureen that you have 
 
 been wishing were broken these five years ; no, indeed, 
 
 it is sure to be the lovely painted china bowl, wreathed with 
 morning-glories and sweet-peas, or the engraved glass gob 
 let, with quaint Old English initials. China sacrificed must 
 be a great means of saintship to women. Pope, I think, 
 puts it as the crowning grace of his perfect woman that she 
 is 
 
 " Mistress of herself though china fall. " 
 
 " I ought to be a saint by this time, then," said mamma ; 
 " for in the course of my days I have lost so many idols by 
 breakage, and peculiar accidents that seemed by a special 
 fatality to befall my prettiest and most irreplaceable things, 
 that in fact it has come to be a superstitious feeling now 
 with which I regard anything particularly pretty of a break 
 able nature." 
 
 " Well," said Marianne, " unless one has a great deal of 
 money, it seems to me that the investment in these pretty 
 fragilities is rather a poor one." 
 
 " Yet," said I, " the principle of beauty is never so cap 
 tivating as when it presides over the hour of daily meals. 
 I would have the room where they are served one of the 
 pleasantest and sunniest in the house. I would have its 
 coloring cheerful, and there should be companionable pic 
 tures and engravings on the walls. Of all things, I dislike 
 a room that seems to be kept, like a restaurant, merely to 
 eat in. I like to see in a dining-room something that be 
 tokens a pleasant sitting-room at other hours. I like there 
 some books, a comfortable sofa or lounge, and all that should 
 make it cosy and inviting. The custom in some families, 
 of adopting for the daily meals one of the two parlors which 
 a city house furnishes, has often seemed to me a particularly 
 happy one. You take your meals, then, in an agreeable 
 
RAKING UP THE FIRE 81 
 
 place, surrounded by the little pleasant arrangements of 
 your daily sitting-room ; and after the meal, if the lady of 
 the house does the honors of her own pretty china herself, 
 the office may be a pleasant and social one. 
 
 " But in regard to your table-service I have my advice 
 at hand. Invest in pretty table-linen, in delicate napkins, 
 have your vase of flowers, and be guided by the eye of 
 taste in the choice and arrangement of even the every-day 
 table articles, and have no ugly things when you can have 
 pretty ones by taking a little thought. If you are sore 
 tempted with lovely china and crystal, too fragile to last, 
 too expensive to be renewed, turn away to a print-shop and 
 comfort yourself by hanging around the walls of your dining- 
 room beauty that will not break or fade, that will meet your 
 eye from year to year, though plates, tumblers, and teasets 
 successively vanish. There is my advice for you, Mari 
 anne." 
 
 At the same time let me say, in parenthesis, that my 
 wife, whose weakness is china, informed me that night, 
 when we were by ourselves, that she was ordering secretly a 
 teaset as a bridal gift for Marianne every cup of which was 
 to be exquisitely painted with the wild flowers of America, 
 from designs of her own, a thing, by the by, that can now 
 be very nicely executed in our country, as one may find by 
 looking in at our friend Briggs s on School Street. " It will 
 last her all her life," she said, " and always be such a pleas 
 ure to look at ; and a pretty tea-table is such a pretty 
 sight ! " So spoke Mrs. Crowfield, " un weaned from china 
 by a thousand falls." She spoke even with tears in her 
 eyes. Verily these women are harps of a thousand strings ! 
 
 But to return to my subject. 
 
 " Finally and lastly," I said, " in my analysis and ex 
 plication of the agreeableness of those same parlors, comes 
 the growing grace, their homeliness. By ( homeliness I 
 mean not ugliness, as the word is apt to be used, but the 
 
82 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 air that is given to a room by being really at home in 
 it. Not the most skillful arrangement can impart this 
 charm. 
 
 "It is said that a king of France once remarked, My 
 son, you must seem to love your people. 
 
 " Father, how shall I seem to love them ? 
 
 " l My son, you must love them. 
 
 " So, to make rooms seem home-like, you must be at home 
 in them. Human light and warmth are so wanting in 
 some rooms, it is so evident that they are never used, 
 that you can never be at ease there. In vain the house 
 maid is taught to wheel the sofa and turn chair toward 
 chair ; in vain it is attempted to imitate a negligent arrange 
 ment of the centre-table. 
 
 " Books that have really been read and laid down, chairs 
 that have really been moved here and there in the animation 
 of social contact, have a sort of human vitality in them ; 
 and a room in which people really live and enjoy is as differ 
 ent from a shut-up apartment as a live woman from a wax 
 image. 
 
 "Even rooms furnished without taste often become charm 
 ing from this one grace, that they seem to let you into 
 the home life and home current. You seem to understand 
 in a moment that you are taken into the family, and are 
 moving in its inner circles, and not revolving at a distance 
 in some outer court of the gentiles. 
 
 " How many people do we call on from year to year and 
 know no more of their feelings, habits, tastes, family ideas 
 and ways, than if they lived in Kamtschatka ! And why ? 
 Because the room which they call a front parlor is made 
 expressly so that you never shall know. They sit in a 
 back room, work, talk, read, perhaps. After the servant 
 has let you in and opened a crack of the shutters, and while 
 you sit waiting for them to change their dress and come in, 
 you speculate as to what they may be doing. From some 
 
RAKING UP THE FIRE 83 
 
 distant region, the laugh of a child, the song of a canary- 
 bird reaches you, and then a door claps hastily to. Do 
 they love plants ? Do they write letters, sew, embroider, 
 crochet ? Do they ever romp and frolic ? What books do 
 they read ? Do they sketch or paint ? Of all these pos 
 sibilities the mute and muffled room says nothing. A sofa 
 and six chairs, two ottomans fresh from the upholsterer s, 
 a Brussels carpet, a centre-table with four gilt Books of 
 Beauty on it, a mantel-clock from Paris, and two bronze 
 vases, all these tell you only in frigid tones, This is the 
 best room, only that, and nothing more, and soon she 
 trips in in her best clothes, and apologizes for keeping you 
 waiting, asks how your mother is, and you remark that it 
 is a pleasant day, and thus the acquaintance progresses from 
 year to year. One hour in the back room, where the plants 
 and canary-bird and children are, might have made you fast 
 friends for life ; but, little as it is, you care no more for 
 them than for the gilt clock on the mantel. 
 
 " And now, girls," said I, pulling a paper out of my 
 pocket, " you must know that your father is getting to be 
 famous by means of these House and Home Papers. 
 Here is a letter I have just received : 
 
 " MOST EXCELLENT MR. CROWFIELD, Y6ur thoughts 
 have lighted into our family circle and echoed from our 
 fireside. We all feel the force of them, and are delighted 
 with the felicity of your treatment of the topic you have 
 chosen. You have taken hold of a subject that lies deep 
 in our hearts, in a genial, temperate, and convincing spirit. 
 All must acknowledge the power of your sentiments upon 
 their imaginations ; if they could only trust to them in 
 actual life ! There is the rub. 
 
 " Omitting further upon these points, there is a special 
 feature of your articles upon which we wish to address you. 
 You seem as yet (we do not know, of course, what you may 
 
84 HOUSE AND HOME PAl EKS 
 
 hereafter do) to speak only of homes whose conduct depends 
 upon the help of servants. Now your principles apply, as 
 some of us well conceive, to nearly all classes of society ; 
 yet most people, to take an impressive hint, must have their 
 portraits drawn out more exactly. We therefore hope that 
 you will give a reasonable share of your attention to us who 
 do not employ servants, so that you may ease us of some of 
 our burdens, which, in spite of common sense, we dare not 
 throw off. For instance, we have company, a friend from 
 afar (perhaps wealthy), or a minister, or some other man of 
 note. What do we do ? Sit down and receive our visitor 
 with all good-will and the freedom of a home ? No ; we 
 (the lady of the house) flutter about to clear up things, apol 
 ogizing about this, that, and the other condition of unpre- 
 paredness, and, having settled the visitor in the parlor, set 
 about marshaling the elements of a grand dinner or supper, 
 such as no person but a gourmand wants to sit down to, 
 when at home and comfortable ; and in getting up this 
 meal, clearing away and washing the dishes, we use up a 
 good half of the time which our guest spends with us. We 
 have spread ourselves, and shown him what we could do ; 
 but what a paltry, heart-sickening achievement ! Now, good 
 Mr. Crowfield, thou friend of the robbed and despairing, wilt 
 thou not descend into our purgatorial circle, and tell the 
 world what thou hast seen there of doleful remembrance ? 
 Tell us how we, who must do and desire to do our own 
 work, can show forth in our homes a homely yet genial hos 
 pitality, and entertain oar guests without making a fuss 
 and hurlyburly, and seeming to be anxious for their sake 
 about many things, and spending too much time getting 
 meals, as if eating were the chief social pleasure. Won t 
 you do this, Mr. Crowfield ? 
 
 " Yours beseechingly, 
 
 "B. H. A." 
 
THE LADY WHO DOES HER OWN WORK 85 
 
 " That s a good letter," said Jenny. 
 
 " To be sure it is/ 7 said I. 
 
 " And shall you answer it, papa ? " 
 
 " In the very next Atlantic, you may be sure I shall. 
 The class that do their own work are the strongest, the 
 most numerous, and, taking one thing with another, quite 
 as well cultivated a class as any other. They are the 
 anomaly of our country, the distinctive feature of the 
 new society that we are building up here j and, if we are to 
 accomplish our national destiny, that class must increase 
 rather than diminish. I shall certainly do my best to an 
 swer the very sensible and pregnant questions of that let 
 ter." 
 
 Here Marianne shivered and drew up a shawl, and Jenny 
 gaped ; my wife folded up the garment in which she had 
 set the last stitch, and the clock struck twelve. 
 
 Bob gave a low whistle. " Who knew it was so late ? " 
 
 " We have talked the fire fairly out," said Jenny. 
 
 VI 
 
 THE LADY WHO DOES HER OWN WORK 
 
 " My dear Chris," said my wife, " is n t it time to be 
 writing the next ( House and Home Paper ? " 
 
 I was lying back in my study-chair, with my heels luxu 
 riously propped on an ottoman, reading for the two-hun 
 dredth time Hawthorne s " Mosses from an Old Manse," or 
 his " Twice-Told Tales," I forget which, I only know 
 that these books constitute my cloud-land, where I love to 
 sail away in dreamy quietude, forgetting the war, the price 
 of coal and flour, the rates of exchange, and the rise and 
 fall of gold. What do all these things matter, as seen from 
 those enchanted gardens in Padua where the weird Kap- 
 paccini tends his enchanted plants, and his gorgeous daughter 
 
86 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 fills us with the light and magic of her presence, and sad 
 dens us with the shadowy allegoric mystery of her preter 
 natural destiny ? But my wife represents the positive 
 forces of time, place, and number in our family, and, hav 
 ing also a chronological head, she knows the day of the 
 month, and therefore gently reminded me that by inevitable 
 dates the time drew near for preparing my which is it, 
 now, May or June number ? 
 
 " Well, my dear, you are right," I said, as by an exer 
 tion I came head-uppermost, and laid down the fascinating 
 volume. " Let me see, what was I to write about ? " 
 
 " Why, you remember you were to answer that letter 
 from the lady who does her own work." 
 
 " Enough ! " said I, seizing the pen with alacrity ; " you 
 have hit the exact phrase : 
 
 " The lady who does her oivn work. 9 
 
 America is the only country where such a title is possi 
 ble, the only country where there is a class of women 
 who may be described as ladies who do their own work. 
 By a lady we mean a woman of education, cultivation, and 
 refinement, of liberal tastes and ideas, who, without any 
 very material additions or changes, would be recognized as 
 a lady in any circle of the Old World or the New. 
 
 What I have said is, that the existence of such a class is 
 a fact peculiar to American society, a clear, plain result of 
 the new principles involved in the doctrine of universal 
 equality. 
 
 W T hen the colonists first came to this country, of however 
 mixed ingredients their ranks might have been composed, 
 and however imbued with the spirit of feudal and aristo 
 cratic ideas, the discipline of the wilderness soon brought 
 them to a democratic level ; the gentleman felled the wood 
 for his log-cabin side by side with the ploughman, and thews 
 and sinews rose in the market. " A man was deemed hon- 
 
THE LADY WHO DOES HER OWN WORK 87 
 
 orable in proportion as he lifted his hand upon the high 
 trees of the forest. So in the interior domestic circle. 
 Mistress and maid, living in a log-cabin together, became 
 companions, and sometimes the maid, as the more accom 
 plished and stronger, took precedence of the mistress. It 
 became natural and unavoidable that children should begin 
 to work as early as they were capable of it. The result 
 was a generation of intelligent people brought up to labor 
 from necessity, but turning on the problem of labor the 
 acuteness of a disciplined brain. The mistress, outdone in 
 sinews and muscles by her maid, kept her superiority by 
 skill and contrivance. If she could not lift a pail of water 
 she could invent methods which made lifting the pail un 
 necessary ; if she could not take a hundred steps without 
 weariness, she could make twenty answer the purpose of a 
 hundred. 
 
 Slavery, it is true, was to some extent introduced into 
 New England, but it never suited the genius of the people, 
 never struck deep root, or spread so as to choke the good 
 seed of self-helpfulness. Many were opposed to it from 
 conscientious principle, many from far-sighted thrift, and 
 from a love of thoroughness and well-doing which despised 
 the rude, unskilled work of barbarians. People, having 
 once felt the thorough neatness and beauty of execution 
 which came of free, educated, and thoughtful labor, could 
 not tolerate the clumsiness of slavery. Thus it came to 
 pass that for many years the rural population of New Eng 
 land, as a general rule, did their own work, both out doors 
 and in. If there were a black man or black woman or 
 bound girl, they were emphatically only the helps, following 
 humbly the steps of master and mistress, and used by them 
 as instruments of lightening certain portions of their toil. 
 The master and mistress with their children were the head 
 workers. 
 
 Great merriment has been excited in the Old Country 
 
88 HOUSE AND HOME 1 APEKS 
 
 because years ago the first English travelers found that the 
 class of persons by them denominated servants were in 
 America denominated help or helpers. But the term was 
 the very best exponent of the state of society. There were 
 few servants in the European sense of the word ; there was 
 a society of educated workers, where all were practically 
 equal, and where, if there was a deficiency in one family 
 and an excess in another, a helper, not a servant, was hired. 
 Mrs. Brown, who has six sons and no daughters, enters 
 into agreement with Mrs. Jones, who has six daughters and 
 no sons. She borrows a daughter, and pays her good wages 
 to help in her domestic toil, and sends a son to help the 
 labors of Mr. Jones. These two young people go into the 
 families in which they are to be employed in all respects 
 as equals and companions, and so the work of the commu 
 nity is equalized. Hence arose, and for many years contin 
 ued, a state of society more nearly solving than any other 
 ever did the problem of combining the highest culture of 
 the mind with the highest culture of the muscles and the 
 physical faculties. 
 
 Then were to be seen families of daughters, handsome, 
 strong females, rising each day to their indoor work with 
 cheerful alertness, one to sweep the room, another to 
 make the fire, while a third prepared the breakfast for the 
 father and brothers who were going out to manly labor; 
 and they chatted meanwhile of books, studies, embroidery, 
 discussed the last new poem, or some historical topic started 
 by graver reading, or perhaps a rural ball that was to come 
 off the next week. They spun with the book tied to the 
 distaff; they wove ; they did all manner of fine needlework ; 
 they made lace, painted flowers, and, in short, in the bound 
 less consciousness of activity, invention, and perfect health, 
 set themselves to any work they had ever read or thought 
 of. A bride in those days was married with sheets and 
 tablecloths of her own weaving, with counterpanes and 
 
THE LADY WHO DOES HER OWN WORK 89 
 
 toilet-covers wrought in divers embroidery by her own and 
 her sisters hands. The amount of fancy work done in our 
 days by girls who have nothing else to do will not equal 
 what was done by these, who performed besides, among 
 them, the whole work of the family. 
 
 For many years these habits of life characterized the ma 
 jority of our rural towns. They still exist among a class 
 respectable in numbers and position, though perhaps not as 
 happy in perfect self-satisfaction and a conviction of the 
 dignity and desirableness of its lot as in former days. Hu 
 man nature is above all things lazy. Every one confesses 
 in the abstract that exertion which brings out all the powers 
 of body and mind is the best thing for us all 5 but prac 
 tically most people do all they can to get rid of it, and as 
 a general rule nobody does much more than circumstances 
 drive him to do. Even I would not write this article were 
 not the publication-day hard on my heels. I should read 
 Hawthorne and Emerson and Holmes, and dream in my 
 armchair, and project in the clouds those lovely unwritten 
 stories that curl and veer and change like mist-wreaths in 
 the sun. So also, however dignified, however invigorating, 
 however really desirable, are habits of life involving daily 
 physical toil, there is a constant evil demon at every one s 
 elbow, seducing him to evade it, or to bear its weight with 
 sullen, discontented murmurs. 
 
 I will venture to say that there are at least, to speak very 
 moderately, a hundred houses where these humble lines will 
 be read and discussed, where there are no servants except 
 the ladies of the household. I will venture to say, also, 
 that these households, many of them, are not inferior in the 
 air of cultivation and refined elegance to many which are 
 conducted by the ministration of domestics. I will venture 
 to assert furthermore that these same ladies who live thus 
 iind quite as much time for reading, letter-writing, drawing, 
 embroidery, and fancy work as the women of families other- 
 
90 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 wise arranged. I am quite certain that they would be found 
 on an average to be in the enjoyment of better health, and 
 more of that sense of capability and vitality which gives one 
 confidence in one s ability to look into life and meet it with 
 cheerful courage, than three quarters of the women who 
 keep servants ; and that, on the whole, their domestic es 
 tablishment is regulated more exactly to their mind, their 
 food prepared and served more to their taste. And yet, 
 with all this, I will not venture to assert that they are 
 satisfied with this way of living, and that they would not 
 change it forthwith if they could. They have a secret feel 
 ing all the while that they are being abused, that they are 
 working harder than they ought to, and that women who 
 live in their houses like boarders, who have only to speak 
 and it is done, are the truly enviable ones. One after 
 another of their associates, as opportunity offers and means 
 increase, deserts the ranks, and commits her domestic affairs 
 to the hands of hired servants. Self - respect takes the 
 alarm. Is it altogether genteel to live as we do ? To be- 
 sure, we are accustomed to it ; we have it all systematized 
 and arranged ; the work of our own hands suits us better 
 than any we can hire ; in fact, when we do hire, we are dis 
 contented and uncomfortable, for who will do for us what 
 we will do for ourselves ? But when we have company ! 
 there s the rub, to get out all our best things and put them 
 back, to cook the meals and wash the dishes ingloriously, 
 and to make all appear as if we did n t do it, and had 
 servants like other people. 
 
 There, after all, is the rub. A want of hardy self-respect, 
 an unwillingness to face with dignity the actual facts and 
 necessities of our situation in life, this, after all, is the 
 worst and most dangerous feature of the case. It is the same 
 sort of pride which makes Smilax think he must hire a 
 waiter in white gloves, and get up a circuitous dinner party 
 on English principles, to entertain a friend from England. 
 
THE LADY WHO DOES HER OWN WORK 91 
 
 Because the friend in England lives in such and such a style, 
 he must make believe for a day that he lives so, too, when 
 in fact it is a whirlwind in his domestic establishment equal 
 to a removal or a fire, and threatens the total extinction of 
 Mrs. Smilax. Now there are two principles of hospitality 
 that people are very apt to overlook. One is, that their 
 guests like to be made at home, and treated with confidence ; 
 and another is, that people are always interested in the de 
 tails of a way of life that is new to them. The Englishman 
 comes to America as weary of his old, easy, family-coach 
 life as you can be of yours : he wants to see something new 
 under the sun, something American ; and forthwith we 
 all bestir ourselves to give him something as near as we can 
 fancy exactly like what he is already tired of. So city 
 people come to the country, not to sit in the best parlor and 
 to see the nearest imitation of city life, but to lie on the 
 haymow, to swing in the barn, to form intimacy with the 
 pigs, chickens, and ducks, and to eat baked potatoes, exactly 
 on the critical moment when they are done, from the oven 
 of the cooking-stove, and we remark, en passant, that 
 nobody has ever truly eaten a baked potato unless he has 
 seized it at that precise and fortunate moment. 
 
 I fancy you now, my friends, whom I have in my eye. 
 You are three happy women together. You are all so 
 well that you know not how it feels to be sick. You are 
 used to early rising, and would not lie in bed if you could. 
 Long years of practice have made you familiar with the short 
 est, neatest, most expeditious method of doing every house 
 hold office, so that really, for the greater part of the time in 
 your house, there seems to a looker-on to be nothing to do. 
 You rise in the morning and dispatch your husband, father, 
 and brothers to the farm or wood-lot ; you go sociably about 
 chatting with each other, while you skim the milk, make 
 the butter, turn the cheeses. The forenoon is long ; it s 
 ten to one that all the so-called morning work is over, and 
 
92 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 you have leisure for an hour s sewing or reading before it is 
 time to start the dinner preparations. By two o clock your 
 housework is done, and you have the long afternoon for 
 books, needlework, or drawing, for perhaps there is among 
 you one with a gift at her pencil. Perhaps one of you reads 
 aloud while the others sew, and you manage in that way 
 to keep up with a great deal of reading. I see on your 
 bookshelves Prescott, Macaulay, Irving, besides the lighter 
 fry of poems and novels, and, if I mistake not, the friendly 
 covers of the "Atlantic." When you have company, you 
 invite Mrs. Smith or Brown or Jones to tea : you have no 
 trouble they come early, with their knitting or sewing ; 
 your particular crony sits with you by your polished stove 
 while you watch the baking of those light biscuits and tea 
 rusks for which you are so famous, and Mrs. Somebodyelse 
 chats with your sister, who is spreading the table with your 
 best china in the best room. When tea is over, there is 
 plenty of volunteering to help you wash your pretty India 
 teacups, and get them back into the cupboard. There is no 
 special fatigue or exertion in all this, though you have taken 
 down the best things and put them back, because you have 
 done all without anxiety or effort, among those who would 
 do precisely the same if you were their visitors. 
 
 But now comes down pretty Mrs. Simmons and her pretty 
 daughter to spend a week with you, and forthwith you are 
 troubled. Your youngest, Fanny, visited them in Xew 
 York last fall, and tells you of their cook and chambermaid, 
 and the servant in white gloves that waits on the table. 
 You say in your soul, " What shall we do ? they never can 
 be contented to live as we do ; how shall we manage ? " 
 And now you long for servants. 
 
 This is the very time that you should know that Mrs. 
 Simmons is tired to death of her fine establishment, and 
 weighed down with the task of keeping the peace among 
 her servants. She is a quiet soul, dearly loving her ease 
 
THE LADY WHO DOES HER OWN WORK 93 
 
 and hating strife ; and yet last week she had five quarrels to 
 settle between her invaluable cook and the other members 
 of her staff, because invaluable cook, on the strength of 
 knowing how to get up state dinners and to manage all 
 sorts of mysteries which her mistress knows nothing about, 
 asserts the usual right of spoiled favorites to insult all her 
 neighbors with impunity, and rule with a rod of iron over 
 the whole house. Anything that is not in the least like 
 her own home and ways of living will be a blessed relief 
 and change to Mrs. Simmons. Your clean, quiet house, 
 your delicate cookery, your cheerful morning tasks, if you 
 will let her follow you about, and sit and talk with you 
 while you are at your work, will all seem a pleasant con 
 trast to her own life. Of course, if it came to the case of 
 offering to change lots in life, she would not do it ; but very 
 likely she thinks she would, and sighs over and pities her 
 self, and thinks sentimentally how fortunate you are, how 
 snugly and securely you live, and wishes she were as un- 
 trammeled and independent as you. And she is more than 
 half right ; for, with her helpless habits, her utter ignorance 
 of the simplest facts concerning the reciprocal relations of 
 milk, eggs, butter, saleratus, soda, and yeast, she is completely 
 the victim and slave of the person she pretends to rule. 
 
 Only imagine some of the frequent scenes and rehearsals 
 in her family. After many trials, she at last engages a 
 seamstress who promises to prove a perfect treasure, 
 neat, dapper, nimble, skillful, and spirited. The very soul 
 of Mrs. Simmons rejoices in heaven. Illusive bliss ! The 
 newcomer proves to be no favorite with Madam Cook, and 
 the domestic fates evolve the catastrophe, as follows. First, 
 low murmur of distant thunder in the kitchen ; then a day 
 or two of sulky silence, in which the atmosphere seems 
 heavy with an approaching storm. At last comes the climax. 
 The parlor door flies open during breakfast. Enter seam 
 stress in tears, followed by Mrs. Cook, with a face swollen 
 
94 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 and red with wrath, who tersely introduces the subject- 
 matter of the drama in a voice trembling with rage. 
 
 " Would you be plased, ma am, to suit yerself with 
 another cook ? Me week will be up next Tuesday, and I 
 want to be going." 
 
 " Why, Bridget, what s the matter ? " 
 
 te Matter enough, ma am ! I niver could live with them 
 Cork girls in a house, nor I won t ; them as likes the Cork 
 girls is welcome for all me j but it s not for the likes of me 
 to live with them, and she been in the kitchen a-upsettin 
 of me gravies with her flatirons and things." 
 
 Here bursts in the seamstress with a whirlwind of denial, 
 and the altercation wages fast and furious, and poor, little, 
 delicate Mrs. Simmons stands like a kitten in a thunder 
 storm in the midst of a regular Irish row. 
 
 Cook, of course, is sure of her victory. She knows that 
 a great dinner is to come off Wednesday, and that her 
 mistress has not the smallest idea how to manage it, and 
 that therefore, whatever happens, she must be conciliated. 
 
 Swelling with secret indignation at the tyrant, poor Mrs. 
 Simmons dismisses her seamstress with longing looks. She 
 suited her mistress exactly, but she did n t suit cook ! 
 
 Now, if Mrs. Simmons had been brought up in early life 
 with the experience that you have, she would be mistress in 
 her own house. She would quietly say to Madam Cook, 
 " If my family arrangements do not suit you, you can leave. 
 I can see to the dinner myself." And she could do it. 
 Her well-trained muscles would not break down under a 
 little extra work ; her skill, adroitness, and perfect familiarity 
 with everything that is to be done would enable her at once 
 to make cooks of any bright girls of good capacity who 
 might still be in her establishment; and, above all, she 
 would feel herself mistress in her own house. This is what 
 would come of an experience in doing her own work as you 
 do. She who can at once put her own trained hand to the 
 
THE LADY WHO DOES HER OWN W011K 95 
 
 machine in any spot where a hand is needed never comes to 
 be the slave of a coarse, vulgar Irishwoman. 
 
 So, also, in forming a judgment of what is to be expected 
 of servants in a given time, and what ought to be expected 
 of a given amount of provisions, poor Mrs. Simmons is ab 
 solutely at sea. If even for one six months in her life she 
 had been a practical cook, and had really had the charge of 
 the larder, she would not now be haunted, as she constantly 
 is, by an indefinite apprehension of an immense wasteful 
 ness, perhaps of the disappearance of provisions through se 
 cret channels of relationship and favoritism. She certainly 
 could not be made to believe in the absolute necessity of so 
 many pounds of sugar, quarts of milk, and dozens of eggs, 
 not to mention spices and wine, as are daily required for the 
 accomplishment of Madam Cook s purposes. But though 
 now she does suspect and apprehend, she cannot speak with 
 certainty. She cannot say, " / have made these things. I 
 know exactly what they require. I have done this and 
 that myself, and know it can be done, and done well, in a 
 certain time." It is said that women who have been accus 
 tomed to doing their own work become hard mistresses. They 
 are certainly more sure of the ground they stand on, they 
 are less open to imposition, they can speak and act in 
 their own houses more as those "having authority," and 
 therefore are less afraid to exact what is justly their due, 
 and less willing to endure impertinence and unfaithfulness. 
 Their general error lies in expecting that any servant ever 
 will do as well for them as they will do for themselves, and 
 that an untrained, undisciplined human being ever can do 
 housework, or any other work, with the neatness and per 
 fection that a person of trained intelligence can. It has 
 been remarked in our armies that the men of cultivation, 
 though bred in delicate and refined spheres, can bear up 
 under the hardships of camp-life better and longer than 
 rough laborers. The reason is, that an educated mind 
 
96 HOUSE AND HOME TAPERS 
 
 knows how to use and save its body, to work it and spare 
 it, as an uneducated mind cannot ; and so the college-bred 
 youth brings himself safely through fatigues which kill the 
 unreflective laborer. Cultivated, intelligent women, who 
 are brought up to do the work of their own families, are 
 labor-saving institutions. They make the head save the 
 wear of the muscles. By forethought, contrivance, system, 
 and arrangement, they lessen the amount to be done, and 
 do it with less expense of time and strength than others. 
 The old New England motto, Get your work done up in the 
 fore?ioon, applied to an amount of work which would keep 
 a common Irish servant toiling from daylight to sunset. 
 
 A lady living in one of our obscure New England towns, 
 where there were no servants to be hired, at last by send 
 ing to a distant city succeeded in procuring a raw Irish 
 maid of all work, a creature of immense bone and muscle, 
 but of heavy, unawakened brain. In one fortnight she 
 established such a reign of Chaos and old Night in the 
 kitchen and through the house that her mistress, a delicate 
 woman, incumbered with the care of young children, began 
 seriously to think that she made more work each day than 
 she performed, and dismissed her. "What was now to be 
 done ? Fortunately, the daughter of a neighboring farmer 
 was going to be married in. six months, and wanted a little 
 ready money for her trousseau. The lady was informed 
 that Miss So - and - so would come to her, not as a servant, 
 but as hired " help." She was fain to accept any help with 
 gladness. Forthwith came into the family circle a tall, well- 
 dressed young person, grave, unobtrusive, self-respecting, yet 
 not in the least presuming, who sat at the family table and 
 observed all its decorums with the modest self-possession of 
 a lady. The newcomer took a survey of the labors of a 
 family of ten members, including four or five young chil 
 dren, and, looking, seemed at once to throw them into sys 
 tem, matured her plans, arranged her hours of washing, iron- 
 
THE LADY WHO DOES HER OWN WORK 97 
 
 ing, baking, cleaning, rose early, moved deftly, and in a 
 single day the slatternly and littered kitchen assumed that 
 neat, orderly appearance that so often strikes one in New 
 England farmhouses. The work seemed to be all gone. 
 Everything was nicely washed, brightened, put in place, 
 and stayed in place : the floors, when cleaned, remained 
 clean ; the work was always done, and not doing ; and 
 every afternoon the young lady sat neatly dressed in her 
 own apartment, either writing letters to her betrothed, or 
 sewing on her bridal outfit. Such is the result of employ 
 ing those who have been brought up to do their own work. 
 That tall, fine-looking girl, for aught we know, may yet be 
 mistress of a fine house on Fifth Avenue ; and, if she is, 
 she will, we fear, prove rather an exacting mistress to Irish 
 Biddy and Bridget ; but she will never be threatened by 
 her cook and chambermaid, after the first one or two have 
 tried the experiment. 
 
 Having written thus far on my article I laid it aside 
 till evening, when, as usual, I was saluted by the inquiry, 
 " Has papa been writing anything to-day ? " and then fol 
 lowed loud petitions to hear it ; and so I read as far, 
 reader, as you have. 
 
 " Well, papa," said Jenny, " what are you meaning to 
 make out there ? Do you really think it would be best for 
 us all to try to go back to that old style of living you de 
 scribe ? After all, you have shown only the dark side of 
 an establishment with servants, and the bright side of the 
 other way of living. Mamma does not have such trouble 
 with her servants ; matters have always gone smoothly in 
 our family ; and, if we are not such wonderful girls as those 
 you describe, yet we may make pretty good housekeepers 
 on the modern system, after all." 
 
 " You don t know all the troubles your mamma has had 
 in your day," said my wife. " I have often, in the course 
 
98 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 of my family history, seen the day when I have heartily 
 wished for the strength and ability to manage my household 
 matters as my grandmother of notable memory managed 
 hers. But I fear that those remarkable women of the olden 
 times are like the ancient painted glass, the art of making 
 them is lost ; my mother was less than her mother, and I 
 am less than my mother." 
 
 "And Marianne and I come out entirely at the little end 
 of the horn," said Jenny, laughing; "yet I wash the break 
 fast cups and dust the parlors, and have always fancied my 
 self a notable housekeeper." 
 
 " It is just as I told you," I said. " Human nature is 
 always the same. Nobody ever is or does more than cir 
 cumstances force him to be and do. Those remarkable 
 women of old were made by circumstances. There were, 
 comparatively speaking, no servants to be had, and so chil 
 dren were trained to habits of industry and mechanical 
 adroitness from the cradle, and every household process was 
 reduced to the very minimum of labor. Every step required 
 in a process was counted, every movement calculated ; and 
 she who took ten steps, when one would do, lost her repu 
 tation for c faculty. Certainly such an early drill was of 
 use in developing the health and the bodily powers, as well 
 as in giving precision to the practical mental faculties. All 
 household economies were arranged with equal niceness in 
 those thoughtful minds. A trained housekeeper knew just 
 how many sticks of hickory of a certain size were required 
 to heat her oven, and how many of each different kind of 
 wood. She knew by a sort of intuition just what kind of 
 food would yield the most palatable nutriment with the least 
 outlay of accessories in cooking. She knew to a minute the 
 time when each article must go into and be withdrawn from 
 her oven ; and, if she could only lie in her chamber and 
 direct, she could guide an intelligent child through the pro 
 cesses with mathematical certainty. It is impossible, how- 
 
THE LADY WHO DOES HER OWN WORK 99 
 
 ever, that anything but early training and long experience 
 can produce these results, and it is earnestly to be wished 
 that the grandmothers of New England had only written 
 down their experiences for our children ; they would have 
 been a mine of maxims and traditions, better than any other 
 traditions of the elders which we know of." 
 
 " One thing I know," said Marianne, " and that is, I 
 wish I had been brought up so, and knew all that I should, 
 and had all the strength and adroitness that those women 
 had. I should not dread to begin housekeeping, as I now 
 do. I should feel myself independent. I should feel that 
 I knew how to direct my servants, and what it was reason 
 able and proper to expect of them ; and then, as you say, I 
 should n t be dependent on all their whims and caprices of 
 temper. I dread those household storms, of all things." 
 
 Silently pondering these anxieties of the young expectant 
 housekeeper, I resumed my pen, and concluded my paper 
 as follows : 
 
 Tn this country, our democratic institutions have removed 
 the superincumbent pressure which in the Old World con 
 fines the servants to a regular orbit. They come here feel 
 ing that this is somehow a land of liberty, and with very 
 dim and confused notions of what liberty is. They are for 
 the most part the raw, untrained Irish peasantry, and the 
 wonder is, that, with all the unreasoning heats and preju 
 dices of the Celtic blood, all the necessary ignorance and 
 rawness, there should be the measure of comfort and success 
 there is in our domestic arrangements. But, so long as 
 things are so, there will be constant changes and interrup 
 tions in every domestic establishment, and constantly recur 
 ring interregnums when the mistress must put her own 
 hand to the work, whether the hand be a trained or an 
 untrained one. As matters now are, the young housekeeper 
 takes life at the hardest. She has very little strength, 
 
100 HOUSE AND HOME TAPERS 
 
 no experience to teach her how to save her strength. She 
 knows nothing experimentally of the simplest processes 
 necessary to keep her family comfortably fed and clothed ; 
 and she has a way of looking at all these things which 
 makes them particularly hard and distasteful to her. She 
 does not escape being obliged to do housework at intervals, 
 but she does it in a weak, blundering, confused way, that 
 makes it twice as hard and disagreeable as it need be. 
 
 Now what I have to say is, that, if every young woman 
 learned to do housework and cultivated her practical facul 
 ties in early life, she would, in the first place, be much 
 more likely to keep her servants, and, in the second place, 
 if she lost them temporarily, would avoid all that wear and 
 tear of the nervous system which comes from constant ill- 
 success in those departments on which family health and 
 temper mainly depend. This is one of the peculiarities of 
 our American life which require a peculiar training. Why 
 not face it sensibly ? 
 
 The second thing I have to say is, that our land is now 
 full of motorpathic institutions to which women are sent at 
 great expense to have hired operators stretch and exercise 
 their inactive muscles. They lie for hours to have their 
 feet twigged, their arms flexed, and all the different muscles 
 of the body worked for them, because they are so flaccid 
 and torpid that the powers of life do not go on. Would it 
 not be quite as cheerful and less expensive a process if 
 young girls from early life developed the muscles in sweep 
 ing, dusting, ironing, rubbing furniture, and all the multi 
 plied domestic processes which our grandmothers knew of ? 
 A woman who did all these, and diversified the intervals 
 with spinning on the great and little wheel, never came to 
 need the gymnastics of Dio Lewis or of the Swedish motor- 
 pathist, which really are a necessity now. Does it not seem 
 poor economy to pay servants for letting our muscles grow 
 feeble, and then to pay operators to exercise them for us ? 
 
WHAT CAN BE GOT IN AMERICA 101 
 
 I will venture to say that our grandmothers in a week went 
 over every movement that any gymnast has inye t nted.;.ancL 
 went over them to some productive purpose, too. 
 
 Lastly, my paper will not have been in vain if those 
 ladies who have learned and practice the invaluable accom 
 plishment of doing their own work will know their own 
 happiness and dignity, and properly value their great ac 
 quisition, even though it may have been forced upon them 
 by circumstances. 
 
 VII 
 
 WHAT CAN BE GOT IN AMERICA 
 
 While I was preparing my article for the " Atlantic," 
 our friend Bob Stephens burst in upon us, in some consid 
 erable heat, with a newspaper in his hand. 
 
 " Well, girls, your time is come now ! You women have 
 been preaching heroism and sacrifice to us, l so splendid 
 to go forth and suffer and die for our country, and now 
 comes the test of feminine patriotism." 
 
 " Why, what s the matter now ? " said Jenny, running 
 eagerly to look over his shoulder at the paper. 
 
 " No more foreign goods," said he, waving it aloft, 
 " no more gold shipped to Europe for silks, laces, jewels, 
 kid gloves, and what not. Here it is, great movement, 
 headed by senators and generals wives, Mrs. General But 
 ler, Mrs. John P. Hale, Mrs. Henry Wilson, and so on, a 
 long string of them, to buy no more imported articles during 
 the war." 
 
 " But I don t see how it can be done," said Jenny. 
 
 " Why," said I, " do you suppose that nothing to wear 
 is made in America ? " 
 
 " But, dear Mr. Crowfield," said Miss Featherstone, a 
 nice girl, who was just then one of our family circle, " there 
 
1Q2 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 is not, positively, much that is really fit to use or wear 
 \md, :n Americjj,, is there now ? Just think : how is 
 Marianne to lurnish her house here without French papers 
 and English carpets ? those American papers are so very 
 ordinary, and, as to American carpets, everybody knows 
 their colors don t hold ; and then, as to dress, a lady must 
 have gloves, you know, and everybody knows no such 
 things are made in America as gloves." 
 
 " I think/ I said, " that I have heard of certain fair 
 ladies wishing that they were men, that they might show 
 with what alacrity they would sacrifice everything on the 
 altar of their country : life and limb would be nothing ; 
 they would glory in wounds and bruises, they would enjoy 
 losing a right arm, they would n t mind limping about on a 
 lame leg the rest of their lives, if they were John or Peter, 
 if only they might serve their dear country/ 
 
 " Yes," said Bob, " that s female patriotism ! Girls are 
 always ready to jump off from precipices, or throw them 
 selves into abysses, but as to wearing an unfashionable hat 
 or thread gloves, that they can t do, not even for their 
 dear country. No matter whether there s any money left 
 to pay for the war or not, the dear souls must have twenty 
 yards of silk in a dress, it s the fashion, you know." 
 
 "Now, isn t he too bad?" said Marianne. "As if 
 we d ever been asked to make these sacrifices and refused ! 
 I think I have seen women ready to give up dress and 
 fashion and everything else for a good cause." 
 
 " For that matter," said I, " the history of all wars has 
 shown women ready to sacrifice what is most intimately 
 feminine in times of peril to their country. The women of 
 Carthage not only gave up their jewels in the siege of their 
 city, but, in the last extremity, cut off their hair for bow 
 strings. The women of Hungary and Poland, in their 
 country s need, sold their jewels and plate and wore orna 
 ments of iron and lead. In the time of our own Kevolu- 
 
WHAT CAN BE GOT IN AMERICA 103 
 
 tion, our women dressed in plain homespun and drank herb- 
 tea, and certainly nothing is more feminine than a cup of 
 tea. And in this very struggle, the women of the Southern 
 States have cut up their carpets for blankets, have borne 
 the most humiliating retrenchments and privations of all 
 kinds without a murmur. So let us exonerate the female 
 sex of want of patriotism, at any rate." 
 
 " Certainly," said my wife ; " and if our Northern wo 
 men have not retrenched and made sacrifices, it has been be 
 cause it has not been impressed on them that there is any 
 particular call for it. Everything has seemed to be so pros 
 perous and plentiful in the Northern States, money has been 
 so abundant and easy to come by, that it has really been 
 difficult to realize that a dreadful and destructive war was 
 raging. Only occasionally, after a great battle, when the 
 lists of the killed and wounded have been sent through the 
 country, have we felt that we were making a sacrifice. The 
 women who have spent such sums for laces and jewels and 
 silks have not had it set clearly before them why they 
 should not do so. The money has been placed freely in 
 their hands, and the temptation before their eyes." 
 
 " Yes," said Jenny, " I am quite sure that there are hun 
 dreds who have been buying foreign goods who would not 
 do it if they could see any connection between their not 
 doing it and the salvation of the country ; but when I go to 
 buy a pair of gloves, I naturally want the best pair I can 
 find, the pair that will last the longest and look the best, 
 and these always happen to be French gloves." 
 
 " Then," said Miss Featherstone, " I never could clearly 
 see why people should confine their patronage and encour 
 agement to works of their own country. 1 7 m sure the poor 
 manufacturers of England have shown the very noblest 
 spirit with relation to our cause, and so have the silk weavers 
 and artisans of France, at least, so I have heard ; why 
 should we not give them a fair share of encouragement, par- 
 
104 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 ticulaiiy when they make things that we are not in circum 
 stances to make, have not the means to make ? " 
 
 " Those are certainly sensible questions/ I replied, " and 
 ought to meet a fair answer, and I should say that, were our 
 country in a fair ordinary state of prosperity, there would be 
 no reason why our wealth should not flow out for the en 
 couragement of well-directed industry in any part of the 
 world ; from this point of view we might look on the whole 
 world as our country, and cheerfully assist in developing its 
 wealth and resources. But our country is now in the situ 
 ation of a private family whose means are absorbed by an 
 expensive sickness, involving the life of its head : just now 
 it is all we can do to keep the family together ; all our means 
 are swallowed up by our own domestic wants ; we have no 
 thing to give for the encouragement of other families, we 
 must exist ourselves ; we must get through this crisis and 
 hold our own, and, that we may do it, all the family expenses 
 must be kept within ourselves as far as possible. If we 
 drain off all the gold of the country to send to Europe to 
 encourage her worthy artisans, we produce high prices and 
 distress among equally worthy ones at home, and we lessen 
 the amount of our resources for maintaining the great strug 
 gle for national existence. The same amount of money 
 which we pay for foreign luxuries, if passed into the hands 
 of our own manufacturers and producers, becomes available 
 for the increasing expenses of the war." 
 
 " But, papa," said Jenny, " I understood that a great part 
 of our governmental income was derived from the duties on 
 foreign goods, and so I inferred that the more foreign goods 
 were imported the better it would be." 
 
 " Well, suppose," said I, " that for every hundred thou 
 sand dollars we send out of the country we pay the govern 
 ment ten thousand ; that is about what our gain as a nation 
 would be : we send our gold abroad in a great stream, and 
 give our government a little driblet." 
 
WHAT CAN BE GOT IN AMERICA 105 
 
 " Well, but/ 7 said Miss Featherstone, " what can be got 
 in America ? Hardly anything, I believe, except common 
 calicoes/ 
 
 " Begging your pardon, my dear lady," said I, " there is 
 where you and multitudes of others are greatly mistaken. 
 Your partiality for foreign things has kept you ignorant of 
 what you have at home. Now I am not blaming the love 
 of foreign things : it is not peculiar to us Americans ; all 
 nations have it. It is a part of the poetry of our nature to 
 love what comes from afar, and reminds us of lands distant 
 and different from our own. The English belles seek after 
 French laces ; the French beauty enumerates English laces 
 among her rarities ; and the French dandy piques himself 
 upon an English tailor. We Americans are great travelers, 
 and few people travel, I fancy, with more real enjoyment 
 than we ; our domestic establishments, as compared with 
 those of the Old World, are less cumbrous and stately, and 
 so our money is commonly in hand as pocket-money, to be 
 spent freely and gayly in our tours abroad. 
 
 " We have such bright and pleasant times in every coun 
 try that we conceive a kindliness for its belongings. To send 
 to Paris for our dresses and our shoes and our gloves may 
 not be a mere bit of foppery, but a reminder of the bright, 
 pleasant hours we have spent in that city of boulevards and 
 fountains. Hence it comes, in a way not very blamable, 
 that many people have been so engrossed with what can be 
 got from abroad that they have neglected to inquire what 
 can be found at home : they have supposed, of course, that 
 to get a decent watch they must send to Geneva or to Lon 
 don ; that to get thoroughly good carpets they must have 
 the English manufacture ; that a really tasteful wall-paper 
 could be found only in Paris ; and that flannels and broad 
 cloths could come only from France, Great Britain, or Ger 
 many." 
 
 " Well, is n t it so ? " said Miss Featherstone. " I cer- 
 
106 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 tainly have always thought so ; I never heard of American 
 watches, 1 7 m sure." 
 
 " Then/ 7 said I, " I ? m sure you can t have read an arti 
 cle that you should have read on the Waltham watches, 
 written by our friend George W. Curtis, in the Atlantic 
 for January of last year. I must refer you to that to learn 
 that we make in America watches superior to those of Swit 
 zerland or England, bringing into the service machinery and 
 modes of workmanship unequaled for delicacy and precision ; 
 as I said before, you must get the article and read it, and, if 
 some sunny day you could make a trip to Waltham and 
 see the establishment, it would greatly assist your compre 
 hension." 
 
 " Then, as to men s clothing," said Bob, " I know to 
 my entire satisfaction that many of the most popular cloths 
 for men s wear are actually American fabrics baptized with 
 French and English names to make them sell." 
 
 " Which shows," said I, " the use of a general commu 
 nity movement to employ American goods. It will change 
 the fashion. The demand will create the supply. When 
 the leaders of fashion are inquiring for American instead of 
 French and English fabrics, they will be surprised to find 
 what nice American articles there are. The work of our 
 own hands will no more be forced to skulk into the market 
 under French and English names, and we shall see, what is 
 really true, that an American gentleman need not look be 
 yond his own country for a wardrobe befitting him. I am 
 positive that we need not seek broadcloth or other woolen 
 goods from foreign lands, that letter hats are made in 
 America than in Europe, and better boots and shoes j and I 
 should be glad to send an American gentleman to the World s 
 Fair dressed from top to toe in American manufactures, 
 with an American watch in his pocket, and see if he would 
 suffer in comparison with the gentlemen of any other coun 
 try." 
 
WHAT CAN BE GOT IN AMERICA 107 
 
 " Then, as to house-furnishing," began my wife, " Ameri 
 can carpets are getting to be every way equal to the Eng 
 lish." 
 
 " Yes," said I, " and, what is more, the Brussels carpets 
 of England are woven on looms invented by an American, 
 and bought of him. Our countryman, Bigelow, went to 
 England to study carpet-weaving in the English looms, 
 supposing that all arts were generously open for the instruc 
 tion of learners. He was denied the opportunity of study 
 ing the machinery and watching the processes by a short 
 sighted jealousy. He immediately sat down with a yard 
 of carpeting, and, patiently unraveling it thread by thread, 
 combined and calculated till he invented the machinery on 
 which the best carpets of the Old and the New World are 
 woven. No pains which such ingenuity and energy can 
 render effective are spared to make our fabrics equal those 
 of the British market, and we need only to be disabused of 
 the old prejudice, and to keep up with the movement of our 
 own country, and find out our own resources. The fact is, 
 every year improves our fabrics. Our mechanics, our manu 
 facturers, are working with an energy, a zeal, and a skill that 
 carry things forward faster than anybody dreams of ; and 
 nobody can predicate the character of American articles in 
 any department now by their character even five years ago." 
 
 " Well, as to wall-papers," said Miss Featherstone, " there 
 you must confess the French are and must be unequaled." 
 
 " I do not confess any such thing," said I hardily. " I 
 grant you that, in that department of paper-hangings which 
 exhibits floral decoration, the French designs and execution 
 are, and must be for some time to come, far ahead of all 
 the world : their drawing of flowers, vines, and foliage has 
 the accuracy of botanical studies and the grace of finished 
 works of art, and we cannot as yet pretend in America to do 
 anything equal to it. But for satin finish, and for a variety 
 of exquisite tints of plain colors, American papers equal any 
 
108 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 in the world : our gilt papers even surpass in the heaviness 
 and polish of the gilding those of foreign countries ; and we 
 have also gorgeous velvets. All I have to say is, let people 
 who are furnishing houses inquire for articles of American 
 manufacture, and they will be surprised at what they will 
 see. We need go no farther than our Cambridge glass 
 works to see that the most dainty devices of cut-glass, 
 crystal, ground and engraved glass of every color and 
 pattern, may be had of American workmanship, every way 
 equal to the best European make, and for half the price. 
 And American painting on china is so well executed, both in 
 Boston and New York, that deficiencies in the finest French 
 or English sets can be made up in a style not distinguishable 
 from the original, as one may easily see by calling on our 
 worthy next neighbor, Briggs, who holds the opposite cor 
 ner to our Atlantic Monthly. No porcelain, it is true, 
 is yet made in America, these decorative arts being exer 
 cised on articles imported from Europe. Our tables must, 
 therefore, perforce, be largely indebted to foreign lands for 
 years to come. Exclusive of this item, however, I believe 
 it would require very little self-denial to paper, carpet, and 
 furnish a house entirely from the manufactures of America. 
 I cannot help saying one word here in favor of the cabinet 
 makers of Boston. There is so much severity of taste, such 
 a style and manner -about the best-made Boston furniture, 
 as raises it really quite into the region of the fine arts. 
 Our artisans have studied foreign models with judicious 
 eyes, and so transferred to our country the spirit of what is 
 best worth imitating that one has no need to import furni 
 ture from Europe." 
 
 " Well," said Miss Featherstone, " there is one point 
 you cannot make out, gloves ; certainly the French have 
 the monopoly of that article." 
 
 " I am not going to ruin my cause by asserting too 
 much," said I. " I have n t been with nicely dressed wo- 
 
WHAT CAN BE GOT IN AMEEICA 109 
 
 men so many years not to speak with proper respect of 
 Alexander s gloves ; and I confess honestly that to forego 
 them must be a fair, square sacrifice to patriotism. But 
 then, on the other hand, it is nevertheless true that gloves 
 have long been made in America and surreptitiously brought 
 into market as French. I have lately heard that very nice 
 kid gloves are made at Watertown and in Philadelphia. I 
 have only heard of them and not seen. A loud demand 
 might bring forth an unexpected supply from these and 
 other sources. If the women of America were bent on 
 having gloves made in their own country, how long would 
 it be before apparatus and factories would spring into be 
 ing ? Look at the hoop-skirt factories ; women wanted 
 hoop-skirts, would have them or die, and forthwith 
 factories arose, and hoop-skirts became as the dust of the 
 earth for abundance." 
 
 " Yes," said Miss Featherstone, " and, to say the truth, 
 the American hoop-skirts are the only ones fit to wear. 
 When we were living on the Champs Elysees, I remem 
 ber we searched high and low for something like them, and 
 finally had to send home to America for some. 
 
 " Well," said I, " that shows what I said. Let there 
 be only a hearty call for an article and it will come. These 
 spirits of the vasty deep are not so very far off, after all, as 
 we may imagine, and women s unions and leagues will lead 
 to inquiries and demands which will as infallibly bring sup 
 plies as a vacuum will create a draught of air." 
 
 " But, at least, there are no ribbons made in America," 
 said Miss Featherstone. 
 
 " Pardon, my lady, there is a ribbon factory now in oper 
 ation in Boston, and ribbons of every color are made in 
 New York ; there is also in the vicinity of Boston a factory 
 which makes Roman scarfs. This shows that the faculty 
 of weaving ribbons is not wanting to us Americans, and 
 a zealous patronage would increase the supply. 
 
110 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 " Then, as for a thousand and one little feminine needs, 
 I believe our manufacturers can supply them. The Ports 
 mouth Steam Company makes white spool-cotton equal to 
 any in England, and colored spool-cotton, of every shade 
 and variety, such as is not made either in England or 
 France. Pins are well made in America ; so are hooks and 
 eyes, and a variety of buttons. Straw bonnets of Ameri 
 can manufacture are also extensively in market, and quite as 
 pretty ones as the double-priced ones which are imported. 
 
 " As to silks and satins, I am not going to pretend that 
 they are to be found here. It is true, there are silk manu 
 factories, like that of the Cheneys in Connecticut, where 
 very pretty foulard dress-silks are made, together with sew 
 ing-silk enough to supply a large demand. Enough has 
 been done to show that silks might be made in America ; 
 but at present, as compared with Europe, we claim neither 
 silks nor thread laces among our manufactures. 
 
 " But what then ? These are not necessaries of life. 
 Ladies can be very tastefully dressed in other fabrics be 
 sides silks. There are many pretty American dress-goods 
 which the leaders of fashion might make fashionable, and 
 certainly no leader of fashion could wish to dress for a no 
 bler object than to aid her country in deadly peril. 
 
 " It is not a life-pledge, not a total abstinence, that is 
 asked, only a temporary expedient to meet a stringent 
 crisis. We only ask a preference for American goods where 
 they can be found. Surely, women whose exertions in 
 Sanitary Fairs have created an era in the history of the 
 world will not shrink from so small a sacrifice for so ob 
 vious a good. 
 
 " Here is something in which every individual woman 
 can help. Every woman who goes into a shop and asks 
 for American goods renders an appreciable aid to our cause. 
 She expresses her opinion and her patriotism, and her voice 
 forms a part of that demand which shall arouse and develop 
 
WHAT CAN BE GOT IN AMERICA 111 
 
 the resources of her country. We shall learn to know our 
 own country. We shall learn to respect our own powers, 
 and every branch of useful labor will spring and flour 
 ish under our well-directed efforts. We shall come out of 
 our great contest, not bedraggled, ragged, and poverty- 
 stricken, but developed, instructed, and rich. Then will 
 we gladly join with other nations in the free interchange of 
 manufactures, and gratify our eye and taste with what is 
 foreign, while we can in turn send abroad our own produc 
 tions in equal ratio." 
 
 " Upon my word," said Miss Featherstone, " I should 
 think it was the Fourth of July ; but I yield the point. 
 I am convinced ; and henceforth you will see me among 
 the most stringent of the leaguers." 
 
 " Eight ! " said I. 
 
 And, fair lady reader, let me hope you will say the same. 
 You can do something for your country, it lies right in 
 your hand. Go to the shops, determined on supplying your 
 family and yourself with American goods. Insist on hav 
 ing them ; raise the question of origin over every article 
 shown to you. In the Revolutionary times, some of the 
 leading matrons of New England gave parties where the 
 ladies were dressed in homespun and drank sage tea. Fash 
 ion makes all things beautiful, and you, my charming and 
 accomplished friend, can create beauty by creating fashion. 
 What makes the beauty of half the Cashmere shawls ? 
 Not anything in the shawls themselves, for they often look 
 coarse and dingy and barbarous. It is the association with 
 style and fashion. Fair lady, give style and fashion to the 
 products of your own country, resolve that the money 
 in your hand shall go to your brave brothers, to your co- 
 Americans, now straining every nerve to uphold the nation 
 and cause it to stand high in the earth. What are you 
 without your country ? As Americans you can hope for 
 no rank but the rank of your native land, no badge of no- 
 
112 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 bility but her beautiful stars. It rests with this conflict to 
 decide whether those stars shall be badges of nobility to you 
 and your childen in all lands. Women of America, your 
 country expects every woman to do her duty ! 
 
 VIII 
 
 ECONOMY 
 
 " The fact is," said Jenny, as she twirled a little hat on 
 her hand, which she had been making over, with nobody 
 knows what of bows and pompons, and other matters for 
 which the women have curious names, " the fact is, 
 American women and girls must learn to economize ; it 
 is n t merely restricting one s self to American goods, it is 
 general economy, that is required. Now here s this hat, 
 costs me only three dollars, all told ; and Sophie Page 
 bought an English one this morning at Madam Meyer s for 
 which she gave fifteen. And I really don t think hers has 
 more of an air than mine. I made this over, you see, with 
 things I had in the house, bought nothing but the ribbon, 
 and paid for altering and pressing, and there you see what 
 a stylish hat I have ! " 
 
 " Lovely ! admirable ! " said Miss Featherstone. " Upon 
 my word, Jenny, you ought to marry a poor parson ; you 
 would be quite thrown away upon a rich man." 
 
 " Let me see," said I. " I want to admire intelligently. 
 That is n t the hat you were wearing yesterday ? " 
 
 " Oh no, papa ! This is just done. The one I wore yes 
 terday was my waterfall-hat, with the green feather ; this, 
 you see, is an oriole." 
 
 " A what ? " 
 
 " An oriole. Papa, how can you expect to learn about 
 these things ? " 
 
 " And that plain little black one, with the stiff crop of 
 scarlet feathers sticking straight up ? " 
 
ECONOMY 113 
 
 " That s my jockey, papa, with a plume en militaire" 
 
 " And did the waterfall and the jockey cost anything ? " 
 
 " They were very, very cheap, papa, all things consid 
 ered. Miss Featherstone will remember that the waterfall 
 was a great bargain, and I had the feather from last year ; 
 and as to the jockey, that was made out of my last year s 
 white one, dyed over. You know, papa, I always take 
 care of my things, and they last from year to year." 
 
 " I do assure you, Mr. Crowfield," said Miss Feather- 
 stone, " I never saw such little economists as your daugh 
 ters ; it is perfectly wonderful what they contrive to dress 
 on. How they manage to do it I m sure I can t see. I 
 never could, I m convinced." 
 
 " Yes," said Jenny, " I ve bought but just one new hat. 
 I only wish you could sit in church where we do, and see 
 those Miss Fielders. Marianne and I have counted six 
 new hats apiece of those girls , new, you. know, just out 
 of the milliner s shop ; and last Sunday they came out in 
 such lovely puffed tulle bonnets ! Were n t they lovely, 
 Marianne ? And next Sunday, I don t doubt, there 11 be 
 something else." 
 
 "Yes," said Miss Featherstone, " their father, they 
 say, has made a million dollars lately on government con 
 tracts." 
 
 " For my part," said Jenny, " I think such extravagance, 
 at such a time as this, is shameful." 
 
 " Do you know," said I, " that I m quite sure the 
 Misses Fielder think they are practicing rigorous economy ? " 
 
 " Papa ! Now there you are with your paradoxes ! How 
 can you say so ? " 
 
 " I should n t be afraid to bet a pair of gloves, now," 
 said I, "that Miss Fielder thinks herself half ready for 
 translation, because she has bought only six new hats and 
 a tulle bonnet so far in the season. If it were not for her 
 dear bleeding country, she would have had thirty-six, like 
 
114 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 the Misses Sibthorpe. If we were admitted to the secret 
 councils of the Fielders, doubtless we should perceive what 
 temptations they daily resist ; how perfectly rubbishy and 
 dreadful they suffer themselves to be, because they feel it 
 important now, in this crisis, to practice economy ; how 
 they abuse the Sibthorpes, who have a new hat every time 
 they drive out, and never think of wearing one more than 
 two or three times ; how virtuous and self-denying they 
 feel when they think of the puffed tulle, for which they 
 only gave eighteen dollars, when Madame Caradori showed 
 them those lovely ones, like the Misses Sibthorpe s, for 
 forty-five ; and how they go home descanting on virgin 
 simplicity, and resolving that they will not allow them 
 selves to be swept into the vortex of extravagance, what 
 ever other people may do." 
 
 " Do you know," said Miss Featherstone, " I believe 
 your papa is right ? I was calling on the oldest Miss 
 Fielder the other day, and she told me that she positively 
 felt ashamed to go looking as she did, but that she really did 
 feel the necessity of economy. Perhaps we might afford to 
 spend more than some others, she said ; but it s so much 
 better to give the money to the Sanitary Commission ! : 
 
 " Furthermore," said I, " I am going to put forth another 
 paradox, and say that very likely there are some people 
 looking on my girls, and commenting on them for extrava 
 gance in having three hats, even though made over, and 
 contrived from last year s stock." 
 
 " They can t know anything about it, then," said Jenny 
 decisively ; " for, certainly, nobody can be decent and in 
 vest less in millinery than Marianne and I do." 
 
 " When I was a young lady," said my wife, " a well- 
 dressed girl got her a new bonnet in the spring, and another 
 in the fall j that was the extent of her purchases in this 
 line. A second-best bonnet, left of last year, did duty to 
 relieve and preserve the best one. My father was accounted 
 
ECONOMY 115 
 
 well-to-do, but I had no more, and wanted no more. I also 
 bought myself, every spring, two pair of gloves, a dark and 
 a light pair, and wore them through the summer, and another 
 two through the winter ; one or two pair of white kids, 
 carefully cleaned, carried me through all my parties. Hats 
 had not been heard of, and the great necessity which re 
 quires two or three new ones every spring and fall had 
 not arisen. Yet I was reckoned a well-appearing girl, who 
 dressed liberally. Now, a young lady who has a waterfall- 
 hat, an oriole-hat, and a jockey must still be troubled with 
 anxious cares for her spring and fall and summer and winter 
 bonnets, all the variety will not take the place of them. 
 Gloves are bought by the dozen ; and as to dresses, there 
 seems to be no limit to the quantity of material and trim 
 ming that may be expended upon them. When I was a 
 young lady, seventy-five dollars a year was considered by 
 careful parents a liberal allowance for a daughter s ward 
 robe. I had a hundred, and was reckoned rich ; and I 
 sometimes used a part to make up the deficiencies in the 
 allowance of Sarah Evans, my particular friend, whose 
 father gave her only fifty. We all thought that a very 
 scant allowance ; yet she generally made a very pretty and 
 genteel appearance, with the help of occasional presents 
 from friends." 
 
 " How could a girl dress for fifty dollars ? " said Mari 
 anne. 
 
 " She could get a white muslin and a white cambric, 
 which, with different sortings of ribbons, served her for all 
 dress occasions. A silk, in those days, took only ten yards 
 in the making, and one dark silk was considered a reason 
 able allowance to a lady s wardrobe. Once made, it stood 
 for something, always worn carefully, it lasted for years. 
 One or two calico morning-dresses, and a merino for winter 
 wear, completed the list. Then, as to collars, capes, cuffs, 
 etc., we all did our own embroidering, and very pretty 
 
116 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 things we wore, too. Girls looked as prettily then as they 
 do now, when four or five hundred dollars a year is insuffi 
 cient to clothe them." 
 
 " But, mamma, you know our allowance is n t anything 
 like that, it is quite a slender one, though not so small 
 as yours was," said Marianne. " Don t you think the cus 
 toms of society make a difference ? Do you think, as things 
 are, we could go back and dress for the sum you did ? " 
 
 " You cannot," said my wife, " without a greater sacri 
 fice of feeling than I wish to impose on you. Still, though 
 I don t see how to help it, I cannot but think that the re 
 quirements of fashion are becoming needlessly extravagant, 
 particularly in regard to the dress of women. It seems to 
 me, it is making the support of families so burdensome that 
 young men are discouraged from marriage. A young man, 
 in a moderately good business, might cheerfully undertake 
 the world with a w r ife who could make herself pretty and 
 attractive for seventy-five dollars a year, when he might sigh 
 in vain for one who positively could not get through, and 
 be decent, on four hundred. Women, too, are getting to 
 be so attached to the trappings and accessories of life that 
 they cannot think of marriage without an amount of fortune 
 which few young men possess." 
 
 " You are talking in very low numbers about the dress 
 of women," said Miss Featherstone. " I do assure you that 
 it is the easiest thing in the world for a girl to make away 
 with a thousand dollars a year, and not have so much to 
 show for it, either, as Marianne and Jenny." 
 
 " To be sure," said I. " Only establish certain formu 
 las of expectation, and it is the easiest thing in the world. 
 For instance, in your mother s day girls talked of a pair of 
 gloves, now they talk of a pack ; then it was a bonnet 
 summer and winter, now it is a bonnet spring, summer, 
 autumn, and winter, and hats like monthly roses, a new 
 blossom every few weeks." 
 
ECONOMY 117 
 
 " And then," said my wife, " every device of the toilet 
 is immediately taken up and varied and improved on, so as 
 to impose an almost monthly necessity for novelty. The 
 jackets of May are outshone by the jackets of June ; the 
 buttons of June are antiquated in July ; the trimmings of 
 July are passees by September ; side-combs, back-combs, 
 puffs, rats, and all sorts of such matters, are in a distracted 
 race of improvement ; every article of feminine toilet is on 
 the move towards perfection. It seems to me that an infin 
 ity of money must be spent in these trifles by those who 
 make the least pretension to keep in the fashion." 
 
 " Well, papa," said Jenny, " after all, it s just the way 
 things always have been since the world began. You know 
 the Bible says, Can a maid forget her ornaments ? It s 
 clear she can t. You see, it s a law of nature ; and you 
 remember all that long chapter in the Bible that we had read 
 in church last Sunday about the curls and veils and tinkling 
 ornaments and crimping-pins, and all that, of those wicked 
 daughters of Zion in old times. Women always have been 
 too much given to dress, and they always will be." 
 
 " The thing is," said Marianne, " how can any woman, 
 I, for example, know what is too much or too little ? In 
 mamma s day, it seems, a girl could keep her place in so 
 ciety, by hard economy, and spend only fifty dollars a year 
 on her dress. Mamma found a hundred dollars ample. I 
 have more than that, and find myself quite straitened to 
 keep myself looking well. I don t want to live for dress, 
 to give all my time and thoughts to it ; I don t wish to be 
 extravagant : and yet I wish to be lady-like it annoys 
 and makes me unhappy not to be fresh and neat and nice, 
 shabbiness and seediness are my aversion. I don t see 
 where the fault is. Can one individual resist the whole 
 current of society ? It certainly is not strictly necessary for 
 us girls to have half the things we do. We might, I suppose, 
 live without many of them, and, as mamma says, look just 
 
118 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 as well, because girls did so before these things were in 
 vented. Now I confess I flatter myself, generally, that I 
 am a pattern of good management and economy, because 
 I get so much less than other girls I associate with. I 
 wish you could see Miss Thome s fall dresses that she 
 showed me last year when she was visiting here. She had 
 six gowns, and no one of them could have cost less than 
 seventy or eighty dollars, and some of them must have been 
 even more expensive, and yet I don t doubt that this fall 
 she will feel that she must have just as many more. She 
 runs through and wears out these expensive things, with 
 all their velvet and thread lace, just as I wear my common 
 est ones ; and at the end of the season they are really gone, 
 spotted, stained, frayed, the lace all pulled to pieces, 
 nothing left to save or make over. I feel as if Jenny and 
 I were patterns of economy when I see such things. I 
 really don t know what economy is. What is it ? " 
 
 " There is the same difficulty in my housekeeping," said 
 my wife. " I think I am an economist. I mean to be one. 
 All our expenses are on a modest scale, and yet I can see 
 much that really is not strictly necessary ; but if I com 
 pare myself with some of my neighbors, I feel as if I were 
 hardly respectable. There is no subject on which all the 
 world are censuring one another so much as this. Hardly 
 any one but thinks her neighbors extravagant in some one 
 or more particulars, and takes for granted that she herself is 
 an economist." 
 
 " I 11 venture to say," said I, " that there is n t a woman 
 of my acquaintance that does not think she is an econo 
 mist." 
 
 " Papa is turned against us women, like all the rest of 
 them," said Jenny. " I wonder if it is n t just so with 
 the men ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Marianne, " it s the fashion to talk as if 
 all the extravagance of the country was perpetrated by 
 
ECONOMY 119 
 
 women. For my part, I think young men are just as ex 
 travagant. Look at the sums they spend for cigars and 
 meerschaums, an expense which has n t even the pretense 
 of usefulness in any way ; it s a purely selfish, nonsensical 
 indulgence. When a girl spends money in making herself 
 look pretty, she contributes something to the agreeableness 
 of society ; but a man s cigars and pipes are neither orna 
 mental nor useful." 
 
 " Then look at their dress," said Jenny : " they are to 
 the full as fussy and particular about it as girls ; they have 
 as many fine, invisible points of fashion, and their fashions 
 change quite as often ; and they have just as many knick- 
 knacks, with their studs and their sleeve buttons and waist 
 coat buttons, their scarfs and scarf pins, their watch chains 
 and seals and seal rings, and nobody knows what. Then 
 they often waste and throw away more than women, because 
 they are not good judges of material, nor saving in what 
 they buy, and have no knowledge of how things should be 
 cared for, altered, or mended. If their cap is a little too 
 tight, they cut the lining with a penknife, or slit holes in 
 a new shirt-collar because it does not exactly fit to their 
 mind. For my part, I think men are naturally twice as 
 wasteful as women. A pretty thing, to be sure, to have 
 all the waste of the country laid to us ! " 
 
 " You are right, child," said I ; " women are by nature, 
 as compared with men, the care-taking and saving part of 
 creation, the authors and conservators of economy. As 
 a general rule, man earns and woman saves and applies. 
 The wastefulness of woman is commonly the fault of man." 
 
 "I don t see into that," said Bob Stevens. 
 
 " In this way. Economy is the science of proportion. 
 Whether a particular purchase is extravagant depends 
 mainly on the income it is taken from. Suppose a woman 
 has a hundred and fifty a year for her dress, and gives fifty 
 dollars for a bonnet, she gives a third of her income, 
 
120 HOUSE AND HOME PAPEES 
 
 it is a horrible extravagance ; while for the woman whose 
 income is ten thousand it may be no extravagance at all. 
 The poor clergyman s wife, when she gives five dollars for 
 a bonnet, may be giving as much in proportion to her 
 income as the woman who gives fifty. Now the difficulty 
 with the greater part of women is, that the men, who make 
 the money and hold it, give them no kind of standard by 
 which to measure their expenses. Most women and girls 
 are in this matter entirely at sea, without chart or compass. 
 They don t know in the least what they have to spend. 
 Husbands and fathers often pride themselves about not say 
 ing a word on business matters to their wives and daughters. 
 They don t wish them to understand them, or to inquire 
 into them, or to make remarks or suggestions concerning 
 them. f I want you to have everything that is suitable 
 and proper/ says Jones to his wife, ( but don t be extrav 
 agant. 7 
 
 " But, my dear, says Mrs. Jones, what is suitable and 
 proper depends very much on our means ; if you could 
 allow me any specific sum for dress and housekeeping, I 
 could tell better. 
 
 " ( Nonsense, Susan ! I can t do that, it s too much 
 trouble. Get what you need, and avoid foolish extrava 
 gances ; that s all I ask. 
 
 " By and by Mrs. Jones s bills are sent in, in an evil 
 hour, when Jones has heavy notes to meet, and then comes 
 a domestic storm. 
 
 " I shall just be ruined, madam, if that s the way you 
 are going on. I can t afford to dress you and the girls in 
 the style you have set up : look at this milliner s bill ! 
 
 " { I assure you, says Mrs. Jones, we have n t got any 
 more than the Stebbinses, nor so much. 
 
 " Don t you know that the Stebbinses are worth five 
 times as much as ever I was ? 
 
 " No, Mrs. Jones did not know it : how should she, 
 
ECONOMY 121 
 
 when her husband makes it a rule never to speak of his 
 business to her, and she has not the remotest idea of his 
 income ? 
 
 " Thus multitudes of good, conscientious women and girls 
 are extravagant from pure ignorance. The male provider 
 allows bills to be run up in his name, and they have no 
 earthly means of judging whether they are spending too 
 much or too little, except the semi-annual hurricane which 
 attends the coming in of these bills. 
 
 " The first essential in the practice of economy is a know 
 ledge of one s income, and the man who refuses to accord 
 to his wife and children this information has never any 
 right to accuse them of extravagance, because he himself 
 deprives them of that standard of comparison which is an 
 indispensable requisite in economy. As early as possible in 
 the education of children, they should pass from that state 
 of irresponsible waiting to be provided for by parents, and 
 be trusted with the spending of some fixed allowance, that 
 they may learn prices and values, and have some notion of 
 what money is actually worth and what it will bring. The 
 simple fact of the possession of a fixed and definite income 
 often suddenly transforms a giddy, extravagant girl into 
 a care-taking, prudent little woman. Her allowance is her 
 own j she begins to plan upon it, to add, subtract, mul 
 tiply, divide, and do numberless sums in her little head. 
 She no longer buys everything she fancies ; she deliberates, 
 weighs, compares. And now there is room for self-denial 
 and generosity to come in. She can do without this article ; 
 she can furbish up some older possession to do duty a little 
 longer, and give this money to some friend poorer than she ; 
 and ten to one the girl whose bills last year were four or 
 five hundred finds herself bringing through this year cred 
 itably on a hundred and fifty. To be sure, she goes with 
 out numerous things which she used to have. From the 
 standpoint of a fixed income she sees that these are impos- 
 
122 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 sible, and no more wants them than the green cheese of the 
 moon. She learns to make her own taste and skill take the 
 place of expensive purchases. She refits her hats and bon 
 nets, retrims her dresses, and in a thousand busy, earnest, 
 happy little ways sets herself to make the most of her small 
 income. 
 
 " So the woman who has her definite allowance for house 
 keeping finds at once a hundred questions set at rest. Be 
 fore it was not clear to her why she should not go and do 
 likewise in relation to every purchase made by her next 
 neighbor. Now, there is a clear logic of proportion. Cer 
 tain things are evidently not to be thought of, though next 
 neighbors do have them ; and we must resign ourselves to 
 find some other way of living." 
 
 " My dear," said my wife, " I think there is a peculiar 
 temptation in a life organized as ours is in America. There 
 are here no settled classes, with similar ratios of income. 
 Mixed together in the same society, going to the same par 
 ties, and blended in daily neighborly intercourse, are fam 
 ilies of the most opposite extremes in point of fortune. In 
 England there is a very well understood expression, that 
 people should not dress or live above their station ; in Amer 
 ica none will admit that they have any particular station, 
 or that they can live above it. The principle of democratic 
 equality unites in society people of the most diverse posi 
 tions and means. 
 
 " Here, for instance, is a family like Dr. Selden s : an 
 old and highly respected one, with an income of only two 
 or three thousand ; yet they are people universally sought 
 for in society, and mingle in all the intercourse of life with 
 merchant millionaires whose incomes are from ten to thirty 
 thousand. Their sons and daughters go to the same schools, 
 the same parties, and are thus constantly meeting upon terms 
 of social equality. 
 
 " Now it seems to me that our danger does not lie in the 
 
ECONOMY 123 
 
 great and evident expenses of our richer friends. We do 
 not expect to have pineries, graperies, equipages, horses, 
 diamonds, we say openly and of course that we do not. 
 Still, our expenses are constantly increased by the proximity 
 of these things, unless we understand ourselves better than 
 most people do. We don t, of course, expect to get a fifteen- 
 hundred-dollar Cashmere, like Mrs. So-and-so, but we begin 
 to look at hundred-dollar shawls and nibble about the hook. 
 We don t expect sets of diamonds, but a diamond ring, a 
 pair of solitaire diamond ear-rings, begin to be speculated 
 about among the young people as among possibilities. We 
 don t expect to carpet our house with Axminster and hang 
 our windows with damask, but at least we must have Brus 
 sels and brocatelle, it would not do not to. And so we 
 go on getting hundreds of things that we don t need, that 
 have no real value except that they soothe our self-love ; 
 and for these inferior articles we pay a higher proportion of 
 our income than our rich neighbor does for his better ones. 
 Nothing is uglier than low-priced Cashmere shawls ; and yet 
 a young man just entering business will spend an eighth of 
 a year s income to put one on his wife, and when he has put 
 it there it only serves as a constant source of disquiet, for, 
 now that the door is opened and Cashmere shawls are pos 
 sible, she is consumed with envy at the superior ones con 
 stantly sported around her. So, also, with point-lace, velvet 
 dresses, and hundreds of things of that sort, which belong 
 to a certain rate of income, and are absurd below it." 
 
 " And yet, mamma, I heard Aunt Easygo say that vel 
 vet, point-lace, and Cashmere were the cheapest finery that 
 could be bought, because they lasted a lifetime." 
 
 "Aunt Easygo speaks from an income of ten thousand a 
 year : they may be cheap for her rate of living ; but for us, for 
 example, by no magic of numbers can it be made to appear 
 that it is cheaper to have the greatest bargain in the world 
 in Cashmere, lace, and diamonds than not to have them at 
 
124 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 all. I never had a diamond, never wore a piece of point- 
 lace, never had a velvet dress, and have been perfectly 
 happy, and just as much respected as if I had. Who ever 
 thought of objecting to me for not having them ? Nobody, 
 that I ever heard." 
 
 " Certainly not, mamma," said Marianne. 
 
 " The thing I have always said to you girls is, that 
 you were not to expect to live like richer people, not to be 
 gin to try, not to think or inquire about certain rates of ex 
 penditure, or take the first step in certain directions. We 
 have moved on all our life after a very antiquated and old- 
 fashioned mode. We have had our little, old-fashioned 
 house, our little old-fashioned ways." 
 
 " Except the parlor carpet, and what came of it, my 
 dear," said I mischievously. 
 
 " Yes, except the parlor carpet," said my wife, with a 
 conscious twinkle, " and the things that came of it ; there 
 was a concession there, but one can t be wise always." 
 
 " We talked mamma into that," said Jenny. 
 
 " But one thing is certain," said my wife, " that, 
 though I have had an antiquated, plain house, and plain 
 furniture, and plain dress, and not the beginning of a thing 
 such as many of my neighbors have possessed, I have spent 
 more money than many of them for real comforts. While 
 I had young children, I kept more and better servants than 
 many women who wore Cashmere and diamonds. I thought 
 it better to pay extra wages to a really good, trusty woman 
 who lived with me from year to year, and relieved me of 
 some of my heaviest family cares, than to have ever so 
 much lace locked away in my drawers. We always were 
 able to go into the country to spend our summers, and to 
 keep a good family horse and carriage for daily driving, 
 by which means we afforded, as a family, very poor patron 
 age to the medical profession. Then we built our house, 
 and, while we left out a great many expensive common- 
 
ECONOMY 125 
 
 places that other people think they must have, we put in a 
 profusion of bathing accommodations such as very few peo 
 ple think of having. There never was a time when we did 
 not feel able to afford to do what was necessary to preserve 
 or to restore health ; and for this I always drew on the sur 
 plus fund laid up by my very unfashionable housekeeping 
 and dressing." 
 
 " Your mother has had/ 7 said I, " what is the great want 
 in America, perfect independence of mind to go her own 
 way without regard to the way others go. I think there is, 
 for some reason, more false shame among Americans about 
 economy than among Europeans. I cannot afford it is 
 more seldom heard among us. A young man beginning 
 life, whose income may be from five to eight hundred a 
 year, thinks it elegant and gallant to affect a careless air 
 about money, especially among ladies, to hand it out 
 freely, and put back his change without counting it, to 
 wear a watch chain and studs and shirt-fronts like those 
 of some young millionaire. None but the most expensive 
 tailors, shoemakers, and hatters will do for him ; and then 
 he grumbles at the dearness of living, and declares that he 
 cannot get along on his salary. The same is true of young 
 girls, and of married men and women, too, the whole of 
 them are ashamed of economy. The cares that wear out 
 life and health in many households are of a nature that 
 cannot be cast on God, or met by any promise from the 
 Bible : it is not care for { food convenient, or for com 
 fortable raiment, but care. to keep up false appearances, and 
 to stretch a narrow income over the space that can be cov 
 ered only by a wider one. 
 
 " The poor widow in her narrow lodgings, with her 
 monthly rent staring her hourly in the face, and her bread 
 and meat and candles and meal all to be paid for on delivery 
 or not obtained at all, may find comfort in the good old 
 Book, reading of that other widow whose wasting measure 
 
126 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 of oil and last failing handful of meal were of such account 
 before her Father in heaven that a prophet was sent to 
 recruit them 5 and when customers do not pay, or wages 
 are cut down, she can enter into her chamber, and, when she 
 hath shut her door, present to her Father in heaven His 
 sure promise that with the fowls of the air she shall be fed 
 arid with the lilies of the field she shall be clothed : but 
 what promises are there for her who is racking her brains 
 on the ways and means to provide as sumptuous an enter 
 tainment of oysters and champagne at her next party as 
 her richer neighbor, or to compass that great bargain which 
 shall give her a point-lace set almost as handsome as that 
 of Mrs. Croesus, who has ten times her income ? " 
 
 " But, papa," said Marianne, with a twinge of that exact 
 ing sensitiveness by which the child is characterized, " I 
 think I am an economist, thanks to you and mamma, so far 
 as knowing just what my income is, and keeping within it ; 
 but that does not satisfy me, and it seems that is n t all 
 of economy ; the question that haunts me is, Might I not 
 make my little all do more and better than I do ? " 
 
 " There," said I, " you have hit the broader and deeper 
 signification of economy, which is, in fact, the science of 
 comparative values. In its highest sense, economy is a 
 just judgment of the comparative value of things, money 
 only the means of enabling one to express that value. 
 This is the reason why the whole matter is so full of diffi 
 culty, why every one criticises his neighbor in this 
 regard. Human beings are so various, the necessities of 
 each are so different, they are made comfortable or uncom 
 fortable by such opposite means, that the spending of other 
 people s incomes must of necessity often look unwise from 
 our standpoint. For this reason multitudes of people who 
 cannot be accused of exceeding their incomes often seem to 
 others to be spending them foolishly and extravagantly." 
 
 " But is there no standard of value ? " said Marianne. 
 
ECONOMY 127 
 
 " There are certain things upon which there is a pretty 
 general agreement, verbally, at least, among mankind. For 
 instance, it is generally agreed that health is an indispensa 
 ble good, that money is well spent that secures it, and 
 worse than ill spent that ruins it. 
 
 " With this standard in mind, how much money is wasted 
 even by people who do not exceed their income ! Here 
 a man builds a house, and pays, in the first place, ten 
 thousand more than he need, for a location in a fashion 
 able part of the city, though the air will be closer and the 
 chances of health less ; he spends three or four thousand 
 more on a stone front, on marble mantels imported from 
 Italy, on plate-glass windows, plated hinges, and a thousand 
 nice points of finish, and has perhaps but one bath-room 
 for a whole household, and that so connected with his own 
 apartment that nobody but himself and his wife can use it. 
 
 " Another man buys a lot in an open, airy situation, 
 which fashion has not made expensive, and builds without 
 a stone front, marble mantels, or plate-glass windows, but 
 has a perfect system of ventilation through his house, and 
 bathing-rooms in every story, so that the children and guests 
 may all, without inconvenience, enjoy the luxury of abun 
 dant water. 
 
 " The first spends for fashion and show, the second for 
 health and comfort. 
 
 " Here is a man that will buy his wife a diamond bracelet 
 and a lace shawl, and take her yearly to Washington to show 
 off her beauty in ball dresses, who yet will not let her pay 
 wages which will command any but the poorest and most 
 inefficient domestic service. The woman is worn out, her 
 life made a desert by exhaustion consequent on a futile 
 attempt to keep up a showy establishment with only half 
 the hands needed for the purpose. Another family will 
 give brilliant parties, have a gay season every year at the 
 first hotels at Newport, and not be able to afford the wife a 
 
128 HOUSE AND HOME TAPERS 
 
 fire in her chamber in midwinter, or the servants enough 
 food to keep them from constantly deserting. The damp, 
 mouldy, dingy cellar-kitchen, the cold, windy, desolate attic, 
 devoid of any comfort, where the domestics are doomed to 
 pass their whole time, are witnesses to what such families 
 consider economy. Economy in the view of some is undis 
 guised slipshod slovenliness in the home circle for the sake 
 of fine clothes to be shown abroad ; it is undisguised hard 
 selfishness to servants and dependants, counting their every 
 approach to comfort a needless waste, grudging the 
 Roman Catholic cook her cup of tea at dinner on Friday, 
 when she must not eat meat, and murmuring that a 
 cracked, second-hand looking-glass must be got for the ser 
 vants room : what business have they to want to know how 
 they look ? 
 
 " Some families will employ the cheapest physician, with 
 out regard to his ability to kill or cure ; some will treat 
 diseases in their incipiency with quack medicines, bought 
 cheap, hoping thereby to fend off the doctor s bill. Some 
 women seem to be pursued by an evil demon of economy, 
 which, like an ignis fatuus in a bog, delights constantly to 
 tumble them over into the mire of expense. They are dis 
 mayed at the quantity of sugar in the recipe for preserves, 
 leave out a quarter, and the whole ferments and is spoiled. 
 They cannot by any means be induced at any one time to 
 buy enough silk to make a dress, and the dress finally, after 
 many convulsions and alterations, must be thrown by alto 
 gether as too scanty. They get poor needles, poor thread, 
 poor sugar, poor raisins, poor tea, poor coal. One wonders, 
 in -looking at their blackened, smouldering grates in a freez 
 ing day, what the fire is there at all for, it certainly 
 warms nobody. The only thing they seem likely to be 
 lavish in is funeral expenses, which come in the wake of 
 leaky shoes and imperfect clothing. These funeral expenses 
 at last swallow all, since nobody can dispute an under- 
 
ECONOMY 129 
 
 taker s bill. One pities these joyless beings. Economy, 
 instead of a rational act of the judgment, is a morbid mono 
 mania, eating the pleasure out of life, and haunting them 
 to the grave. 
 
 " Some people s ideas of economy seem to run simply in 
 the line of eating. Their flour is of an extra brand, their 
 meat the first cut ; the delicacies of every season, in their 
 dearest stages, come home to their table with an apologetic 
 smile, It was scandalously dear, my love, but I thought 
 we must just treat ourselves. And yet these people cannot 
 afford to buy books, and pictures they regard as an un- 
 thought-of extravagance. Trudging home with fifty dollars 
 worth of delicacies on his arm, Smith meets Jones, who is 
 exulting with a bag of crackers under one arm and a choice 
 little bit of an oil painting under the other, which he thinks 
 a bargain at fifty dollars. I can t afford to buy pictures, 
 Smith says to his spouse, and I don t know how Jones 
 and his wife manage. Jones and his wife will live on 
 bread and milk for a month, and she will turn her best 
 gown the third time, but they will have their picture, and 
 they are happy. Jones s picture remains, and Smith s fifty 
 dollars worth of oysters and canned fruit to-morrow will be 
 gone forever. Of all modes of spending money, the swal 
 lowing of expensive dainties brings the least return. There 
 is one step lower than this, the consuming of luxuries 
 that are injurious to the health. If all the money spent on 
 tobacco and liquors could be spent in books and pictures, I 
 predict that nobody s health would be a whit less sound, and 
 houses would be vastly more attractive. There is enough 
 money spent in smoking, drinking, and over-eating to give 
 every family in the community a good library, to hang 
 everybody s parlor walls with lovely pictures, to set up in 
 every house a conservatory which should bloom all winter 
 with choice flowers, to furnish every dwelling with ample 
 bathing and warming accommodations, even down to the 
 
130 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 dwellings of the poor ; and in the millennium I believe this 
 is the way things are to be. 
 
 " In these times of peril and suffering, if the inquiry 
 arises, How shall there be retrenchment ? I answer, First 
 and foremost, retrench things needless, doubtful, and posi 
 tively hurtful, as rum, tobacco, and all the meerschaums of 
 divers colors that do accompany the same. Second, retrench 
 all eating not necessary to health and comfort. A French 
 family would live in luxury on the leavings that are con 
 stantly coming from the tables of those who call them 
 selves in middling circumstances. There are superstitions 
 of the table that ought to be broken through. Why must 
 you always have cake in your closet ? why need you feel 
 undone to entertain a guest with no cake on your tea-table ? 
 Do without it a year, and ask yourselves if you or your 
 children, or any one else, have suffered materially in conse 
 quence. 
 
 " Why is it imperative that you should have two or three 
 courses at every meal ? Try the experiment of having but 
 one, and that a very good one, and see if any great amount 
 of suffering ensues. Why must social intercourse so largely 
 consist in eating ? In Paris there is a very pretty custom. 
 Each family has one evening in the week when it stays at 
 home and receives friends. Tea, with a little bread and 
 butter and cake, served in the most informal way, is the 
 only refreshment. The rooms are full, busy, bright, 
 everything as easy and joyous as if a monstrous supper, 
 with piles of jelly and mountains of cake, were waiting to 
 give the company a nightmare at the close. 
 
 " Said a lady, pointing to a gentleman and his wife in 
 a social circle of this kind, f I ought to know them well, 
 I have seen them every week for twenty years. It is 
 certainly pleasant and confirmative of social enjoyment for 
 friends to eat together ; but a little enjoyed in this way 
 answers the purpose as well as a great deal, and better, too." 
 
ECONOMY 131 
 
 " Well, papa," said Marianne, " in the matter of dress, 
 now, how much ought one to spend just to look as others 
 do ? " 
 
 " I will tell you what I saw the other night, girls, in 
 the parlor of one of our hotels. Two middle-aged Quaker 
 ladies came gliding in, with calm, cheerful faces, and lus 
 trous dove-colored silks. By their conversation I found 
 that they belonged to that class of women among the 
 Friends who devote themselves to traveling on missions of 
 benevolence. They had just completed a tour of all the 
 hospitals for wounded soldiers in the country, where they 
 had been carrying comforts, arranging, advising, and sooth 
 ing by their cheerful, gentle presence. They were now 
 engaged on another mission, to the lost and erring of their 
 own sex ; night after night, guarded by a policeman, they 
 had ventured after midnight into the dance-houses where 
 girls are being led to ruin, and with gentle words of tender, 
 motherly counsel sought to win them from their fatal ways, 
 telling them where they might go the next day to find 
 friends who would open to them an asylum and aid them 
 to seek a better life. 
 
 " As I looked upon these women, dressed with such mod 
 est purity, I began secretly to think that the Apostle was 
 not wrong when he spoke of women adorning themselves 
 with the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit; for the 
 habitual gentleness of their expression, the calmness and 
 purity of the lines in their faces, the delicacy and simplicity 
 of their apparel, seemed of themselves a rare and peculiar 
 beauty. I could not help thinking that fashionable bon 
 nets, flowing lace sleeves, and dresses elaborately trimmed 
 could not have improved even their outward appearance. 
 Doubtless their simple wardrobe needed but a small trunk 
 in traveling from place to place, and hindered but little 
 their prayers and ministrations. 
 
 " Now, it is true, all women are not called to such a life 
 
132 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 as this ; but might not all women take a leaf at least from 
 their book ? I submit the inquiry humbly. It seems to 
 me that there are many who go monthly to the sacrament, 
 and receive it with sincere devotion, and who give thanks 
 each time sincerely that they are thus made ( members in 
 corporate in the mystical body of Christ/ who have never 
 thought of this membership as meaning that they should 
 share Christ s sacrifices for lost souls, or abridge them 
 selves of one ornament or encounter one inconvenience for 
 the sake of those wandering sheep for whom he died. Cer 
 tainly there is a higher economy which we need to learn, 
 that which makes all things subservient to the spiritual and 
 immortal, and that not merely to the good of our own souls 
 and those of our family, but of all who are knit with us in 
 the great bonds of human brotherhood. 
 
 " There have been from time to time, among well-mean 
 ing Christian people, retrenchment societies on high moral 
 grounds, which have failed for want of knowledge how to 
 manage the complicated question of necessaries and luxu 
 ries. These words have a signification in the case of dif 
 ferent people as varied as the varieties of human habit and 
 constitution. It is a department impossible to be bound 
 by external rules, but none the less should every high- 
 minded Christian soul in this matter have a law unto itself. 
 It may safely be laid down as a general rule, that no in 
 come, however large or however small, should be unblessed 
 by the divine touch of self-sacrifice. Something for the 
 poor, the sorrowing, the hungry, the tempted, and the weak 
 should be taken from ivkat is our own at the expense of 
 some personal sacrifice, or we suffer more morally than the 
 brother from whom we withdraw it. Even the Lord of all, 
 when dwelling among men. out of that slender private purse 
 which he accepted for his little family of chosen ones, had 
 ever something reserved to give to the poor. It is easy to 
 say, It is but a drop in the bucket. I cannot remove the 
 
SERVANTS 133 
 
 great mass of misery in the world. What little I could 
 save or give does nothing. It does this, if no more, it 
 prevents one soul, and that soul your own, from drying 
 and hardening into utter selfishness and insensibility ; it 
 enables you to say, I have done something ; taken one atom 
 from the great heap of sins and miseries and placed it on 
 the side of good. 
 
 " The Sisters of Charity and the Friends, each with their 
 different costume of plainness and self-denial, and other 
 noble-hearted women of no particular outward order, but 
 kindred in spirit, have shown to womanhood, on the battle 
 field and in the hospital, a more excellent way, a beauty 
 and nobility before which all the common graces and orna 
 ments of the sex fade, appear like dim candles by the pure, 
 eternal stars." 
 
 IX 
 
 SERVANTS 
 
 In the course of my papers various domestic revolutions 
 have occurred. Our Marianne has gone from us with a 
 new name to a new life, and a modest little establishment 
 not many squares off claims about as much of my wife s 
 and Jenny s busy thoughts as those of the proper mistress. 
 
 Marianne, as I always foresaw, is a careful and some 
 what anxious housekeeper. Her tastes are fastidious ; she 
 is made for exactitude : the smallest departures from the 
 straight line appear to her shocking deviations. She had 
 always lived in a house where everything had been formed 
 to quiet and order under the ever-present care and touch of 
 her mother ; nor had she ever participated in those cares 
 more than to do a little dusting of the parlor ornaments, 
 or wash the best china, or make sponge-cake or chocolate- 
 caramels. Certain conditions of life had always appeared 
 so to be matters of course that she had never conceived of 
 
134 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 a house without them. It never occurred to her that such 
 bread and biscuit as she saw at the home table would not 
 always and of course appear at every table, that the sil 
 ver would not always be as bright, the glass as clear, the 
 salt as fine and smooth, the plates and dishes as nicely ar 
 ranged, as she had always seen them, apparently without 
 the thought or care of any one ; for my wife is one of those 
 housekeepers whose touch is so fine that no one feels it. 
 She is never heard scolding or reproving, never enter 
 tains her company with her recipes for cookery or the faults 
 of her servants. She is so unconcerned about receiving her 
 own personal share of credit for the good appearance of her 
 establishment that even the children of the house have 
 not supposed that there is any particular will of hers in the 
 matter : it all seems the natural consequence of having 
 very good servants. 
 
 One phenomenon they had never seriously reflected on, 
 that, under all the changes of the domestic cabinet which 
 are so apt to occur in American households, the same coffee, 
 the same bread and biscuit, the same nicely prepared dishes 
 and neatly laid table, always gladdened their eyes ; and from 
 this they inferred only that good servants were more abun 
 dant than most people had supposed. They were somewhat 
 surprised when these marvels were wrought by professedly 
 green hands, but were given to suppose that these green 
 hands must have had some remarkable quickness or apti 
 tude for acquiring. That sparkling jelly, well-flavored ice 
 creams, clear soups, and delicate biscuits could be made by 
 a raw Irish girl, fresh from her native Erin, seemed to 
 them a proof of the genius of the race ; and my wife, who 
 never felt it important to attain to the reputation of a cook, 
 quietly let it pass. 
 
 For some time, therefore, after the inauguration of the 
 new household, there was trouble in the camp. Sour bread 
 had appeared on the table ; bitter, acrid coffee had shocked 
 
SERVANTS 135 
 
 and astonished the palate ; lint had been observed on 
 tumblers, and the spoons had sometimes dingy streaks 
 on the brightness of their first bridal polish ; beds were 
 detected made shockingly awry : and Marianne came burn 
 ing with indignation to her mother. 
 
 " Such a little family as we have, and two strong girls," 
 said she, " every thing ought to be perfect ; there is really 
 nothing to do. Think of a whole batch of bread absolutely 
 sour ! and when I gave that away, then this morning an 
 other exactly like it ! and when I talked to cook about it, 
 she said she had lived in this and that family, and her bread 
 had always been praised as equal to the baker s ! " 
 
 " I don t doubt she is right," said I. " Many families 
 never have anything but sour bread from one end of the 
 year to the other, eating it unperceiving, and with good 
 cheer ; and they buy also sour bread of the baker, with like 
 approbation, lightness being in their estimation the only 
 virtue necessary in the article." 
 
 " Could you not correct her fault ? " suggested my wife. 
 
 " I have done all I can. I told her we could not have 
 such bread, that it was dreadful ; Bob says it would give 
 him the dyspepsia in a week ; and then she went and made 
 exactly the same ! It seems to me mere willfulness." 
 
 " But," said I, " suppose, instead of such general direc 
 tions, you should analyze her proceedings and find out just 
 where she makes her mistake : is the root of the trouble 
 in the yeast, or in the time she begins it, letting it rise too 
 long ? the time, you know, should vary so much with 
 the temperature of the weather." 
 
 " As to that," said Marianne, " I know nothing. I never 
 noticed ; it never was my business to make bread ; it always 
 seemed quite a simple process, mixing yeast and flour and 
 kneading it ; and our bread at home was always good." 
 
 " It seems, then, my dear, that you have come to your 
 profession without even having studied it." 
 
136 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 My wife smiled and said, 
 
 " You know, Marianne, I proposed to you to be our 
 family bread-maker for one month of the year before you 
 married." 
 
 " Yes, mamma, I remember ; but I was like other girls : 
 I thought there was no need of it. I never liked to do such 
 things ; perhaps I had better have done it." 
 
 " You certainly had," said I, " for the first business of 
 a housekeeper in America is that of a teacher. She can 
 have a good table only by having practical knowledge, and 
 tact in imparting it. If she understands her business practi 
 cally and experimentally, her eye detects at once the weak 
 spot ; it requires only a little tact, some patience, some 
 clearness in giving directions, and all comes right. I ven 
 ture to say that your mother would have exactly such bread 
 as always appears on our table, and have it by the hands 
 of your cook, because she could detect and explain to her 
 exactly her error." 
 
 " Do you know," said my wife, " what yeast she uses ? " 
 
 " I believe," said Marianne, " it s a kind she makes her 
 self. I think I heard her say so. I know she makes a 
 great fuss about it, and rather values herself upon it. She 
 is evidently accustomed to being praised for her bread, and 
 feels mortified and angry, and I don t know how to manage 
 her." 
 
 " Well," said I, " if you carry your watch to a watch 
 maker, and undertake to show him how to regulate the 
 machinery, he laughs and goes on his own way ; but if a 
 brother-machinist makes suggestions, he listens respectfully. 
 So, when a woman who knows nothing of woman s work 
 undertakes to instruct one who knows more than she does, 
 she makes no impression ; but a woman who has been trained 
 experimentally, and shows she understands the matter thor 
 oughly, is listened to with respect." 
 
 " I think," said my wife, " that your Bridget is worth 
 
SERVANTS 137 
 
 teaching. She is honest, well-principled, and tidy. She has 
 good recommendations from excellent families, whose ideas 
 of good bread, it appears, differ from ours ; and with a little 
 good-nature, tact, and patience, she will come into your ways." 
 
 " But the coffee, mamma, you would not imagine it to 
 be from the same bag with your own, so dark and so bitter ; 
 what do- you suppose she has done to it ? " 
 
 " Simply this," said my wife. " She has let the berries 
 stay a few moments too long over the fire, they are burnt, 
 instead of being roasted ; and there are people who think it 
 essential to good coffee that it should look black, and have 
 a strong, bitter flavor. A very little change in the prepar 
 ing will alter this." 
 
 "Now," said I, " Marianne, if you want my advice, I 11 
 give it to you gratis : make your own bread for one month. 
 Simple as the process seems, I think it will take as long as 
 that to give you a thorough knowledge of all the possibili 
 ties in the case ; but after that you will never need to make 
 any more, you will be able to command good bread by the 
 aid of all sorts of servants ; you will, in other words, be a 
 thoroughly prepared teacher." 
 
 " I did not think," said Marianne, " that so simple a thing 
 required so much attention." 
 
 "It is simple," said my wife, " and yet requires a delicate 
 care and watchfulness. There are fifty ways to spoil good 
 bread ; there are a hundred little things to be considered 
 and allowed for that require accurate observation and experi 
 ence. The same process that will raise good bread in cold 
 weather will make sour bread in the heat of summer ; dif 
 ferent qualities of flour require variations in treatment, as 
 also different sorts and conditions of yeast j and when all is 
 done, the baking presents another series of possibilities which 
 require exact attention." 
 
 " So it appears," said Marianne gayly, " that I must be 
 gin to study my profession at the eleventh hour." 
 
138 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 " Better late than never," said I. " But there is this 
 advantage on your side : a well-trained mind, accustomed to 
 reflect, analyze, and generalize, has an advantage over uncul 
 tured minds even of double experience. Poor as your cook 
 is, she now knows more of her business than you do. After 
 a very brief period of attention and experiment you will not 
 only know more than she does, but you will convince her 
 that you do, which is quite as much to the purpose." 
 
 " In the same manner," said my wife, " you will have to 
 give lessons to your other girl on the washing of silver and 
 the making of beds. Good servants do not often come to 
 us : they must be made by patience and training ; and if a 
 girl has a good disposition and a reasonable degree of handi- 
 ness, and the housekeeper understands her profession, she 
 may make a good servant out of an indifferent one. Some 
 of my best girls have been those who came to me directly 
 from the ship, with no preparation but docility and some 
 natural quickness. The hardest cases to be managed are 
 not of those who have been taught nothing, but of those 
 who have been taught wrongly, who come to you self- 
 opinionated, with ways which are distasteful to you, and 
 contrary to the genius of your housekeeping. Such require 
 that their mistress shall understand at least so much of the 
 actual conduct of affairs as to prove to the servant that there 
 are better ways than those in which she has hitherto been 
 trained." 
 
 " Don t you think, mamma," said Marianne, " that there 
 has been a sort of reaction against woman s work in our 
 day ? So much has been said of the higher sphere of wo 
 man, and so much has been done to find some better work 
 for her, that insensibly, I think, almost everybody begins to 
 feel that it is rather degrading for a woman in good society 
 to be much tied down to family affairs." 
 
 " Especially," said my wife, " since in these Woman s 
 Eights Conventions there is so much indignation expressed 
 
SERVANTS 139 
 
 at those who would confine her ideas to the kitchen and 
 nursery." 
 
 "There is reason in all things," said I. " Woman s 
 Eights Conventions are a protest against many former ab 
 surd, unreasonable ideas, the mere physical and culinary 
 idea of womanhood as connected only with puddings and 
 shirt-buttons, the unjust and unequal burdens which the 
 laws of harsher ages had cast upon the sex. Many of the 
 women connected with these movements are as superior in 
 everything properly womanly as they are in exceptional 
 talent and culture. There is no manner of doubt that the 
 sphere of woman is properly to be enlarged, and that repub 
 lican governments in particular are to be saved from corrup 
 tion and failure only by allowing to woman this enlarged 
 sphere. Every woman has rights as a human being first, 
 which belong to no sex, and ought to be as freely conceded 
 to her as if she were a man, and, first and foremost, the 
 great right of doing anything which God and Nature evi 
 dently have fitted her to excel in. If she be made a nat 
 ural orator, like Miss Dickinson, or an astronomer, like Mrs. 
 Somerville, or a singer, like Grisi, let not the technical 
 rules of womanhood be thrown in the way of her free use 
 of her powers. Nor can there be any reason shown why a 
 woman s vote in the state should not be received with as 
 much respect as in the family. A state is but an associa 
 tion of families, and laws relate to the rights and immuni 
 ties which touch woman s most private and immediate wants 
 and dearest hopes ; and there is no reason why sister, wife, 
 and mother should be more powerless in the state than 
 in the home. Nor does it make a woman unwomanly to 
 express an opinion by dropping a slip of paper into a box, 
 more than to express that same opinion by conversation. 
 In fact, there is no doubt that, in all matters relating to the 
 interests of education, temperance, and religion, the state 
 would be a material gainer by receiving the votes of women. 
 
140 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 " But, having said all this, I must admit, per contra, not 
 only a great deal of crude, disagreeable talk in these con 
 ventions, but a too great tendency of the age to make the 
 education of women anti-domestic. It seems as if the world 
 never could advance except like ships under a head wind, 
 tacking and going too far, now in this direction and now 
 in the opposite. Our common-school system now rejects 
 sewing from the education of girls, which very properly 
 used to occupy many hours daily in school a generation ago. 
 The daughters of laborers and artisans are put through al 
 gebra, geometry, trigonometry, and the higher mathematics, 
 to the entire neglect of that learning which belongs distinc 
 tively to woman. A girl cannot keep pace with her class 
 if she gives any time to domestic matters, and accordingly 
 she is excused from them all during the whole term of her 
 education. The boy of a family, at an early age, is put to 
 a trade, or the labors of a farm ; the father becomes impa 
 tient of his support, and requires of him to care for him 
 self. Hence an interrupted education, learning coming by 
 snatches in the Avinter months, or in the intervals of work. 
 As the result, the females in our country towns are com 
 monly, in mental culture, vastly in advance of the males of 
 the same household ; but with this comes a physical deli 
 cacy, the result of an exclusive use of the brain and a neg 
 lect of the muscular system, Avith great inefficiency in prac 
 tical domestic duties. The race of strong, hardy, cheerful 
 girls, that used to grow up in country places, and made 
 the bright, neat, New England kitchens of old times, the 
 girls that could wash, iron, brew, bake, harness a horse and 
 drive him, no less than braid straw, embroider, draw, paint, 
 and read innumerable books, this race of women, pride 
 of olden time, is daily lessening ; and in their stead come 
 the fragile, easily fatigued, languid girls of a modern age, 
 drilled in book-learning, ignorant of common things. The 
 great danger of all this, and of the evils that come from it, 
 
SERVANTS 141 
 
 is that society by and by will turn as blindly against female 
 intellectual culture as it now advocates it, and, having 
 worked disproportionately one way, will work disproportion 
 ately in the opposite direction." 
 
 " The fact is," said my wife, " that domestic service is 
 the great problem of life here in America ; the happiness 
 of families, their thrift, well-being, and comfort, are more 
 affected by this than by any one thing else. Our girls, as 
 they have been brought up, cannot perform the labor of 
 their own families, as in those simpler, old-fashioned days 
 you tell of ; and, what is worse, they have no practical skill 
 with which to instruct servants, and servants come to us, 
 as a class, raw and untrained ; so what is to be done ? In 
 the present state of prices, the board of a domestic costs 
 double her wages, and the waste she makes is a more serious 
 matter still. Suppose you give us an article upon this sub 
 ject in your House and Home Papers. You could not 
 have a better one." 
 
 So I sat down, and wrote thus on 
 
 SERVANTS AND SERVICE 
 
 Many of the domestic evils in America originate in the 
 fact that, while society here is professedly based on new 
 principles which ought to make social life in every respect 
 different from the life of the Old World, yet these princi 
 ples have never been so thought out and applied as to give 
 consistency and harmony to our daily relations. America 
 starts with a political organization based on a declaration 
 of the primitive freedom and equality of all men. Every 
 human being, according to this principle, stands on the 
 same natural level with every other, and has the same chance 
 to rise, according to the degree of power or capacity given 
 by the Creator. All our civil institutions are designed to 
 preserve this equality, as far as possible, from generation to 
 
142 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 generation : there is no entailed property, there are no 
 hereditary titles, no monopolies, no privileged classes, 
 all are to be as free to rise and fall as the waves of the sea. 
 
 The condition of domestic service, however, still retains 
 about it something of the influences from feudal times, and 
 from the near presence of slavery in neighboring States. 
 All English literature, all the literature of the world, de 
 scribes domestic service in the old feudal spirit and with the 
 old feudal language, which regarded the master as belong 
 ing to a privileged class and the servant to an inferior one. 
 There is not a play, not a poem, not a novel, not a history, 
 that does not present this view. The master s rights, like 
 the rights of kings, were supposed to rest in his being born 
 in a superior rank. The good servant was one who. from 
 childhood, had learned " to order himself lowly and rever 
 ently to all his betters." When New England brought to 
 these shores the theory of democracy, she brought, in the 
 persons of the first pilgrims, the habits of thought and of 
 action formed in aristocratic communities. Winthrop s Jour 
 nal, and all the old records of the earlier colonists, show 
 households where masters and mistresses stood on the " right 
 divine " of the privileged classes, howsoever they might 
 have risen up against authorities themselves. 
 
 The first consequence of this state of things was a univer 
 sal rejection of domestic service in all classes of American- 
 born society. For a generation or two, there was, indeed, 
 a sort of interchange of family strength, sons and daugh 
 ters engaging in the service of neighboring families, in de 
 fault of a sufficient working force of their own, but always 
 on conditions of strict equality. The assistant was to share 
 the table, the family sitting-room, and every honor and at 
 tention that might be claimed by son or daughter. When 
 families increased in refinement and education so as to make 
 these conditions of close intimacy with more uncultured 
 neighbors disagreeable, they had to choose between such in- 
 
SERVANTS 143 
 
 timacies and the performance of their own domestic toil. 
 No wages could induce a son or daughter of New England 
 to take the condition of a servant on terms which they 
 thought applicable to that of a slave. The slightest hint of 
 a separate table was resented as an insult ; not to enter the 
 front door, and not to sit in the front parlor on state occa 
 sions, was bitterly commented on as a personal indignity. 
 
 The well-taught, self-respecting daughters of farmers, the 
 class most valuable in domestic service, gradually retired 
 from it. They preferred any other employment, however 
 laborious. Beyond all doubt, the labors of a well-regulated 
 family are more healthy, more cheerful, more interesting, 
 because less monotonous, than the mechanical toils of a fac 
 tory ; yet the girls of New England, with one consent, pre 
 ferred the factory, and left the whole business of domestic 
 service to a foreign population ; and they did it mainly be 
 cause they would not take positions in families as an infe 
 rior laboring class by the side of others of their own age 
 who assumed as their prerogative to live without labor. 
 
 " I can t let you have one of my daughters," said an en 
 ergetic matron to her neighbor from the city, who was seek 
 ing for a servant in her summer vacation ; " if you had n t 
 daughters of your own, maybe I would ; but my girls ain t 
 going to work so that your girls may live in idleness. 7 
 
 It was vain to offer money. " We don t need your money, 
 ma am, we can support ourselves in other ways ; my girls 
 can braid straw and bind shoes, but they ain t going to be 
 slaves to anybody." 
 
 In the Irish and German servants who took the place of 
 Americans in families, there was, to begin with, the tradi 
 tion of education in favor of a higher class ; but even the 
 foreign population became more or less infected with the 
 spirit of democracy. They came to this country with vague 
 notions of freedom and equality, and in ignorant and uncul 
 tivated people such ideas are often more unreasonable for 
 
144 HOUSE AND HOME PAPEKS 
 
 being vague. They did not. indeed, claim a seat at the 
 table and in the parlor, but they repudiated many of those 
 habits of respect and courtesy which belonged to their 
 former condition, and asserted their own will and way in 
 the round, unvarnished phrase which they supposed to be 
 their right as republican citizens. Life became a sort of do 
 mestic wrangle and struggle between the employers, who 
 secretly confessed their weakness, but endeavored openly to 
 assume the air and bearing of authority, and the employed, 
 who knew their power and insisted on their privileges. 
 From this cause domestic service in America has had less of 
 mutual kindliness than in old countries. Its terms have 
 been so ill understood and defined that both parties have 
 assumed the defensive ; and a common topic of conversation 
 in American female society has often been the general ser 
 vile war which in one form or another was going on in their 
 different families, a war as interminable as would be a 
 struggle between aristocracy and common people, undefined 
 by any bill of rights or constitution, and therefore opening 
 fields for endless disputes. In England, the class who go to 
 service are a class, and service is a profession ; the distance 
 between them and their employers is so marked and defined, 
 and all the customs and requirements of the position are so 
 perfectly understood, that the master or mistress has no fear 
 of being compromised by condescension, and no need of the 
 external voice or air of authority. The higher up in the 
 social scale one goes, the more courteous seems to become 
 the intercourse of master and servant ; the more perfect and 
 real the power, the more is it veiled in outward expression, 
 commands are phrased as requests, and gentleness of voice 
 and manner covers an authority which no one would think 
 of offending without trembling. 
 
 But in America all is undefined. In the first place, there 
 is no class who mean to make domestic service a profession 
 to live and die in. It is universally an expedient, a step- 
 
SERVANTS 145 
 
 ping-stone to something higher ; your best servants always 
 have something else in view as soon as they have laid by a 
 little money ; some form of independence which shall give 
 them a home of their own is constantly in mind. Families 
 look forward to the buying of landed homesteads, arid the 
 scattered brothers and sisters work awhile in domestic ser 
 vice to gain the common fund for the purpose ; your seam 
 stress intends to become a dressmaker, and take in work at 
 her own house ; your cook is pondering a marriage with the 
 baker, which shall transfer her toils from your cooking- 
 stove to her own. Young women are eagerly rushing into 
 every other employment, till female trades and callings are 
 all overstocked. We are continually harrowed with tales 
 of the sufferings of distressed needlewomen, of the exac 
 tions and extortions practiced on the frail sex in the many 
 branches of labor and trade at which they try their hands ; 
 and yet women will encounter all these chances of ruin and 
 starvation rather than make up their minds to permanent 
 domestic service. Now what is the matter with domestic 
 service ? One would think, on the face of it, that a calling 
 which gives a settled home, a comfortable room, rent-free, 
 with fire and lights, good board and lodging, and steady, 
 well-paid wages, would certainly offer more attractions than 
 the making of shirts for tenperice, with all the risks of pro 
 viding one s own sustenance and shelter. 
 
 I think it is mainly from the want of a definite idea of 
 the true position of a servant under our democratic institu 
 tions that domestic service is so shunned and avoided in 
 America, that it is the very last thing which an intelligent 
 young woman will look to for a living. It is more the 
 want of personal respect toward those in that position than 
 the labors incident to it which repels our people from it. 
 Many would be willing to perform these labors, but they 
 are not willing to place themselves in a situation where 
 their self-respect is hourly wounded by the implication of 
 
146 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 a degree of inferiority which does not follow any kind of 
 labor or service in this country but that of the family. 
 
 There exists in the minds of employers an unsuspected 
 spirit of superiority, which is stimulated into an active form 
 by the resistance which democracy inspires in the working 
 class. Many families think of servants only as a necessary 
 evil, their wages as exactions, and all that is allowed them 
 as so much taken from the family ; and they seek in every 
 way to get from them as much and to give them as little as 
 possible. Their rooms are the neglected, ill-furnished, in 
 commodious ones, and the kitchen is the most cheerless 
 and comfortless place in the house. Other families, more 
 good-natured and liberal, provide their domestics with more 
 suitable accommodations, and are more indulgent ; but there 
 is still a latent spirit of something like contempt for the 
 position. That they treat their servants with so much con 
 sideration seems to them a merit entitling them to the most 
 prostrate gratitude ; and they are constantly disappointed 
 and shocked at that want of sense of inferiority on the part 
 of these people which leads them to appropriate pleasant 
 rooms, good furniture, and good living as mere matters of 
 common justice. 
 
 It seems to be a constant surprise to some employers that 
 servants should insist on having the same human wants as 
 themselves. Ladies who yawn in their elegantly furnished 
 parlors, among books and pictures, if they have not company, 
 parties, or opera to diversify the evening, seem astonished 
 and half indignant that cook and chambermaid are more 
 disposed to go out for an evening gossip than to sit on hard 
 chairs in the kitchen where they have been toiling all day. 
 The pretty chambermaid s anxieties about her dress, the 
 time she spends at her small and not very clear mirror, are 
 sneeringly noticed by those whose toilet-cares take up serious 
 hours ; and the question has never apparently occurred to 
 them why a serving-maid should not want to look pretty as 
 
SERVANTS 147 
 
 well as her mistress. She is a woman as well as they, with 
 all a woman s wants and weaknesses ; and her dress is as 
 much to her as theirs to them. 
 
 A vast deal of trouble among servants arises from imper 
 tinent interferences and petty tyrannical exactions on the 
 part of employers. Now the authority of the master and 
 mistress of a house in regard to their domestics extends 
 simply to the things they have contracted to do and the 
 hours during which they have contracted to serve ; other 
 wise than this, they have no more right to interfere with 
 them in the disposal of their time than with any mechanic 
 whom they employ. They have, indeed, a right to regulate 
 the hours of their own household, and servants can choose 
 between conformity to these hours and the loss of their situ 
 ation ; but, within reasonable limits, their right to come 
 and go at their own discretion, in their own time, should be 
 unquestioned. 
 
 If employers are troubled by the fondness of their ser 
 vants for dancing, evening company, and late hours, the 
 proper mode of proceeding is to make these matters a sub 
 ject of distinct contract in hiring. The more strictly and 
 perfectly the business matters of the first engagement of 
 domestics are conducted, the more likelihood there is of 
 mutual quiet and satisfaction in the relation. It is quite 
 competent to every housekeeper to say what practices are 
 or are not consistent with the rules of her family, and what 
 will be inconsistent with the service for which she agrees 
 to pay. It is much better to regulate such affairs by cool 
 contract in the outset than by warm altercations and pro 
 tracted domestic battles. 
 
 As to the terms of social intercourse, it seems somehow 
 to be settled in the minds of many employers that their 
 servants owe them and their family more respect than they 
 and the family owe to the servants. But do they ? What 
 is the relation of servant to employer in a democratic coun- 
 
148 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 try ? Precisely that of a person who for money performs 
 any kind of service for you. The carpenter comes into your 
 house to put up a set of shelves, the cook comes into 
 your kitchen to cook your dinner. You never think that 
 the carpenter owes you any more respect than you owe to 
 him because he is in your house doing your behests ; he is 
 your fellow -citizen, you treat him with respect, you expect 
 to be treated with respect by him. You have a claim on 
 him that he shall do your work according to your directions, 
 no more. Now I apprehend that there is a very common 
 notion as to the position and rights of servants which is 
 quite different from this. Is it not a common feeling that 
 a servant is one who may be treated with a degree of free 
 dom by every member of the family which he or she may 
 not return ? Do not people feel at liberty to question ser 
 vants about their private affairs, to comment on their dress 
 and appearance, in a manner which they would feel to be an 
 impertinence if reciprocated ? Do they not feel at liberty 
 to express dissatisfaction with their performances in rude 
 and unceremonious terms, to reprove them in the presence 
 of company, while yet they require that the dissatisfaction 
 of servants shall be expressed only in terms of respect ? 
 A woman would not feel herself at liberty to talk to her 
 milliner or her dressmaker in language as devoid of consid 
 eration as she will employ towards her cook or chambermaid. 
 Yet both are rendering her a service which she pays for in 
 money, and one is no more made her inferior thereby than 
 the other. Both have an equal right to be treated with 
 courtesy. The master and mistress of a house have a right 
 to require respectful treatment from all whom their roof 
 shelters, but they have no more right to exact it of servants 
 than of every guest and every child, and they themselves 
 owe it as much to servants as to guests. 
 
 In order that servants may be treated with respect and 
 courtesy, it is not necessary, as in simpler patriarchal days, 
 
SERVANTS 149 
 
 that they sit at the family table. Your carpenter or plumber 
 does not feel hurt that you do not ask him to dine with 
 you, nor your milliner and mantua-maker that you do not 
 exchange ceremonious calls and invite them to your parties. 
 It is well understood that your relations with them are of a 
 mere business character. They never take it as an assump 
 tion of superiority on your part that you do not admit them 
 to relations of private intimacy. There may be the most 
 perfect respect and esteem and even friendship between them 
 and you, notwithstanding. So it may be in the case of 
 servants. It is easy to make any person understand that 
 there are quite other reasons than the assumption of personal 
 superiority for not wishing to admit servants to the family 
 privacy. It was not, in fact, to sit in the parlor or at the 
 table, in themselves considered, that was the thing aimed 
 at by New England girls, these were valued only as signs 
 that they were deemed worthy of respect and consideration, 
 and, where freely conceded, were often in point of fact 
 declined. 
 
 Let servants feel, in their treatment by their employers, 
 and in the atmosphere of the family, that their position is 
 held to be a respectable one, let them feel in the mistress 
 of the family the charm of unvarying consideration and 
 good manners, let their work rooms be made convenient and 
 comfortable, and their private apartments bear some reason 
 able comparison in point of agreeableness to those of other 
 members of the family, and domestic service will be more 
 frequently sought by a superior and self-respecting class. 
 There are families in which such a state of things prevails ; 
 and such families, amid the many causes which unite to 
 make the tenure of service uncertain, have generally been 
 able to keep good permanent servants. 
 
 There is an extreme into which kindly disposed people 
 often run with regard to servants, which may be mentioned 
 here. They make pets of them. They give extravagant 
 
150 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 wages and indiscreet indulgences, and, through indolence 
 and easiness of temper, tolerate neglect of duty. Many of 
 the complaints of the ingratitude of servants come from 
 those who have spoiled them in this way ; while many of 
 the longest and most harmonious domestic unions have 
 sprung from a simple, quiet course of Christian justice and 
 benevolence, a recognition of servants as fellow-beings and 
 fellow-Christians, and a doing to them as we would in like 
 circumstances that they should do to us. 
 
 The mistresses of American families, whether they like 
 it or not, have the duties of missionaries imposed upon them 
 by that class from which our supply of domestic servants is 
 drawn. They may as \vell accept the position cheerfully, 
 and, as one raw, untrained hand after another passes through 
 their family, and is instructed by them in the mysteries of 
 good housekeeping, comfort themselves with the reflection 
 that they are doing something to form good w r ives and 
 mothers for the Kepublic. 
 
 The complaints made of Irish girls are numerous and 
 loud ; the failings of green Erin, alas ! are but too open and 
 manifest ; yet, in arrest of judgment, let us move this con 
 sideration : let us imagine our own daughters between the 
 ages of sixteen and twenty- four, untaught and inexperienced 
 in domestic affairs as they commonly are, shipped to a for 
 eign shore to seek service in families. It may be questioned 
 whether as a whole they would do much better. The girls 
 that fill our families and do our housework are often of the 
 age of our own daughters, standing for themselves, with 
 out mothers to guide them, in a foreign country, not only 
 bravely supporting themselves, but sending home in every 
 ship remittances to impoverished friends left behind. If our 
 daughters did as much for us, should we not be proud of 
 their energy and heroism ? 
 
 When we go into the houses of our country, we find a 
 majority of well-kept, well-ordered, and even elegant estab- 
 
SERVANTS 151 
 
 lishments where the only hands employed are those of the 
 daughters of Erin. True, American women have been their 
 instructors, and many a weary hour of care have they had 
 in the discharge of this office ; but the result on the whole 
 is beautiful and good, and the end of it, doubtless, will be 
 peace. 
 
 In speaking of the office of the American mistress as 
 being a missionary one, we are far from recommending any 
 controversial interference with the religious faith of our 
 servants. It is far better to incite them to be good Chris 
 tians in their own way than to run the risk of shaking their 
 faith in all religion by pointing out to them the errors of 
 that in which they have been educated. The general purity 
 of life and propriety of demeanor of so many thousands of 
 undefended young girls cast yearly upon our shores, with 
 no home but their church, and no shield but their religion, 
 are a sufficient proof that this religion exerts an influence 
 over them not to be lightly trifled with. But there is a 
 real unity even in opposite Christian forms ; and the Roman 
 Catholic servant and the Protestant mistress, if alike pos 
 sessed by the spirit of Christ, and striving to conform to the 
 Golden Rule, cannot help being one in heart, though one go 
 to mass and the other to meeting. 
 
 Finally, the bitter baptism through which we are passing, 
 the life blood dearer than our own which is drenching dis 
 tant fields, should remind us of the preciousness of distinc 
 tive American ideas. They who would seek in their foolish 
 pride to establish the pomp of liveried servants in America 
 are doing that which is simply absurd. A servant can never 
 in our country be the mere appendage to another man, to be 
 marked like a sheep with the color of his owner ; he must be 
 a fellow-citizen, with an established position of his own, free 
 to make contracts, free to come and go, and having in his 
 sphere titles to consideration and respect just as definite as 
 those of any trade or profession whatever. 
 
152 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 Moreover, we cannot in this country maintain to any great 
 extent large retinues of servants. Even with ample for 
 tunes they are forbidden by the general character of society 
 here, which makes them cumbrous and difficult to manage. 
 Every mistress of a family knows that her cares increase 
 with every additional servant. Two keep the peace with 
 each other and their employer ; three begin a possible dis 
 cord, which possibility increases with four, and becomes 
 certain with five or six. Trained housekeepers, such as 
 regulate the complicated establishments of the Old World, 
 form a class that are not, and from the nature of the case 
 never will be, found in any great numbers in this country. 
 All such women, as a general thing, are keeping, and prefer 
 to keep, houses of their own. 
 
 A moderate style of housekeeping, small, compact, and 
 simple domestic establishments, must necessarily be the 
 general order of life in America. So many openings of 
 profit are to be found in this country that domestic service 
 necessarily wants the permanence which forms so agreeable 
 a feature of it in the Old World. This being the case, it 
 should be an object in America to exclude from the labors 
 of the family all that can, with greater advantage, be exe 
 cuted out of it by combined labor. 
 
 Formerly, in New England, soap and candles were to be 
 made in each separate family ; now, comparatively few take 
 this toil upon them. We buy soap of the soap-maker, and 
 candles of the candle-factor. This principle might be ex 
 tended much further. In France no family makes its own 
 bread, and better bread cannot be eaten than what can be 
 bought at the appropriate shops. No family does its own 
 washing 5 the family s linen is all sent to women who, mak 
 ing this their sole profession, get it up with a care and 
 nicety which can seldom be equaled in any family. 
 
 How would it simplify the burdens of the American 
 housekeeper to have washing and ironing day expunged 
 
COOKERY 153 
 
 from her calendar ! How much more neatly and compactly 
 could the whole domestic system be arranged ! If all the 
 money that each separate family spends on the outfit and 
 accommodations for washing and ironing, on fuel, soap, 
 starch, and the other et ceteras, were united in a fund to 
 create a laundry for every dozen families, one or two good 
 women could do in firstrate style what now is very indif 
 ferently done by the disturbance and disarrangement of all 
 other domestic processes in these families. Whoever sets 
 neighborhood laundries on foot will do much to solve the 
 American housekeeper s hardest problem. 
 
 Finally, American women must not try with three ser 
 vants to carry on life in the style which in the Old World 
 requires sixteen : they must thoroughly understand, and 
 be prepared to teach, every branch of housekeeping ; they 
 must study to make domestic service desirable by treating 
 their servants in a way to lead them to respect themselves 
 and to feel themselves respected ; and there will gradually 
 be evolved from the present confusion a solution of the 
 domestic problem which shall be adapted to the life of a new 
 and growing world. 
 
 COOKERY 
 
 My wife and I were sitting at the open bow-window of 
 my study, watching the tuft of bright-red leaves on our 
 favorite maple, which warned us that summer was over. 
 I was solacing myself, like all the world in our days, with 
 reading the " Schonberg Cotta Family," when my wife 
 made her voice heard through the enchanted distance, and 
 dispersed the pretty vision of German cottage life. 
 
 " Chris ! " 
 
 " Well, my dear." 
 
154 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 " Do you know the day of the month ? " 
 
 Now my wife knows this is a thing that I never do know, 
 that I can t know, and in fact that there is no need I 
 should trouble myself about, since she always knows, and, 
 what is more, always tells me. In fact, the question, when 
 asked by her, meant more than met the ear. It was a 
 delicate way of admonishing me that another paper for 
 the " Atlantic " ought to be in train ; and so I answered, 
 not to the external form, but to the internal intention, 
 
 " Well, you see, my dear, I have n t made up my mind 
 what my next paper shall be about. 7 
 
 " Suppose, then, you let me give you a subject." 
 
 " Sovereign lady, speak on ! Your slave hears ! " 
 
 " Well, then, take Cookery. It may seem a vulgar sub 
 ject, but I think more of health and happiness depends on 
 that than on any other one thing. You may make houses 
 enchantingly beautiful, hang them with pictures, have them 
 clean and airy and convenient ; but if the stomach is fed with 
 sour bread and burnt coffee, it will raise such rebellions 
 that the eyes will see no beauty anywhere. Now, in the 
 little tour that you and I have been taking this summer, I 
 have been thinking of the great abundance of splendid 
 material we have in America, compared with the poor 
 cooking. How often, in our stoppings, we have sat down 
 to tables loaded with material, originally of the very best 
 kind, which had been so spoiled in the treatment that there 
 was really nothing to eat ! Green biscuits with acrid spots 
 of alkali ; sour yeast-bread ; meat slowly simmered in fat 
 till it seemed like grease itself, and slowly congealing in 
 cold grease; and, above all, that unpardonable enormity, 
 strong butter ! How often I have longed to show people 
 what might have been done with the raw material out of 
 which all these monstrosities were concocted ! " 
 
 " My dear," said I, " you are driving me upon delicate 
 ground. Would you have your husband appear in public 
 
COOKERY 155 
 
 with that most opprobrious badge of the domestic furies, a 
 dishcloth, pinned to his coat-tail ? It is coming to exactly 
 the point I have always predicted, Mrs. Crowfield: you 
 must write yourself. I always told you that you could 
 write far better than I, if you would only try. Only sit 
 down and write as you sometimes talk to me, and I might 
 hang up my pen by the side of Uncle Ned s fiddle and 
 bow." 
 
 " Oh, nonsense ! " said my wife. " I never could write. 
 I know what ought to be said, and I could say it to any 
 one ; but my ideas freeze in the pen, cramp in my fingers, 
 and make my brain seem like heavy bread. I was born for 
 extemporary speaking. Besides, I think the best things on 
 all subjects in this world of ours are said, not by the practi 
 cal workers, but by the careful observers. 77 
 
 " Mrs. Crowfield, that remark is as good as if I had 
 made it myself," said I. " It is true that I have been all 
 my life a speculator and observer in all domestic matters, 
 having them so confidentially under my eye in our own 
 household ; and so, if I write on a pure woman s matter, it 
 must be understood that I am only your pen and mouth 
 piece, only giving tangible form to wisdom which I have 
 derived from you." 
 
 So down I sat and scribbled, while my sovereign lady 
 quietly stitched by my side. And here I tell my reader 
 that I write on such a subject under protest, declaring 
 again my conviction that, if my wife only believed in her 
 self as firmly as I do, she would write so that nobody would 
 ever want to listen to me again. 
 
 COOKERY 
 
 We in America have the raw material of provision in 
 greater abundance than any other nation. There is no coun 
 try where an ample, well-furnished table is more easily 
 spread, and for that reason, perhaps, none where the boun- 
 
156 HOUSE AND HOME PAPEKS 
 
 ties of Providence are more generally neglected. I do not 
 mean to say that the traveler through the length and 
 breadth of our land could not, on the whole, find an aver 
 age of comfortable subsistence ; yet, considering that our 
 resources are greater than those of any other civilized peo 
 ple, our results are comparatively poorer. 
 
 It is said that, a list of the summer vegetables which 
 are exhibited on New York hotel tables being shown to a 
 French artiste, he declared that to serve such a dinner prop 
 erly would take till midnight. I recollect how I was once 
 struck with our national plenteousness on returning from a 
 Continental tour, and going directly from the ship to a New 
 York hotel, in the bounteous season of autumn. For 
 months I had been habituated to my neat little bits of chop 
 or poultry garnished with the inevitable cauliflower or po 
 tato, which seemed to be the sole possibility after the reign 
 of green peas was over. Now I sat down all at once to a 
 carnival of vegetables, ripe, juicy tomatoes, raw or cooked ; 
 cucumbers in brittle slices ; rich, yellow sweet potatoes ; 
 broad Lima-beans, and beans of other and various names ; 
 tempting ears of Indian corn steaming in enormous piles, 
 and great smoking tureens of the savory succotash, an In 
 dian gift to the table for which civilization need not blush ; 
 sliced egg-plant in delicate fritters ; and marrow squashes, 
 of creamy pulp and sweetness : a rich variety, embarrassing 
 to the appetite, and perplexing to the choice. Verily, the 
 thought has often impressed itself on my mind that the 
 vegetarian doctrine preached in America left a man quite as 
 much as he had capacity to eat or enjoy, and that in the 
 midst of such tantalizing abundance he really lost the apol 
 ogy which elsewhere bears him out in preying upon his 
 less gifted and accomplished animal neighbors. 
 
 But with all this, the American table, taken as a whole, 
 is inferior to that of England or France. It presents a fine 
 abundance of material, carelessly and poorly treated. The 
 
COOKERY 157 
 
 management of food is nowhere in the world, perhaps, more 
 slovenly and wasteful. Everything betokens that want 
 of care that waits on abundance ; there are great capabili 
 ties and poor execution. A tourist through England can 
 seldom fail, at the quietest country inn, of finding himself 
 served with the essentials of English table comfort, his 
 mutton-chop done to a turn, his steaming little private ap 
 paratus for concocting his own tea, his choice pot of marma 
 lade or slice of cold ham, and his delicate rolls and creamy 
 butter, all served with care and neatness. In France, one 
 never asks in vain for delicious cafe-au-lait, good bread and 
 butter, a nice omelet, or some savory little portion of meat 
 with a French name. But to a tourist taking like chance 
 in American country fare, what is the prospect ? What is 
 the coffee ? what the tea ? and the meat ? and, above all, 
 the butter ? 
 
 In lecturing on cookery, as on housebuilding, I divide 
 the subject into, not four, but five grand elements : first, 
 Bread ; second, Butter ; third, Meat ; fourth, Vegetables ; 
 and fifth, Tea, by which I mean, generically, all sorts of 
 warm, comfortable drinks served out in teacups, whether 
 they be called tea, coffee, chocolate, broma, or what not. 
 
 I affirm that, if these five departments are all perfect, 
 the great ends of domestic cookery are answered, so far as 
 the comfort and well-being of life are concerned. I am 
 aware that there exists another department, which is often 
 regarded by culinary amateurs and young aspirants as the 
 higher branch and very collegiate course of practical cook 
 ery ; to wit, confectionery, by which I mean to designate 
 all pleasing and complicated compounds of sweets and 
 spices, devised not for health and nourishment, and strongly 
 suspected of interfering with both, mere tolerated gratifi 
 cations of the palate, which we eat, not with the expectation 
 of being benefited, but only with the hope of not being in 
 jured by them. In this large department rank all sorts of 
 
158 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 cakes, pies, preserves, ices, etc. I shall have a word or two 
 to say under this head before I have done. I only remark 
 now that, in my tours about the country, I have often had 
 a virulent ill-will excited towards these works of culinary 
 supererogation, because I thought their excellence was at 
 tained by treading under foot and disregarding the five 
 grand essentials. I have sat at many a table garnished 
 with three or four kinds of well-made cake, compounded 
 with citron and spices and all imaginable good things, 
 where the meat was tough and greasy, the bread some hot 
 preparation of flour, lard, saleratus, and acid, and the butter 
 unutterably detestable. At such tables I have thought 
 that, if the mistress of the feast had given the care, time, 
 and labor to preparing the simple items of bread, butter, 
 and meat that she evidently had given to the preparation 
 of these extras, the lot of a traveler might be much more 
 comfortable. Evidently she never had thought of these 
 common articles as constituting a good table. So long as 
 she had puff pastry, rich black cake, clear jelly, and pre 
 serves, she seemed to consider that such unimportant mat 
 ters as bread, butter, and meat could take care of them 
 selves. It is the same inattention to common things as 
 that which leads people to build houses with stone fronts 
 and window-caps and expensive front-door trimmings, with 
 out bathing-rooms or fireplaces or ventilators. 
 
 Those who go into the country looking for summer board 
 in farmhouses know perfectly well that a table where the 
 butter is always fresh, the tea and coffee of the best kinds 
 and well made, and the meats properly kept, dressed, and 
 served, is the one table of a hundred, the fabulous en 
 chanted island. It seems impossible to get the idea into 
 the minds of people that what is called common food, 
 carefully prepared, becomes, in virtue of that very care and 
 attention, a delicacy, superseding the necessity of artificially 
 compounded dainties. 
 
COOKERY 159 
 
 To begin, then, with the very foundation of a good table, 
 Bread : What ought it to be ? It should be light, 
 sweet, and tender. 
 
 This matter of lightness is the distinctive line between 
 savage and civilized bread. The savage mixes simple flour 
 and water into balls of paste, which he throws into boiling 
 water, and which come out solid, glutinous masses, of which 
 his common saying is, " Man eat dis, he no die," - which a 
 facetious traveler who was obliged to subsist on it inter 
 preted to mean, " Dis no kill you, nothing will." In short, 
 it requires the stomach of a wild animal or of a savage to 
 digest this primitive form of bread, and of course more or 
 less attention in all civilized modes of bread making is given 
 to producing lightness. By lightness is meant simply that 
 the particles are to be separated from each other by little 
 holes or air-cells ; and all the different methods of making 
 light bread are neither more nor less than the formation in 
 bread of these air-cells. 
 
 So far as we know, there are four practicable methods 
 of aerating bread, namely, by fermentation ; by efferves 
 cence of an acid and an alkali ; by aerated egg, or egg 
 which has been filled with air by the process of beating ; 
 and, lastly, by pressure of some gaseous substance into the 
 paste, by a process much resembling the impregnation of 
 water in a -soda fountain. All these have one and the same 
 object, to give us the cooked particles of our flour sepa 
 rated by such permanent air-cells as will enable the stomach 
 more readily to digest them. 
 
 A very common mode of aerating bread in America is 
 by the effervescence of an acid and an alkali in the flour. 
 The carbonic acid gas thus formed produces minute air-cells 
 in the bread, or, as the cook says, makes it light. When 
 this process is performed with exact attention to chemical 
 laws, so that the acid and alkali completely neutralize each 
 other, leaving no overplus of either, the result is often very 
 
160 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 palatable. The difficulty is, that this is a happy conjunc 
 tion of circumstances which seldom occurs. The acid most 
 commonly employed is that of sour milk, and, as milk has 
 many degrees of sourness, the rule of a certain quantity of 
 alkali to the pint must necessarily produce very different 
 results at different times. As an actual fact, where this 
 mode of making bread prevails, as we lament to say it does 
 to a great extent in this country, one finds five cases of 
 failure to one of success. It is a woful thing that the 
 daughters of New England have abandoned the old re 
 spectable mode of yeast brewing and bread raising for this 
 specious substitute, so easily made, and so seldom well 
 made. The green, clammy, acrid substance called biscuit, 
 which many of our worthy republicans are obliged to eat in 
 these days, is wholly unworthy of the men and women of 
 the Republic. Good patriots ought not to be put off in 
 that way, they deserve better fare. 
 
 As an occasional variety, as a household convenience for 
 obtaining bread or biscuit at a moment s notice, the process 
 of effervescence may be retained ; but we earnestly entreat 
 American housekeepers, in Scriptural language, to stand in 
 the way and ask for the old paths, and return to the good 
 yeast-bread of their sainted grandmothers. 
 
 If acid and alkali must be used, by all means let them 
 be mixed in due proportions. No cook should be left to 
 guess and judge for herself about this matter. There is an 
 article, called " Preston s Infallible Yeast Powder," which 
 is made by chemical rule, and produces very perfect results. 
 The use of this obviates the worst dangers in making bread 
 by effervescence. 
 
 Of all processes of aeration in bread-making, the oldest 
 and most time-honored is by fermentation. That this was 
 known in the days of our Saviour is evident from the forci 
 ble simile in which he compares the silent permeating force 
 of truth in human society to the very familiar household 
 process of raising bread by a little yeast. 
 
COOKEKY 161 
 
 There is, however, one species of yeast, much used in 
 some parts of the country, against which I have to enter 
 my protest. It is called salt-risings, or milk-risings, and is 
 made by mixing flour, milk, and a little salt together and 
 leaving them to ferment. The bread thus produced is often 
 very attractive, when new and made with great care. It is 
 white and delicate, with fine, even air-cells. It has, how 
 ever, when kept, some characteristics which remind us of 
 the terms in which our old English Bible describes the 
 effect of keeping the manna of the ancient Israelites, which 
 we are informed, in words more explicit than agreeable, 
 " stank, and bred worms." If salt-rising bread does not 
 fulfill the whole of this unpleasant description, it certainly 
 does emphatically a part of it. The smell which it has in 
 baking, and when more than a day old, suggests the in 
 quiry whether it is the saccharine or the putrid fermenta 
 tion with which it is raised. Whoever breaks a piece of it 
 after a day or two will often see minute filaments or clammy 
 strings drawing out from the fragments, which, with the 
 unmistakable smell, will cause him to pause before consum 
 mating a nearer acquaintance. 
 
 The fermentation of flour by means of brewer s or dis 
 tiller s yeast produces, if rightly managed, results far more 
 palatable and wholesome. The only requisites for success 
 in it are, first, good materials, and, second, great care in a 
 few small things. There are certain low-priced or damaged 
 kinds of flour which can never by any kind of domestic 
 chemistry be made into good bread ; and to those persons 
 whose stomachs forbid them to eat gummy, glutinous paste, 
 under the name of bread, there is no economy in buying 
 these poor brands, even at half the price of good flour. 
 
 But good flour and good yeast being supposed, with a 
 temperature favorable to the development of fermentation, 
 the whole success of the process depends on the thorough 
 diffusion of the proper proportion of yeast through the 
 
162 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 whole mass, and on stopping the subsequent fermentation 
 at the precise and fortunate point. The true housewife 
 makes her bread the sovereign of her kitchen, its behests 
 must be attended to in all critical points and moments, no 
 matter what else be postponed. She who attends to her 
 bread when she has done this, and arranged that, and per 
 formed the other, very often finds that the forces of nature 
 will not wait for her. The snowy mass, perfectly mixed, 
 kneaded with care and strength, rises in its beautiful per 
 fection till the moment comes for fixing the air-cells by 
 baking. A few minutes now, and the acetous fermentation 
 will begin, and the whole result be spoiled. Many bread- 
 makers pass in utter carelessness over this sacred and mys 
 terious boundary. Their oven has cake in it, or they are 
 skimming jelly, or attending to some other of the so-called 
 higher branches of cookery, while the bread is quickly 
 passing into the acetous stage. At last, when they are 
 ready to attend to it, they find that it has been going its 
 own way, it is so sour that the pungent smell is plainly 
 perceptible. Now the saleratus-bottle is handed down, and 
 a quantity of the dissolved alkali mixed with the paste, 
 an expedient sometimes making itself too manifest by 
 greenish streaks or small acrid spots in the bread. As the 
 result, we have a beautiful article spoiled, bread without 
 sweetness, if not absolutely sour. 
 
 In the view of many, lightness is the only property 
 required in this article. The delicate, refined sweetness 
 which exists in carefully kneaded bread, baked just before 
 it passes to the extreme point of fermentation, is something 
 of which they have no conception ; and thus they will even 
 regard this process of spoiling the paste by the acetous fer 
 mentation, and then rectifying that acid by effervescence 
 with an alkali, as something positively meritorious. How 
 else can they value and relish baker s loaves, such as some 
 are, drugged with ammonia and other disagreeable things, 
 
COOKERY 163 
 
 light indeed, so light that they seem to have neither weight 
 nor substance, but with no more sweetness or taste than so 
 much white cotton ? 
 
 Some persons prepare bread for the oven by simply mix 
 ing it in the mass, without kneading, pouring it into pans, 
 and suffering it to rise there. The air-cells in bread thus 
 prepared are coarse and uneven ; the bread is as inferior in 
 delicacy and nicety to that which is well kneaded as a raw 
 Irish servant to a perfectly educated and refined lady. The 
 process of kneading seems to impart an evenness to the 
 minute air-cells, a fineness of texture, and a tenderness and 
 pliability to the whole substance, that can be gained in no 
 other way. 
 
 The divine principle of beauty has its reign over bread as 
 well as over all other things ; it has its laws of aesthetics ; 
 and that bread which is so prepared that it can be formed 
 into separate and well-proportioned loaves, each one carefully 
 worked and moulded, will develop the most beautiful re 
 sults. After being moulded, the loaves should stand a little 
 while, just long enough to allow the fermentation going on 
 in them to expand each little air-cell to the point at which 
 it stood before it was worked down, and then they should 
 be immediately put into the oven. 
 
 Many a good thing, however, is spoiled in the oven. We 
 cannot but regret, for the sake of bread, that our old steady 
 brick ovens have been almost universally superseded by those 
 of ranges and cooking-stoves, which are infinite in their 
 caprices, and forbid all general rules. One thing, however, 
 may be borne in mind as a principle, that the excellence 
 of bread in all its varieties, plain or sweetened, depends on 
 the perfection of its air-cells, whether produced by yeast, 
 egg, or effervescence ; that one of the objects of baking is to 
 fix these air-cells, and that the quicker this can be done 
 through the whole mass, the better will the result be. 
 When cake or bread is made heavy by baking too quickly, 
 
164 HOUSE AND HOME "PAPERS 
 
 it is because the immediate formation of the top crust hin 
 ders the exhaling of the moisture in the centre, and prevents 
 the air-cells from cooking. The weight also of the crust 
 pressing down on the doughy air-cells below destroys them, 
 producing that horror of good cooks, a heavy streak. The 
 problem in baking, then, is the quick application of heat 
 rather below than above the loaf, and its steady continu 
 ance till all the air-cells are thoroughly dried into permanent 
 consistency. Every housewife must watch her own oven to 
 know how this can be best accomplished. 
 
 Bread-making can be cultivated to any extent as a fine 
 art ; and the various kinds of biscuit, tea-rusks, twists, rolls, 
 into which bread may be made, are much better worth a 
 housekeeper s ambition than the getting up of rich and ex 
 pensive cake or confections. There are also varieties of 
 material which are rich in good effects. Unbolted flour, 
 altogether more wholesome than the fine wheat, and when 
 properly prepared more palatable, rye-flour and corn-meal, 
 each affording a thousand attractive possibilities, each and 
 all of these come under the general laws of breadstuffs, and 
 are worth a careful attention. 
 
 A peculiarity of our American table, particularly in the 
 Southern and Western States, is the constant exhibition of 
 various preparations of hot bread. In many families of the 
 South and West, bread in loaves to be eaten cold is an arti 
 cle quite unknown. The effect of this kind of diet upon 
 the health has formed a frequent subject of remark among 
 travelers ; but only those know the full mischiefs of it who 
 have been compelled to sojourn for a length of time in 
 families where it is maintained. The unknown horrors of 
 dyspepsia from bad bread are a topic over which we will 
 ingly draw a veil. 
 
 Next to bread comes butter, on which we have to say 
 that, when we remember what butter is in civilized Europe, 
 
COOKERY 165 
 
 and compare it with what it is in America, we wonder at 
 the forbearance and lenity of travelers in their strictures on 
 our national commissariat. 
 
 Butter in England, France, and Italy is simply solidified 
 cream, with all the sweetness of the cream in its taste, 
 freshly churned each day, and unadulterated by salt. At 
 the present moment, when salt is five cents a pound and 
 butter fifty, we Americans are paying, I should judge from 
 the taste, for about one pound of salt to every ten of butter, 
 and those of us who have eaten the butter of Prance and 
 England do this with rueful recollections. 
 
 There is, it is true, an article of butter made in the Ameri 
 can style with salt, which, in its own kind and way, has a 
 merit not inferior to that of England and France. Many 
 prefer it, and it certainly takes a rank equally respectable 
 with the other. It is yellow, hard, and worked so perfectly 
 free from every particle of buttermilk that it might make 
 the voyage of the world without spoiling. It is salted, but 
 salted with care and delicacy, so that it may be a question 
 whether even a fastidious Englishman might not prefer its 
 golden solidity to the white, creamy freshness of his own. 
 Now I am not for universal imitation of foreign customs, and 
 where I find this butter made perfectly I call it our Amer 
 ican style, and am not ashamed of it. I only regret that 
 this article is the exception, and not the rule, on our tables. 
 When I reflect on the possibilities which beset the delicate 
 stomach in this line, I do not wonder that my venerated 
 friend Dr. Mussey used to close his counsels to invalids with 
 the direction, "And don t eat grease on your bread." 
 
 America must, I think, have the credit of manufacturing 
 and putting into market more bad butter than all that is 
 made in all the rest of the world together. The varieties of 
 bad tastes and smells which prevail in it are quite a study. 
 This has a cheesy taste, that a mouldy, this is flavored 
 with cabbage, and that again with turnip ; and another has 
 
166 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 the strong, sharp savor of rancid animal fat. These varie 
 ties, I presume, come from the practice of churning only at 
 long intervals, and keeping the cream meanwhile in unven- 
 tilated cellars or dairies, the air of which is loaded with the 
 effluvia of vegetable substances. No domestic articles are 
 so sympathetic as those of the milk tribe : they readily take 
 on the smell and taste of any neighboring substance, and 
 hence the infinite variety of flavors on which one mournfully 
 muses who has late in autumn to taste twenty firkins of 
 butter in hopes of finding one which will simply not be in 
 tolerable on his winter table. 
 
 A matter for despair as regards bad butter is that, at the 
 tables where it is used, it stands sentinel at the door to bar 
 your way to every other kind of food. You turn from your 
 dreadful half-slice of bread, which fills your mouth with 
 bitterness, to your beefsteak, which proves virulent with 
 the same poison ; you think to take refuge in vegetable 
 diet, and find the butter in the string-beans, and pollut 
 ing the innocence of early peas ; it is in the corn, in the 
 succotash, in the squash; the beets swim in it, the onions 
 have it poured over them. Hungry and miserable, you 
 think to solace yourself at the dessert ; but the pastry is 
 cursed, the cake is acrid with the same plague. You are 
 ready to howl with despair, and your misery is great upon 
 you, especially if this is a table w r here you have taken 
 board for three months with your delicate wife and four 
 small children. Your case is dreadful, and it is hopeless, 
 because long usage and habit have rendered your host per 
 fectly incapable of discovering what is the matter. " Don t 
 like the butter, sir ? I assure you I paid an extra price 
 for it, and it s the very best in the market. I looked over 
 as many as a hundred tubs, and picked out this one." You 
 are dumb, but not less despairing. 
 
 Yet the process of making good butter is a very simple 
 one. To keep the cream in a perfectly pure, cool atmos- 
 
COOKERY 167 
 
 phere, to churn while it is yet sweet, to work out the butter 
 milk thoroughly, and to add salt with such discretion as not 
 to ruin the fine, delicate flavor of the fresh cream, all this 
 is quite simple, so simple that one wonders at thousands 
 and millions of pounds of butter yearly manufactured which 
 are merely a hobgoblin-bewitchment of cream into foul and 
 loathsome poisons. 
 
 The third head of my discourse is that of Meat, of which 
 America furnishes, in the gross material, enough to spread 
 our tables royally, were it well cared for and served. 
 
 The faults in the meat generally furnished to us are, first, 
 that it is too new. A beefsteak, which three or four days 
 of keeping might render practicable, is served up to us pal 
 pitating with freshness, with all the toughness of animal 
 muscle yet warm. In the Western country, the traveler, 
 on approaching an hotel, is often saluted by the last shrieks 
 of the chickens which half an hour afterward are presented 
 to him li la spread-eagle for his dinner. The example of 
 the Father of the Faithful, most wholesome to be followed 
 in so many respects, is imitated only in the celerity with 
 which the young calf, tender and good, was transformed into 
 an edible dish for hospitable purposes. But what might be 
 good housekeeping in a nomadic Emir, in days when re 
 frigerators were yet in the future, ought not to be so closely 
 imitated as it often is in our own land. 
 
 In the next place, there is a woful lack of nicety in the 
 butcher s work of cutting and preparing meat. Who that 
 remembers the neatly trimmed mutton-chop of an English 
 inn, or the artistic little circle of lamb-chop fried in bread 
 crumbs coiled around a tempting centre of spinach which 
 can always be found in France, can recognize any family 
 resemblance to these dapper civilized preparations in those 
 coarse, roughly hacked strips of bone, gristle, and meat 
 which are commonly called mutton-chop in America ? There 
 
168 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 seems to be a large dish of something resembling meat, in 
 which each fragment has about two or three edible morsels, 
 the rest being composed of dry and burnt skin, fat, and 
 ragged bone. 
 
 Is it not time that civilization should learn to demand 
 somewhat more care and nicety in the modes of preparing 
 what is to be cooked and eaten ? Might not some of the 
 refinement and trimness which characterize the preparations 
 of the European market be with advantage introduced into 
 our own ? The housekeeper who wishes to garnish her 
 table with some of those nice things is stopped in the out 
 set by the butcher. Except in our large cities, where some 
 foreign travel may have created the demand, it seems im 
 possible to get much in this line that is properly prepared. 
 
 I am aware that, if this is urged on the score of aesthetics, 
 the ready reply will be, " Oh, we can t give time here in 
 America to go into niceties and French whim -whams ! " 
 But the French mode of doing almost all practical things is 
 based on that true philosophy and utilitarian good sense 
 which characterize that seemingly thoughtless people. No 
 where is economy a more careful study, and their market is 
 artistically arranged to this end. The rule is so to cut their 
 meats that no portion designed to be cooked in a certain man 
 ner shall have wasteful appendages which that mode of cook 
 ing will spoil. The French soup kettle stands ever ready 
 to receive the bones, the thin fibrous flaps, the sinewy and 
 gristly portions, which are so often included in our roasts 
 or broilings, which fill our plates with unsightly debris, and 
 finally make an amount of blank waste for which we pay our 
 butcher the same price that we pay for what we have eaten. 
 
 The dead waste of our clumsy, coarse way of cutting 
 meats is immense. For example, at the beginning of the 
 present season, the part of a lamb denominated leg and loin, 
 or hind-quarter, sold for thirty cents a pound. Now this 
 includes, besides the thick, fleshy portions, a quantity of 
 
COOKERY 169 
 
 bone, sinew, and thin fibrous substance, constituting full 
 one third of the whole weight. If we put it into the oven 
 entire, in the usual manner, we have the thin parts over 
 done, and the skinny and fibrous parts utterly dried up, by 
 the application of the amount of heat necessary to cook the 
 thick portion. Supposing the joint to weigh six pounds, 
 at thirty cents, and that one third of the weight is so treated 
 as to become perfectly useless, we throw away sixty cents. 
 Of a piece of beef at twenty-five cents a pound, fifty cents 
 worth is often lost in bone, fat, and burnt skin. 
 
 The fact is, this way of selling and cooking meat in large, 
 gross portions is of English origin, and belongs to a country 
 where all the customs of society spring from a class who 
 have no particular occasion for economy. The practice of 
 minute and delicate division comes from a nation which 
 acknowledges the need of economy, and has made it a study. 
 A quarter of lamb in this mode of division would be sold 
 in three nicely prepared portions. The thick part would 
 be sold by itself, for a neat, compact little roast ; the rib- 
 bones would be artistically separated, and all the edible 
 matters scraped away would form those delicate dishes of 
 lamb-chop which, fried in bread-crumbs to a golden brown, 
 are so ornamental and so palatable a side-dish ; the trim 
 mings which remain after this division would be destined to 
 the soup kettle or stew pan. In a French market is a little 
 portion for every purse, and the far-famed and delicately 
 flavored soups and stews which have arisen out of French 
 economy are a study worth a housekeeper s attention. Not 
 one atom of food is wasted in the French modes of prepara 
 tion 5 even tough animal cartilages and sinews, instead of 
 appearing burnt and blackened in company with the roast 
 meat to which they happen to be related, are treated accord 
 ing to their own laws, and come out either in savory soups, 
 or those fine, clear meat-jellies which form a garnish no less 
 agreeable to the eye than palatable to the taste. 
 
170 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 Whether this careful, economical, practical style of meat 
 cooking can ever to any great extent be introduced into our 
 kitchens now is a question. Our butchers are against it ; 
 our servants are wedded to the old wholesale wasteful ways, 
 which seem to them easier because they are accustomed to 
 them. A cook who will keep and properly tend a soup 
 kettle which shall receive and utilize all that the coarse 
 preparations of the butcher would require her to trim away, 
 who understands the art of making the most of all these 
 remains, is a treasure scarcely to be hoped for. If such 
 things are to be done, it must be primarily through the 
 educated brain of cultivated women who do not scorn to 
 turn their culture and refinement upon domestic problems. 
 
 When meats have been properly divided so that each 
 portion can receive its own appropriate style of treatment 
 next comes the consideration of the modes of cooking. 
 These may be divided into two great general classes : those 
 where it is desired to keep the juices within the meat, as 
 in baking, broiling, and frying ; and those whose object is 
 to extract the juice and dissolve the fibre, as in the mak 
 ing of soups and stews. In the first class of operations, the 
 process must be as rapid as may consist with the thorough 
 cooking of all the particles. In this branch of cookery, 
 doing quickly is doing well. The fire must be brisk, the 
 attention alert. The introduction of cooking-stoves offers 
 to careless domestics facilities for gradually drying up meats, 
 and despoiling them of all flavor and nutriment, facilities 
 which appear to be very generally laid hold of. They have 
 almost banished the genuine, old-fashioned roast meat from 
 our tables, and left in its stead dried meats with their most 
 precious and nutritive juices evaporated. How few cooks, 
 unassisted, are competent to the simple process of broiling 
 a beefsteak or mutton-chop ! how very generally one has 
 to choose between these meats gradually dried away, or 
 burned on the outside and raw within ! Yet in England 
 
COOKERY 171 
 
 these articles never come on table done amiss ; their perfect 
 cooking is as absolute a certainty as the rising of the sun. 
 
 No one of these rapid processes of cooking, however, is 
 so generally abused as frying. The frying-pan has awful 
 sins to answer for. What untold horrors of dyspepsia have 
 arisen from its smoky depths, like the ghosts from witches 
 caldrons ! The fizzle of frying meat is as a warning knell 
 on many an ear, saying, " Touch not, taste not, if you would 
 not burn and writhe ! " 
 
 Yet those who have traveled abroad remember that some 
 of the lightest, most palatable, and most digestible prepara 
 tions of meat have come from this dangerous source. But 
 we fancy quite other rites and ceremonies inaugurated the 
 process, and quite other hands performed its offices, than 
 those known to our kitchens. Probably the delicate cote- 
 lettes of France are not flopped down into half-melted grease, 
 there gradually to warm and soak and fizzle, while Biddy 
 goes in and out on her other ministrations, till finally, when 
 thoroughly saturated and dinner-hour impends, she bethinks 
 herself, and crowds the fire below to a roaring heat, and 
 finishes the process by a smart burn, involving the kitchen 
 and surrounding precincts in volumes of Stygian gloom. 
 
 From such preparations has arisen the very current med 
 ical opinion that fried meats are indigestible. They are in 
 digestible if they are greasy ; but French cooks have taught 
 us that a thing has no more need to be greasy because emerg 
 ing from grease than Venus had to be salt because she rose 
 from the sea. 
 
 There are two ways of frying employed by the French 
 cook. One is, to immerse the article to be cooked in loll 
 ing fat, with an emphasis on the present participle, and 
 the philosophical principle is, so immediately to crisp every 
 pore at the first moment or two of immersion as effectually to 
 seal the interior against the intrusion of greasy particles ; it 
 can then remain as long as may be necessary thoroughly to 
 
172 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 cook it, without imbibing any more of the boiling fluid than 
 if it were enclosed in an eggshell. The other method is, to 
 rub a perfectly smooth iron surface with just enough of some 
 oily substance to prevent the meat from adhering, and cook 
 it with a quick heat, as cakes are baked on a griddle. In 
 both these cases there must be the most rapid application of 
 heat that can be made without burning, and by the adroit 
 ness shown in working out this problem the skill of the 
 cook is tested. Any one whose cook attains this important 
 secret will find fried things quite as digestible and often 
 more palatable than any other. 
 
 In the second department of meat cookery, to wit, the 
 slow and gradual application of heat for the softening and 
 dissolution of its fibre and the extraction of its juices, com 
 mon cooks are equally untrained. Where is the so-called 
 cook who understands how to prepare soups and stews ? 
 These are precisely the articles in which a French kitchen 
 excels. The soup kettle, made with a double bottom to 
 prevent burning, is a permanent, ever-present institution, 
 and the coarsest and most impracticable meats distilled 
 through that alembic come out again in soups, jellies, or sa 
 vory stews. The toughest cartilage, even the bones, being 
 first cracked, are here made to give forth their hidden 
 virtues, and to rise in delicate and appetizing forms. One 
 great law governs all these preparations : the application of 
 heat must be gradual, steady, long protracted, never reach 
 ing the point of active boiling. Hours of quiet simmering 
 dissolve all dissoluble parts, soften the sternest fibre, and 
 unlock every minute cell in which Nature has stored away 
 her treasures of nourishment. This careful and protracted 
 application of heat and the skillful use of flavors constitute 
 the two main points in all those nice preparations of meat 
 for which the French have so many names, processes by 
 which a delicacy can be imparted to the coarsest and cheap 
 est food superior to that of the finest articles under less 
 philosophic treatment. 
 
COOKERY 173 
 
 French soups and stews are a study, and they would 
 not be an unprofitable one to any person who wishes to live 
 with comfort and even elegance on small means. 
 
 John Bull looks down from the sublime of ten thousand 
 a year on French kickshaws, as he calls them : " Give me 
 my meat cooked so I may know what it is ! " An ox 
 roasted whole is dear to John s soul, and his kitchen arrange 
 ments are Titanic. What magnificent rounds and sirloins 
 of beef, revolving on self-regulating spits, with a rich click 
 of satisfaction, before grates piled with roaring fires ! Let 
 us do justice to the royal cheer. Nowhere are the charms 
 of pure, unadulterated animal food set forth in more impos 
 ing style. For John is rich, and what does he care for odds 
 and ends and parings ? Has he not all the beasts of the 
 forest, and the cattle on a thousand hills ? What does he 
 want of economy ? But his brother Jean has not ten thou 
 sand pounds a year, nothing like it ; but he makes up for 
 the slenderness of his purse by boundless fertility of inven 
 tion and delicacy of practice. John began sneering at Jean s 
 soups and ragouts, but all John s modern sons and daughters 
 send to Jean for their cooks, and the sirloins of England 
 rise up and do obeisance to this Joseph with a white apron 
 who comes to rule in their kitchens. 
 
 There is no animal fibre that will not yield itself up to 
 long-continued, steady heat. But the difficulty with almost 
 any of the common servants who call themselves cooks is, 
 that they have not the smallest notion of the philosophy of 
 the application of heat. Such a one will complacently tell 
 you, concerning certain meats, that the harder you boil them 
 the harder they grow, an obvious fact, which, under her 
 mode of treatment by an indiscriminate galloping boil, has 
 frequently come under her personal observation. If you 
 tell her that such meat must stand for six hours in a heat 
 just below the boiling-point, she will probably answer, " Yes, 
 ma am," and go on her own way. Or she will let it stand 
 
174 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 till it burns to the bottom of the kettle, a most common 
 termination of the experiment. The only way to make sure 
 of the matter is either to import a French kettle, or to fit 
 into an ordinary kettle a false bottom, such as any tinman 
 may make, that shall leave a space of an inch or two be 
 tween the meat and the fire. This kettle may be main 
 tained as a constant habitue of the range, and into it the 
 cook may be instructed to throw all the fibrous trimmings 
 of meat, all the gristle, tendons, and bones, having previ 
 ously broken up these last with a mallet. 
 
 Such a kettle will furnish the basis for clear, rich soups 
 or other palatable dishes. Clear soup consists of the dis 
 solved juices of the meat and gelatine of the bones, cleared 
 from the fat and fibrous portions by straining when cold. 
 The grease, which rises to the top of the fluid, may thus be 
 easily removed. In a stew, on the contrary, you boil down 
 this soup till it permeates the fibre which long exposure to 
 heat has softened. All that remains, after the proper prep 
 aration of the fibre and juices, is the flavoring, and it is in 
 this, particularly, that French soups excel those of America 
 and England and all the world. 
 
 English and American soups are often heavy and hot with 
 spices. There are appreciable tastes in them. They burn 
 your mouth with cayenne or clove or allspice. You can tell 
 at once what is in them, oftentimes to your sorrow. But a 
 French soup has a flavor which one recognizes at once as 
 delicious, yet not to be characterized as due to any single 
 condiment ; it is the just blending of many things. The 
 same remark applies to all their stews, ragouts, and other 
 delicate preparations. No cook will ever study these flavors ; 
 but perhaps many cooks mistresses may, and thus be able 
 to impart delicacy and comfort to economy. 
 
 As to those things called hashes, commonly manufactured 
 by unwatched, untaught cooks, out of the remains of yester 
 day s repast, let us not dwell too closely on their memory, 
 
COOKERY 175 
 
 compounds of meat, gristle, skin, fat, and burnt fibre, 
 with a handful of pepper and salt flung at them, dredged 
 with lumpy flour, watered from the spout of the tea-kettle, 
 and left to simmer at the cook s convenience while she is 
 otherwise occupied. Such are the best performances a house 
 keeper can hope for from an untrained cook. 
 
 But the cunningly devised minces, the artful preparations 
 
 choicely flavored, which may be made of yesterday s repast, 
 
 - by these is the true domestic artist known. No cook 
 
 untaught by an educated brain ever makes these, and yet 
 
 economy is a great gainer by them. 
 
 As regards the department of Vegetables, their number 
 and variety in America are so great that a table might al 
 most be furnished by these alone. Generally speaking, their 
 cooking is a more simple art, and therefore more likely to be 
 found satisfactorily performed, than that of meats. If only 
 they are not drenched with rancid butter, their own native 
 excellence makes itself known in most of the ordinary modes 
 of preparation. 
 
 There is, however, one exception. 
 
 Our stanch old friend the potato is to other vegetables 
 what bread is on the table. Like bread, it is held as a sort 
 of sine qua non ; like that, it may be made invariably pal 
 atable by a little care in a few plain particulars, through 
 neglect of which it often becomes intolerable. The soggy, 
 waxy, indigestible viand that often appears in the potato- 
 dish is a downright sacrifice of the better nature of this vege 
 table. 
 
 The potato, nutritive and harmless as it appears, belongs 
 to a family suspected of very dangerous traits. It is a fam 
 ily connection of the deadly nightshade and other ill-reputed 
 gentry, and sometimes shows strange proclivities to evil, 
 now breaking out uproariously, as in the noted potato rot, 
 and now more covertly in various evil affections. For this 
 
176 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 reason, scientific directors bid us beware of the water in 
 which potatoes are boiled, into which, it appears, the 
 evil principle is drawn off ; and they caution us not to shred 
 them into stews without previously suffering the slices to 
 lie for an hour or so in salt and water. These cautions are 
 worth attention. 
 
 The most usual modes of preparing the potato for the 
 table are by roasting or boiling. These processes are so sim 
 ple that it is commonly supposed every cook understands 
 them without special directions, and yet there is scarcely 
 an uninstructed cook who can boil or roast a potato. 
 
 A good roasted potato is a delicacy worth a dozen compo 
 sitions of the cook-book ; yet when we ask for it, what 
 burnt, shriveled abortions are presented to us ! Biddy rushes 
 to her potato-basket and pours out two dozen of different 
 sizes, some having in them three times the amount of matter 
 of others. These being washed, she tumbles them into her 
 oven at a leisure interval, and there lets them lie till it is 
 time to serve breakfast, whenever that may be. As a re 
 sult, if the largest are cooked, the smallest are presented in 
 cinders, and the intermediate sizes are \vithered and watery. 
 Nothing is so utterly ruined by a few moments of overdoing. 
 That which at the right moment was plump with mealy rich 
 ness, a quarter of an hour later shrivels and becomes watery, 
 and it is in this state that roast potatoes are most fre 
 quently served. 
 
 In the same manner we have seen boiled potatoes from an 
 untaught cook coming upon the table like lumps of yellow 
 wax, and the same article, the day after, under the direc 
 tions of a skillful mistress, appearing in snowy balls of pow 
 dery lightness. In the one case, they were thrown in their 
 skins into water and suffered to soak or boil, as the case 
 might be, at the cook s leisure, and, after they were boiled, 
 to stand in the water till she was ready to peel them. In 
 the other case, the potatoes being first peeled were boiled as 
 
COOKERY 177 
 
 quickly as possible in salted water, which, the moment they 
 were done, was drained off, and then they were gently shaken 
 for a minute or two over the fire to dry them still more 
 thoroughly. We have never yet seen the potato so depraved 
 and given over to evil that could not be reclaimed by this 
 mode of treatment. 
 
 As to fried potatoes, who that remembers the crisp, 
 golden slices of the French restaurant, thin as wafers and 
 light as snowflakes, does not speak respectfully of them ? 
 What cousinship with these have those coarse, greasy masses 
 of sliced potato, wholly soggy and partly burnt, to which we 
 are treated under the name of fried potatoes h la America ? 
 In our cities the restaurants are introducing the French 
 article to great acceptance, and to the vindication of the 
 fair fame of this queen of vegetables. 
 
 Finally, I arrive at the last great head of my subject, to 
 wit, Tea, meaning thereby, as before observed, what our 
 Hibernian friend did in the inquiry, " Will y r Honor take 
 1 tay tay or coffee tay ? " 
 
 I am not about to enter into the merits of the great tea 
 and coffee controversy, or say whether these substances 
 are or are not wholesome. I treat of them as actual exist 
 ences, and speak only of the modes of making the most of 
 them. 
 
 The French coffee is reputed the best in the world ; and 
 a thousand voices have asked, What is it about the French 
 coffee ? In the first place, then, the French coffee is coffee, 
 and not chicory, or rye, or beans, or peas. In the second 
 place, it is freshly roasted, whenever made, roasted with 
 great care and evenness in a little revolving cylinder which 
 makes part of the furniture of every kitchen, and which 
 keeps in the aroma of the berry. It is never overdone, 
 so as to destroy the coffee flavor, which is in nine cases out 
 of ten the fault of the coffee we meet with. Then it is 
 
178 HOUSE AND HOME TAPERS 
 
 ground, and placed in a coffee pot with a filter, through 
 Avhich it percolates in clear drops the coffee-pot standing 
 on a heated stove to maintain the temperature. The nose 
 of the coffee-pot is stopped up to prevent the escape of the 
 aroma during this process. The extract thus obtained is 
 a perfectly clear, dark fluid, know as cafe noir } or black 
 coffee. It is black only because of its strength, being in 
 fact almost the very essential oil of coffee. A tablespoonful 
 of this in boiled milk would make what is ordinarily called 
 a strong cup of coffee. The boiled milk is prepared with 
 no less care. It must be fresh and new, not merely warmed 
 or even brought to the boiling point, but slowly simmered 
 till it attains a thick, creamy richness. The coffee mixed 
 with this, and sweetened with that sparkling beet-root 
 sugar which ornaments a French table, is the celebrated 
 cnfe-au-laitj the name of which has gone round the world. 
 
 As we look to France for the best coffee, so we must 
 look to England for the perfection of tea. The teakettle 
 is as much an English institution as aristocracy or the 
 Prayer Book ; and when one wants to know exactly how 
 tea should be made, one has only to ask how a fine old 
 English housekeeper makes it. 
 
 The first article of her faith is, that the water must not 
 merely be hot, not merely have boiled a few moments since, 
 but be actually boiling at the moment it touches the tea. 
 Hence, though servants in England are vastly better trained 
 than with us, this delicate mystery is seldom left to their 
 hands. Tea making belongs to the drawing-room, and high 
 born ladies preside at " the bubbling and loud-hissing urn," 
 and see that all due rites and solemnities are properly per 
 formed, that the cups are hot, and that the infused tea 
 waits the exact time before the libations commence. Oh, 
 ye dear old English tea-tables, resorts of the kindest-hearted 
 hospitality in the world ! we still cherish your memory, 
 even though you do not say pleasant things of us there. 
 
COOKERY 179 
 
 One of these days you will think better of us. Of late, 
 the introduction of English breakfast tea has raised a new 
 sect among the tea drinkers, reversing some of the old can 
 ons. Breakfast tea must be boiled ! Unlike the delicate 
 article of olden time, which required only a momentary in 
 fusion to develop its richness, this requires a longer and 
 severer treatment to bring out its strength, thus confus 
 ing all the established usages, and throwing the work into 
 the hands of the cook in the kitchen. 
 
 The faults of tea, as too commonly found at our hotels 
 and boarding-houses, are that it is made in every way the 
 reverse of what it should be. The water is hot, perhaps, 
 but not boiling ; the tea has a general flat, stale, smoky 
 taste, devoid of life or spirit ; and it is served, usually, with 
 thin milk instead of cream. Cream is as essential to the 
 richness of tea as of coffee. We could wish that the English 
 fashion might generally prevail, of giving the traveler his 
 own kettle of boiling water and his own tea-chest, and let 
 ting him make tea for himself. At all events he would 
 then be sure of one merit in his tea, it would be hot, a 
 very simple and obvious virtue, but one very seldom ob 
 tained. 
 
 Chocolate is a French and Spanish article, and one sel 
 dom served on American tables. We in America, however, 
 make an article every way equal to any which can be im 
 ported from Paris, and he who buys Baker s best vanilla- 
 chocolate may rest assured that no foreign land can furnish 
 anything better. A very rich and delicious beverage may 
 be made by dissolving this in milk slowly boiled down after 
 the French fashion. 
 
 I have now gone over all the ground I laid out, as com 
 prising the great first principles of cookery ; and I would 
 here modestly offer the opinion that a table where all these 
 principles are carefully observed would need few dainties. 
 
180 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 The struggle after so-called delicacies comes from the poor 
 ness of common things. Perfect bread and butter would 
 soon drive cake out of the field ; it has done so in many 
 families. Nevertheless, I have a word to say under the 
 head of Confectionery, meaning by this the whole range 
 of ornamental cookery, or pastry, ices, jellies, preserves, 
 etc. The art of making all these very perfectly is far bet 
 ter understood in America than the art of common cook 
 ing. 
 
 There are more women who know how to make good 
 cake than good bread, more who can furnish you with 
 a good ice-cream than a well-cooked mutton-chop ; a fair 
 charlotte -russe is easier to come by than a perfect cup of 
 coffee ; and you shall find a sparkling jelly to your dessert 
 where you sighed in vain for so simple a luxury as a well- 
 cooked potato. 
 
 Our fair countrywomen might rest upon their laurels in 
 these higher fields, and turn their great energy and ingenuity 
 to the study of essentials. To do common things perfectly 
 is far better worth our endeavor than to do uncommon things 
 respectably. We Americans in many things as yet have 
 been a little inclined to begin making our shirt at the ruffle ; 
 but nevertheless, when we set about it, we can make the 
 shirt as nicely as anybody, it needs only that we turn our 
 attention to it, resolved that, ruffle or no ruffle, the shirt 
 we will have. 
 
 I have also a few words to say as to the prevalent ideas 
 in respect to French cookery. Having heard much of it, 
 with no very distinct idea what it is, our people have some 
 how fallen into the notion that its forte lies in high spicing, 
 and so, when our cooks put a great abundance of clove, 
 mace, nutmeg, and cinnamon into their preparations, they 
 fancy that they are growing up to be French cooks. But 
 the fact is, that the Americans and English are far more 
 given to spicing than the French. Spices in our made 
 
COOKERY 181 
 
 dishes are abundant, and their taste is strongly pronounced. 
 In living a year in France I forgot the taste of nutmeg, 
 clove, and allspice, which had met me in so many dishes in 
 America. 
 
 The thing may be briefly defined. The English and 
 Americans deal in sjnces, the French in flavors, flavors 
 many and subtile, imitating often in their delicacy those 
 subtile Mendings which Nature produces in high-flavored 
 fruits. The recipes of our cookery-books are most of them 
 of English origin, coming down from the times of our 
 phlegmatic ancestors, when the solid, burly, beefy growth of 
 the foggy island required the heat of fiery condiments, and 
 could digest heavy sweets. Witness the national recipe for 
 plum-pudding, which may be rendered : Take a pound of 
 every indigestible substance you can think of, boil into a 
 cannon-ball, and serve in flaming brandy. So of the Christ 
 mas mince-pie and many other national dishes. But in 
 America, owing to our brighter skies and more fervid 
 climate, we have developed an acute, nervous delicacy of 
 temperament far more akin to that of France than of Eng 
 land. 
 
 Half of the recipes in our cook-books are mere murder to 
 such constitutions and stomachs as we grow here. We re 
 quire to ponder these things, and think how we in our 
 climate and under our circumstances ought to live, and, in 
 doing so, we may, without accusation of foreign foppery, 
 take some leaves from many foreign books. 
 
 But Christopher has prosed long enough. I must now 
 read this to my wife, and see what she says. 
 
182 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 XI 
 OUR HOUSE 
 
 Our gallant Bob Stephens, into whose lifeboat our 
 Marianne has been received, has lately taken the mania of 
 housebuilding into his head. Bob is somewhat fastidious, 
 difficult to please, fond of domesticities and individualities; 
 and such a man never can fit himself into a house built by 
 another, and accordingly housebuilding has always been his 
 favorite mental recreation. During all his courtship, as 
 much time was taken up in planning a future house as if he 
 had money to build one ; and all Marianne s patterns, and 
 the backs of half their letters, were scrawled with ground- 
 plans and elevations. But latterly this chronic disposition 
 has been quickened into an acute form by the falling-in of 
 some few thousands to their domestic treasury, left as 
 the sole residuum of a painstaking old aunt, who took it 
 into her head to make a will in Bob s favor, leaving, among 
 other good things, a nice little bit of land in a rural district 
 half an hour s railroad ride from Boston. 
 
 So now ground-plans thicken, and my wife is being con 
 sulted morning, noon, and night ; and I never come into 
 the room without finding their heads close together over a 
 paper, and hearing Bob expatiate on his favorite idea of a 
 library. He appears to have got so far as this, that the 
 ceiling is to be of carved oak, with ribs running to a boss 
 overhead, and finished medisevally with ultramarine blue 
 and gilding, and then away he goes sketching Gothic 
 patterns of bookshelves which require only experienced 
 carvers, and the wherewithal to pay them, to be the divinest 
 things in the world. 
 
 Marianne is exercised about china-closets and pantries, 
 and about a bedroom on the ground-floor, for, like all 
 
OUR HOUSE 183 
 
 other women of our days, she expects not to have strength 
 enough to run upstairs oftener than once or twice a week ; 
 and my wife, who is a native genius in this line, and has 
 planned in her time dozens of houses for acquaintances, 
 wherein they are at this moment living happily, goes over 
 every day with her pencil and ruler the work of rearranging 
 the plans, according as the ideas of the young couple veer 
 and vary. 
 
 One day Bob is importuned to give two feet off from 
 his library for a closet in the bedroom, but resists like a 
 Trojan. The next morning, being mollified by private 
 domestic supplications, Bob yields, and my wife rubs out 
 the lines of yesterday, two feet come off the library, and 
 a closet is constructed. But now the parlor proves too 
 narrow, the parlor wall must be moved two feet into the 
 hall. Bob declares this will spoil the symmetry of the 
 latter ; and, if there is anything he wants, it is a wide, 
 generous, ample hall to step into when you open the front 
 door. 
 
 " Well, then," says Marianne, " let s put two feet more 
 into the width of the house. 7 
 
 " Can t on account of the expense, you see," says Bob. 
 " You see every additional foot of outside wall necessitates 
 so many more bricks, so much more flooring, so much more 
 roofing, etc." 
 
 And my wife, with thoughtful brow, looks over the 
 plans, and considers how two feet more are to be got into 
 the parlor without moving any of the walls. 
 
 " I say," says Bob, bending over her shoulder, " here, 
 take your two feet in the parlor, and put two more feet 
 on to the other side of the hall stairs ; " and he dashes 
 heavily with his pencil. 
 
 " Oh, Bob ! " exclaims Marianne, " there are the kitchen 
 pantries ! you ruin them, and no place for the cellar 
 stairs ! " 
 
184 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 " Hang the pantries and cellar stairs ! " says Bob. 
 "Mother must find a place for them somewhere else. I 
 say the house must be roomy and cheerful, and pantries 
 and those things may take care of themselves ; they can be 
 put somewhere, well enough. No fear but you will find a 
 place for them somewhere. What do you women always 
 want such a great enormous kitchen for ? " 
 
 "It is not any larger than is necessary," said my wife, 
 thoughtfully ; " nothing is gained by taking off from it." 
 
 " What if you should put it all down into a basement," 
 suggests Bob, " and so get it all out of sight together ? " 
 
 " Never, if it can be helped," said my wife. " Basement 
 kitchens are necessary evils, only to be tolerated in cities 
 where land is too dear to afford any other." 
 
 So goes the discussion till the trio agree to sleep over it. 
 The next morning an inspiration visits my wife s pillow. 
 She is up and seizes plans and paper, and, before six o clock, 
 has enlarged the parlor very cleverly by throwing out a 
 bow-window. So waxes and wanes the prospective house, 
 innocently battered down and rebuilt with India-rubber and 
 black-lead. Doors are cut out to-night and walled up 
 to-morrow; windows knocked out here and put in there, 
 as some observer suggests possibilities of too much or too 
 little draught. Now all seems finished, when, lo ! a dis 
 covery ! There is no fireplace nor stove-flue in my lady s 
 bedroom, and can be none without moving the bathing- 
 room. Pencil and India-rubber are busy again, and for 
 a while the whole house seems to threaten to fall to pieces 
 with the confusion of the moving ; the bath-room wanders 
 like a ghost, now invading a closet, now threatening the 
 tranquillity of the parlor, till at last it is laid, by some 
 unheard-of calculations of my wife s, and sinks to rest in a 
 place so much better that everybody wonders it never was 
 thought of before. 
 
 " Papa," said Jenny, " it appears to me people don t 
 
OUR HOUSE 185 
 
 exactly know what they want when they build ; why don t 
 you write a paper on housebuilding ? " 
 
 " I have thought of it," said I, with the air of a man 
 called to settle some great reform. " It must be entirely 
 because Christopher has not written that our young people 
 and mamma are tangling themselves daily in webs which 
 are untangled the next day." 
 
 " You see," said Jenny, " they have only just so much 
 money, and they want everything they can think of under 
 the sun. There s Bob been studying architectural anti 
 quities, and nobody knows what, and sketching all sorts of 
 curly-whorlies ; and Marianne has her notions about a par 
 lor and boudoir and china closets and bedroom closets ; and 
 Bob wants a baronial hall ; and mamma stands out for 
 linen closets and bathing-rooms and all that ; and so, among 
 them all it will just end in getting them head over ears in 
 debt." 
 
 The thing struck me as not improbable. 
 
 " I don t know, Jenny, whether my writing an article is 
 going to prevent all this ; but as my time in the l Atlantic 
 is coming round, I may as well write on what I am obliged 
 to think of, and so I will give a paper on the subject to 
 enliven our next evening s session." 
 
 So that evening, when Bob and Marianne had dropped in 
 as usual, and while the customary work of drawing and 
 rubbing out was going on at Mrs. Crowfield s sofa, I pro 
 duced my paper and read as follows : 
 
 OUR HOUSE 
 
 There is a place, called " our house," which everybody 
 knows of. The sailor talks of it in his dreams at sea. The 
 wounded soldier, turning in his uneasy hospital-bed, bright 
 ens at the word ; it is like the dropping of cool water in 
 the desert, like the touch of cool fingers on a burning brow. 
 " Our house," he says feebly, and the light comes back into 
 
186 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 his dim eyes ; for all homely charities, all fond thoughts, 
 all purities, all that man loves on earth or hopes for in 
 heaven, rise with the word. 
 
 " Our house " may be in any style of architecture, low 
 or high. It may be the brown old farmhouse, with its tall 
 wellsweep, or the one-story gambrel-roofed cottage, or the 
 large, square, white house, with green blinds, under the 
 wind-swung elms of a century ; or it may be the log-cabin 
 of the wilderness, with its one room, still there is a spell 
 in the memory of it beyond all conjurations. Its stone and 
 brick and mortar are like no other ; its very clapboards and 
 shingles are dear to us, powerful to bring back the memo 
 ries of early days and all that is sacred in home love. 
 
 " Papa is getting quite sentimental," whispered Jenny, 
 loud enough for me to hear. I shook my head at her im 
 pressively, and went on undaunted. 
 
 There is no one fact of our human existence that has a 
 stronger influence upon us than the house we dwell in, 
 especially that in which our earlier and more impressible 
 years are spent. The building and arrangement of a house 
 influence the health, the comfort, the morals, the religion. 
 There have been houses built so devoid of all consideration 
 for the occupants, so rambling and haphazard in the dis 
 posal of rooms, so sunless and cheerless and wholly with 
 out snugness or privacy, as to make it seem impossible 
 to live a joyous, generous, rational, religious family life in 
 them. 
 
 There are, we shame to say, in our cities things called 
 houses, built and rented by people who walk erect and have 
 the general air and manner of civilized and Christianized 
 men, which are so inhuman in their building that they can 
 only be called snares and traps for souls, places where 
 children cannot well escape growing up iilthy and impure ; 
 
OUR HOUSE 187 
 
 places where to form a home is impossible, and to live a 
 decent, Christian life would require miraculous strength. 
 
 A celebrated British philanthropist, who had devoted 
 much study to the dwellings of the poor, gave it as his 
 opinion that the temperance societies were a hopeless under 
 taking in London unless these dwellings underwent a trans 
 formation. They were so squalid, so dark, so comfortless, 
 so constantly pressing upon the senses foulness, pain, and 
 inconvenience, that it was only by being drugged with gin 
 and opium that their miserable inhabitants could find heart 
 to drag on life from day to day. He had himself tried the 
 experiment of reforming a drunkard by taking him from 
 one of these loathsome dens, and enabling him to rent a 
 tenement in a block of model lodging-houses which had 
 been built under his supervision. The young man had 
 been a designer of figures for prints ; he was of a delicate 
 frame, and a nervous, susceptible temperament. Shut in 
 one miserable room with his wife and little children, with 
 out the possibility of pure air, with only filthy, fetid water to 
 drink, with the noise of other miserable families resounding 
 through the thin partitions, what possibility was there of 
 doing anything except by the help of stimulants, which for 
 a brief hour lifted him above the perception of these mis 
 eries ? Changed at once to a neat flat, where, for the same 
 rent as his former den, he had three good rooms, with water 
 for drinking, house-service, and bathing freely supplied, 
 and the blessed sunshine and air coming in through win 
 dows well arranged for ventilation, he became in a few 
 weeks a new man. In the charms of the little spot which 
 he could call home, its quiet, its order, his former talent 
 came back to him, and he found strength, in pure air and 
 pure water and those purer thoughts of which they are the 
 emblems, to abandon burning and stupefying stimulants. 
 
 The influence of dwelling-houses for good or for evil 
 their influence on the brain, the nerves, and, through these, 
 
188 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 on the heart and life is one of those things that cannot be 
 enough pondered by those who build houses to sell or rent. 
 
 Something more generous ought to inspire a man than 
 merely the percentage which he can get for his money. He 
 who would build houses should think a little on the sub 
 ject. He should reflect what houses are for, what they may 
 be made to do for human beings. The great majority of 
 houses in cities are not built by the indwellers themselves ; 
 they are built for them by those who invest their money 
 in this way, with little other thought than the percentage 
 which the investment will return. 
 
 For persons of ample fortune there are, indeed, palatial 
 residences, with all that wealth can do to render life de 
 lightful. But in that class of houses which must be the 
 lot of the large majority, those which must be chosen by 
 young men in the beginning of life, when means are com 
 paratively restricted, there is yet wide room for thought arid 
 the judicious application of money. 
 
 In looking over houses to be rented by persons of mod 
 erate means, one cannot help longing to build, one sees 
 so many ways in which the same sum which built an in 
 convenient and unpleasant house might have been made to 
 build a delightful one. 
 
 " That J s so ! " said Bob with emphasis. " Don t you re 
 member, Marianne, how many dismal, commonplace, shabby 
 houses we trailed through ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Marianne. " You remember those houses 
 with such little squeezed rooms and that flourishing stair 
 case, with the colored-glass china-closet window, and no 
 butler s sink ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Bob ; " and those astonishing, abominable 
 stone abortions that adorned the doorsteps. People do lay 
 out a deal of money to make houses look ugly, it must be 
 confessed." 
 
OUR HOUSE 189 
 
 " One would willingly," said Marianne, " dispense with 
 frightful stone ornaments in front, and with heavy mould 
 ings inside, which are of no possible use or beauty, and with 
 showy plaster cornices and centrepieces in the parlor ceil 
 ings, and even with marble mantels, for the luxury of hot 
 and cold water in each chamber, and a couple of comfortable 
 bathrooms. Then, the disposition of windows and doors is 
 so wholly without regard to convenience ! How often we 
 find rooms, meant for bedrooms, where really there is no 
 good place for either bed or dressing-table ! " 
 
 Here my wife looked up, having just finished redrawing 
 the plans to the latest alteration. 
 
 " One of the greatest reforms that could be, in these re 
 forming days," she observed, " would be to have women 
 architects. The mischief with houses built to rent is that 
 they are all mere male contrivances. No woman would 
 ever plan chambers where there is no earthly place to set 
 a bed except against a window or door, or waste the room 
 in entries that might be made into closets. I don t see, for 
 my part, apropos to the modern movement for opening new 
 professions to the female sex, why there should not be well- 
 educated female architects. The planning and arrangement 
 of houses, and the laying-out of grounds, are a fair subject 
 of womanly knowledge and taste. It is the teaching of 
 Nature. What would anybody think of a bluebird s nest 
 that had been built entirely by Mr. Blue, without the help 
 of his wife ?" 
 
 " My dear," said I, " you must positively send a paper 
 on this subject to the next Woman s Rights Convention." 
 
 " I am of Sojourner Truth s opinion," said my wife, 
 " that the best way to prove the propriety of one s doing 
 anything is to go and do it. A woman who should have 
 energy to grow through the preparatory studies and set to 
 work in this field would, I am sure, soon find employ 
 ment." 
 
190 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 " If she did as well as you would do, my dear," said I. 
 " There are plenty of young women in our Boston high 
 schools who are going through higher fields of mathematics 
 than are required by the architect, and the schools for de 
 sign show the flexibility and fertility of the female pencil. 
 The thing appears to me altogether more feasible than many 
 other openings which have been suggested to woman." 
 
 " Well," said Jenny, " is n t papa ever to go on with 
 his paper ? " 
 
 I continued : 
 
 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 divi 
 sion 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 
 
OUR HOUSE 191 
 
 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 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 pre 
 serve 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 pleas 
 ant sitting-room. With tables, chairs, book-cases, 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 in 
 dicated, windows might be freely left open in these central 
 halls, producing there a constant movement of air, and the 
 
192 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 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 dis 
 course to show when and how and why sin came. A min 
 ister gets up in a crowded lecture-room, where the mephitic 
 air almost makes the candles burn blue, and bewails the 
 dead ness 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. 
 
OUR HOUSE 193 
 
 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 improve 
 ments. The great central chimney, with its open fireplaces 
 in the different rooms, created a constant current which car 
 ried 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 North 
 ern 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 atmos 
 phere at a temperature between eighty and ninety, and the 
 inmates sitting there, with all their winter clothes on, be 
 come 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 con 
 sumption, and that the opening of the spring, which ought 
 to bring life and health, in so many cases brings death. 
 
194 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 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 deli 
 cate 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 w r e 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 jin 
 gled 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 
 
OUR HOUSE 195 
 
 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 pur 
 poses 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 pass 
 ing, 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 with 
 out 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 
 
196 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 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 ele 
 ment 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, 
 
OUR HOUSE 197 
 
 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 im 
 agine 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 ex 
 treme 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 
 
198 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 window-blind open in some distant Lack 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 shut- 
 ting 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 peo 
 ple 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 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 Octo 
 ber. 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 ex 
 istence were to be rid of flies. I remember, during this 
 same journey, stopping for a day or two at a country board 
 ing-house, which was dark as Egypt from cellar to garret. 
 The long, dim, gloomy dining-room was first closed by out 
 side blinds, and then by impenetrable paper curtains, not- 
 
OUR HOUSE 199 
 
 withstanding 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 could n 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 out 
 door enjoyment, and sit and think of nothing but flies j in 
 fact, flies are all they have left. No wonder they become 
 morbid on the subject. 7 
 
 " Well now, papa talks just like a man, doesn t he ? " said 
 Jenny. " He has n t the responsibility of keeping things 
 clean. I wonder what he would do, if he were a house 
 keeper." 
 
 " 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 should n 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 with- 
 
200 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 out sun, wan, pale, long-visaged, holding feeble, implor 
 ing 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 popula 
 tion in New England are groaning and suffering under afflic 
 tions, the result of a depressed vitality, neuralgia, with a 
 new ache for every day of the year, rheumatism, consump 
 tion, 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 dark 
 ness. 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 201 
 
 " Our house " shall not be blockaded with a dank, drip 
 ping 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 con 
 vert 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, un 
 healthy thoughts are bred of living in dark, chilly rooms, 
 behind such dripping thickets ? Our neighbors faults as 
 sume a deeper hue, life seems a dismal thing, our very re 
 ligion 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 be 
 low, 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 
 
202 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 hot air, are all healthy and admirable provisions for warm 
 ing 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 with 
 out 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 judi 
 cious care in arranging apartments and economizing heat, a 
 range may make two or three chambers comfortable in win 
 ter 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. 
 
OUR HOUSE 203 
 
 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 Avas out in the yard ; 
 and in winter one must flounder through snow and bring up 
 the ice-bound bucket, before one could till the teakettle for 
 breakfast. For a sovereign princess of the republic, this 
 was hardly respectful or respectable. Wells have come some 
 what 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 arrange 
 ments 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, convul 
 sions, neuralgias innumerable, are washed off in their first 
 beginnings, and run down the lead pipes into oblivion. 
 Have, then, 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 
 
204 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 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 con 
 stantly. 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 dis 
 tributed 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 se 
 cure this. 
 
 " Well, papa," said Marianne, " you have made out all 
 your four elements in your house, except one. I can t im 
 agine 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 appar 
 ently 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." 
 
OUR HOUSE 205 
 
 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 ad 
 vantages 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 rela 
 tions 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 vig 
 orous, 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 
 
206 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 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 parti 
 cle 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 w r ith plants, if it were not for this eternal shower 
 ing 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 in 
 clude 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 
 
OUR HOUSE 207 
 
 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 win 
 ter 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." I 
 
 " 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 ? " 
 
208 
 
 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 " Here it is," said my wife, after a few dashes with her 
 pencil, " an inexpensive house, yet one of the pleasantest I 
 ever saw." 
 
 Ib^NTAllN 
 
 LINING- 
 
 PANTKT 
 
 
 ROOM 
 
 
 * 
 
 
 "WASH 
 
 
 
 ROOM 
 
 CARLOER 
 
 
 
 
 
 : 
 
 P\ 
 
 
 
 HAII 
 
 
 T KrrcHEN 
 d l 
 
 T, , 
 
 
 L 
 I 
 
 r, China-closet, p, Passage, rf, 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 foun 
 tain is ever playing into a little marble basin, and which all 
 the year through has its green and bloom. It is heated sim 
 ply 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 decompo 
 sition. Great care must be taken that there be no leaves 
 left to fall and decay on the ground, since vegetable exhala 
 tions poison the air. With these precautions such a plot 
 will soften and purify the air of a house. 
 
OUR HOUSE 209 
 
 Where the means do not allow even so small a conserva 
 tory, 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 ten 
 drils 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 bril 
 liant 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 pro 
 vide 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. 
 
210 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 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 bathrooms, my conserva 
 tory, 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 con 
 sidered not decent to look upon till hastily shrouded in a 
 friendly blanket of white paint, has, when oiled and var 
 nished, 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 charm 
 ing effects. 
 
 As to paper hangings, we are proud to say that our 
 
OUR HOUSE 211 
 
 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. 
 
212 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 XII 
 HOME RELIGION 
 
 It was Sunday evening, and our little circle were con 
 vened 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 
 have n 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 
 
HOME RELIGION 213 
 
 away the grass and flowers. Nevertheless, she has an 
 indulgent ear for all that gives promise of bettering any 
 body or anything, and therefore is not severe on any new 
 methods that may arise in our progressive days of accom 
 plishing old good objects. 
 
 " There must be a home religion," said my wife. 
 
 11 1 believe in home religion," said Bob Stephens, 
 " but not in the outward show of it. The best sort of re 
 ligion 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 out 
 ward, 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 rto 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 expres- 
 
214 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 sion 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 1 1 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 daguerreotype of a past good feel 
 ing, 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 con 
 scious 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. 7 
 
 " 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 heal 
 ing power. Then we remember the scattered and wander 
 ing 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 
 
HOME RELIGION 215 
 
 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 win 
 tered 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 Catho 
 lics, 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 com 
 mon 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 j 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 ser- 
 
HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 vants, 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 lov 
 ing. 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 omis 
 sion. 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 
 
HOME RELIGION 217 
 
 always for doing something that she thinks isn t the 
 thing." 
 
 " Well, you see/ 7 said Marianne, " Bob is always talking 
 against our old Puritan fathers, and saying all manner of 
 hard tilings 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." 
 
 "The fact is," said I, "that we realize very fully all the 
 objections and difficulties of the experiments in living that 
 we have tried ; but the difficulties in others that we are 
 intending to try have not yet come to light. The Puritan 
 Sabbath had great and very obvious evils. Its wearisome 
 restraints and over-strictness cast a gloom on religion, and 
 arrayed against the day itself the active prejudices that now 
 are undermining it and threatening its extinction. But it 
 had great merits and virtues, and produced effects on society 
 that we cannot well afford to dispense with. The clearing 
 of a whole day from all possibilities of labor and amusement 
 necessarily produced a grave and thoughtful people, and a 
 democratic republic can be carried on by no other. In 
 lands which have Sabbaths of mere amusement, mere gala 
 days, republics rise and fall as quick as children s card- 
 houses ; and the reason is, they are built by those whose 
 political and religious education has been childish. The 
 common people of Europe have been sedulously nursed on 
 amusements by the reigning powers, to keep them from 
 meddling with serious matters ; their religion has been 
 sensuous and sentimental, and their Sabbaths thoughtless 
 holidays. The common people of New England are edu 
 cated to think, to reason, to examine all questions of poli 
 tics and religion for themselves j and one deeply thought- 
 
218 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 ful day every week baptizes and strengthens their reflective 
 and reasoning faculties. The Sunday-schools of Paris are 
 whirligigs where Young France rides round and round on 
 little hobby-horses till his brain spins even faster than Na 
 ture made it to spin; and when he grows up, his political 
 experiments are as whirligig as his Sunday education. If I 
 were to choose between the Sabbath of France and the old 
 Puritan Sabbath, I should hold up both hands for the latter, 
 with all its objectionable features." 
 
 " Well," said my wife, " cannot we contrive to retain 
 all that is really valuable of the Sabbath, and to ameliorate 
 and smooth away what is forbidding ? " 
 
 "That is the problem of our day," said I. " We do not 
 want the Sabbath of Continental Europe : it does not suit 
 democratic institutions ; it cannot be made even a quiet or 
 a safe day, except by means of that ever-present armed 
 police that exists there. If the Sabbath of America is 
 simply to be a universal loafing, picnicking, dining-out day, 
 as it is now with all our foreign population, we shall need 
 what they have in Europe, the gendarmes at every turn, to 
 protect the fruit on our trees and the melons in our fields. 
 People who live a little out from great cities see enough, 
 and more than enough, of this sort of Sabbath-keeping, with 
 our loose American police. 
 
 " The fact is, our system of government was organized to 
 go by moral influences as much as mills by water, and Sun 
 day was the great day for concentrating these influences and 
 bringing them to bear ; and we might just as well break down 
 all the dams and let out all the water of the Lowell mills, 
 and expect still to work the looms, as to expect to work our 
 laws and constitution with European notions of religion. 
 
 "It is true the Puritan Sabbath had its disagreeable 
 points. So have the laws of Nature. They are of a most 
 uncomfortable sternness and rigidity; yet for all that, we 
 would hardly join in a petition to have them repealed, or 
 
HOME EELIGION 219 
 
 made wavering and uncertain for human convenience. We 
 can bend to them in a thousand ways, and live very com 
 fortably under them." 
 
 " But," said Bob, " Sabbath-keeping is the iron rod of 
 bigots ; they don t allow a man any liberty of his own. 
 One says it s wicked to write a letter Sunday ; another 
 holds that you must read no book but the Bible and a 
 third is scandalized if you take a walk, ever so quietly, in 
 the fields. There are all sorts of quips and turns. We 
 may fasten things with pins of a Sunday, but it s wicked 
 to fasten with needle and thread, and so on, and so on ; 
 and each one, planting himself on his own individual mode 
 of keeping Sunday, points his guns and frowns severely 
 over the battlements on his neighbors whose opinions and 
 practice are different from his." 
 
 " Yet," said I, " Sabbath days are expressly mentioned 
 by Saint Paul as among those things concerning which no 
 man should judge another. It seems to me that the error 
 as regards the Puritan Sabbath was in representing it, not 
 as a gift from God to man, but as a tribute of man to God. 
 Hence all these hagglings and nice questions and exactions 
 to the uttermost farthing. The holy time must be weighed 
 and measured. It must begin at twelve o clock of one 
 night, and end at twelve o clock of another ; and from be 
 ginning to end, the mind must be kept in a state of tension 
 by the effort not to think any of its usual thoughts or do 
 any of its usual works. The fact is, that the metaphysical, 
 defining, hair-splitting mind of New England, turning its 
 whole powers on this one bit of ritual, this one only day of 
 divine service, which was left of all the feasts and fasts of 
 the old churches, made of it a thing straiter and stricter 
 than ever the old Jews dreamed of. 
 
 " The old Jewish Sabbath entered only into the physi 
 cal region, merely enjoining cessation from physical toil. 
 Thou shalt not labor nor do any work, 9 covered the whole 
 
220 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 ground. In other respects than this it was a joyful festi 
 val, resembling, in the mode of keeping it, the Christmas 
 of the modern church. It was a day of social hilarity, 
 the Jewish law strictly forbidding mourning and gloom 
 during festivals. The people were commanded on feast 
 days to rejoice before the Lord their God with all their 
 might. We fancy there were no houses where children 
 were afraid to laugh, where the voice of social cheerfulness 
 quavered away in terror lest it should awake a wrathful 
 God. The Jewish Sabbath was instituted, in the absence 
 of printing, of books, and of all the advantages of literature, 
 to be the great means of preserving sacred history, a day 
 cleared from all possibility of other employment than social 
 and family communion, when the heads of families and the 
 elders of tribes might instruct the young in those religious 
 traditions which have thus come down to us. 
 
 " The Christian Sabbath is meant to supply the same 
 moral need in that improved and higher state of society 
 which Christianity introduced. Thus it was changed from 
 the day representing the creation of the world to the resur 
 rection day of Him who came to make all things new. The 
 Jewish Sabbath was buried with Christ in the sepulchre, 
 and arose with Him, not a Jewish, but a Christian festi 
 val, still holding in itself that provision for man s needs 
 which the old institution possessed, but with a wider and 
 more generous freedom of application. It was given to 
 the Christian world as a day of rest, of refreshment, of hope 
 and joy, and of worship. The manner of making it such 
 a day was left open and free to the needs and convenience 
 of the varying circumstances and characters of those for 
 whose benefit it was instituted." 
 
 " Well," said Bob, " don t you think there is a deal of 
 nonsense about Sabbath-keeping ? " 
 
 " There is a deal of nonsense about everything human 
 beings have to deal with," I said. 
 
HOME RELIGION 221 
 
 " And," said Marianne, " how to find out what is non 
 sense ? " 
 
 " By clear conceptions," said I, " of what the day is for. 
 I should define the Sabbath as a divine and fatherly gift to 
 man, a day expressly set apart for the cultivation of his 
 moral nature. Its object is not merely physical rest and 
 recreation, but moral improvement. The former are proper 
 to the day only so far as they are subservient to the latter. 
 The whole human race have the conscious need of being 
 made better, purer, and more spiritual ; the whole human 
 race have one common danger of sinking to a mere animal 
 life under the pressure of labor or in the dissipations of 
 pleasure ; and of the whole human race the proverb holds 
 good, that what may be done any time is done at no time. 
 Hence the Heavenly Father appoints one day as a special 
 season for the culture of man s highest faculties. Accord 
 ingly, whatever ways and practices interfere with the pur 
 pose of the Sabbath as a day of worship and moral culture 
 should be avoided, and all family arrangements for the day 
 should be made with reference thereto." 
 
 " Cold dinners on Sunday, for example," said Bob. 
 " Marianne holds these as prime articles of faith." 
 
 " Yes, they doubtless are most worthy and merciful, 
 in giving to the poor cook one day she may call her own, 
 and rest from the heat of range and cooking-stove. For 
 the same reason, I would suspend as far as possible all trav 
 eling, and all public labor, on Sunday. The hundreds of 
 hands that these things require to carry them on are the 
 hands of human beings, whose right to this merciful pause 
 of rest is as clear as their humanity. Let them have their 
 day to look upward." 
 
 " But the little ones," said my oldest matron daughter, 
 who had not as yet spoken, " they are the problem. Oh, 
 this weary labor of making children keep Sunday ! If I try 
 it, I have no rest at all myself. If I must talk to them or 
 
222 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 read to them to keep them from play, my Sabbath becomes 
 my hardest working day." 
 
 "And, pray, what commandment of the Bible ever said 
 children should not play on Sunday ? " said I. " We are 
 forbidden to work, and we see the reason why ; but lambs 
 frisk and robins sing on Sunday ; and little children, who 
 are as yet more than half animals, must not be made to 
 keep the day in the manner proper to our more developed 
 faculties. As much cheerful, attractive religious instruction 
 as they can bear without weariness may be given, and then 
 they may simply be restrained from disturbing others. Say 
 to the little one, i This day we have noble and beautiful 
 things to think of that interest us deeply : you are a child ; 
 you cannot read and think and enjoy such things as much 
 as we can; you may play softly and quietly, and remember 
 not to make a disturbance. I would take a child to public 
 worship at least once of a Sunday ; it forms a good habit in 
 him. If the sermon be long and unintelligible, there are 
 the little Sabbath-school books in every child s hands ; and 
 while the grown people are getting what they understand, 
 who shall forbid a child s getting what is suited to him in 
 a way that interests him and disturbs nobody ? The Sab 
 bath-school is the child s church and happily it is yearly 
 becoming a more and more attractive institution. I approve 
 the custom of those who beautify the Sabbath school-room 
 with plants, flowers, and pictures, thus making it an attrac 
 tive place to the childish eye. The more this custom pre 
 vails, the more charming in after years will be the memo 
 ries of Sunday. 
 
 " It is most especially to be desired that the whole air 
 and aspect of the day should be one of cheerfulness. Even 
 the new dresses, new bonnets, and new shoes, in which chil 
 dren delight of a Sunday, should not be despised. They 
 have their value in marking the day as a festival ; and it is 
 better for the child to long for Sunday, for the sake of his 
 
HOME RELIGION 223 
 
 little new shoes, than that he should hate and dread it as a 
 period of wearisome restraint. All the latitude should be 
 given to children that can be, consistently with fixing in 
 their minds the idea of a sacred season. I would rather 
 that the atmosphere of the day should resemble that of a 
 weekly Thanksgiving than that it should make its mark on 
 the tender mind only by the memory of deprivations and 
 restrictions." 
 
 " Well," said Bob, " here a Marianne always breaking 
 her heart about my reading on Sunday. Now I hold that 
 what is bad on Sunday is bad on Monday, and what is 
 good on Monday is good on Sunday." 
 
 " We cannot abridge other people s liberty," said I. 
 " The generous, confiding spirit of Christianity has imposed 
 not a single restriction upon us in reference to Sunday. 
 The day is put at our disposal as a good Father hands a 
 piece of money to his child, There it is ; take it and 
 spend it well. 7 The child knows from his father s charac 
 ter what he means by spending it well, but he is left free 
 to use his own judgment as to the mode. 
 
 " If a man conscientiously feels that reading of this or 
 that description is the best for him as regards his moral 
 training and improvement, let him pursue it, and let no man 
 judge him. It is difficult, with the varying temperaments 
 of men, to decide what are or are not religious books. One 
 man is more religiously impressed by the reading of history 
 or astronomy than he would be by reading a sermon. There 
 may be overwrought and wearied states of the brain and 
 nerves which require and make proper the diversions of 
 light literature ; and if so, let it be used. The mind must 
 have its recreations as well as the body." 
 
 " But for children and young people," said my daughter, 
 " would you let them read novels on Sunday ? " 
 
 " That is exactly like asking, Would you let them talk 
 with people on Sunday ? Now people are different ; it de- 
 
224 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 pends, therefore, on who they are. Some are trifling and 
 flighty, some are positively bad-principled, some are alto 
 gether good in their influence. So of the class of books 
 called novels. Some are merely frivolous, some are abso 
 lutely noxious and dangerous, others again are written with 
 a strong moral and religious purpose, and, being vivid and 
 interesting, produce far more religious effect on the mind 
 than dull treatises and sermons. The parables of Christ 
 sufficiently establish the point that there is no inherent ob 
 jection to the use of fiction in teaching religious truth. 
 Good religious fiction, thoughtfully read, may be quite as 
 profitable as any other reading." 
 
 " But don t you think," said Marianne, " that there is 
 danger in too much fiction ? " 
 
 " Yes," said I. " But the chief danger of all that class 
 of reading is its easiness, and the indolent, careless mental 
 habits it induces. A great deal of the reading of young 
 people on all days is really reading to no purpose, its object 
 being merely present amusement. It is a listless yielding 
 of the mind to be washed over by a stream which leaves no 
 fertilizing properties, and carries away by constant wear the 
 good soil of thought. I should try to establish a barrier 
 against this kind of reading, not only on Sunday, but on 
 Monday, on Tuesday, and on all days. Instead, therefore, 
 of objecting to any particular class of books for Sunday 
 reading, I should say in general that reading merely for 
 pastime, without any moral aim, is the thing to be guarded 
 against. That which inspires no thought, no purpose, which 
 steals away all our strength and energy, and makes the Sab 
 bath a day of dreams, is the reading I would object to. 
 
 " So of music. I do not see the propriety of confining 
 one s self to technical sacred music. Any grave, solemn, 
 thoughtful, or pathetic music has a proper relation to our 
 higher spiritual nature, whether it be printed in a church 
 service-book or on secular sheets. On me, for example, 
 
HOME RELIGION 225 
 
 Beethoven s Sonatas have a far more deeply religious influ 
 ence than much that has religious names and words. Music 
 is to he judged of by its effects." 
 
 u Well," said Bob, t( if Sunday is given for our own in 
 dividual improvement, I for one should not go to church. 
 I think I get a great deal more good in staying at home and 
 reading." 
 
 " There are two considerations to be taken into account 
 in reference to this matter of church-going," I replied. 
 " One relates to our duty as members of society in keeping 
 up the influence of the Sabbath, and causing it to be re 
 spected in the community ; the other, to the proper dispo 
 sition of our time for our own moral improvement. As mem 
 bers of the community, we should go to church, and do all 
 in our power to support the outward ordinances of religion. 
 If a conscientious man makes up his mind that Sunday is a 
 day for outward acts of worship and reverence, he should 
 do his own part as an individual towards sustaining these 
 observances. Even though he may have such mental and 
 moral resources that as an individual he could gain much 
 more in solitude than in a congregation, still he owes to the 
 congregation the influence of his presence and sympathy. 
 But I have never yet seen the man, however finely gifted 
 morally and intellectually, whom I thought in the long run 
 a gainer in either of these respects by the neglect of public 
 worship. I have seen many who in their pride kept aloof 
 from the sympathies and communion of their brethren, who 
 lost strength morally, and deteriorated in ways that made 
 themselves painfully felt. Sunday is apt in such cases to 
 degenerate into a day of mere mental idleness and reverie, 
 or to become a sort of waste-paper box for scraps, odds and 
 ends of secular affairs. 
 
 " As to those very good people and many such there 
 are who go straight on with the work of life on Sunday, 
 on the plea that < to labor is to pray, I simply think they 
 
226 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 are mistaken. In the first place, to labor is not the same 
 thing as to pray. It may sometimes be as good a thing to 
 do, and in some cases even a better thing ; but it is not the 
 same thing. A man might as well never write a letter to 
 his wife, on the plea that making money for her is writing 
 to her. It may possibly be quite as great a proof of love to 
 work for a wife as to write to her, but few wives would not 
 say that both were not better than either alone. Further 
 more, there is no doubt that the intervention of one day of 
 spiritual rest and aspiration so refreshes a man s whole na 
 ture, and oils the many wheels of existence, that he who 
 allows himself a weekly Sabbath does more work in the 
 course of his life for the omission of work on that day. 
 
 " A young student in a French college, where the exami 
 nations are rigidly severe, found by experience that he suc 
 ceeded best in his examination by allowing one day of entire 
 rest just before it. His brain and nervous system refreshed 
 in this way carried him through the work better than if 
 taxed to the last moment. There are men transacting a 
 large and complicated business who can testify to the same 
 influence from the repose of the Sabbath. 
 
 " I believe those Christian people who from conscience 
 and principle turn their thoughts most entirely out of the 
 current of worldly cares on Sunday fulfill unconsciously a 
 great law of health ; and that, whether their moral nature 
 be thereby advanced or not, their brain will work more 
 healthfully and actively for it, even in physical and worldly 
 matters. It is because the Sabbath thus harmonizes the 
 physical and moral laws of our being that the injunction 
 concerning it is placed among the ten great commandments, 
 each of which represents some one of the immutable needs 
 of humanity." 
 
 " There is yet another point of family religion that ought 
 to be thought of," said my wife : " I mean the customs of 
 mourning. If there is anything that ought to distinguish 
 
HOME RELIGION 227 
 
 Christian families from Pagans, it should be their way of 
 looking at and meeting those inevitable events that must 
 from time to time break the family chain. It seems to be 
 the peculiarity of Christianity to shed hope on such events. 
 And yet it seems to me as if it were the very intention of 
 many of the customs of society to add tenfold to their gloom 
 and horror, such swathings of black crape, such funereal 
 mu filings of every pleasant object, such darkening of rooms, 
 and such seclusion from society and giving up to bitter 
 thoughts and lamentation. How can little children that 
 look on such things believe that there is a particle of truth 
 in all they hear about the joyous and comforting doctrines 
 which the Bible holds forth for such times ? " 
 
 " That subject is a difficult one/ 7 I rejoined. Nature 
 seems to indicate a propriety in some outward expressions 
 of grief when we lose our friends. All nations agree in 
 these demonstrations. In a certain degree they are sooth 
 ing to sorrow ; they are the language of external life made 
 to correspond to the internal. Wearing mourning has its 
 advantages. It is a protection to the feelings of the wearer, 
 for whom it procures sympathetic and tender consideration ; 
 it saves grief from many a hard jostle in the ways of life ; 
 it prevents the necessity of many a trying explanation, and 
 is the ready apology for many an omission of those tasks to 
 which sorrow is unequal. For all these reasons I never could 
 join the crusade which some seem disposed to wage against 
 it. Mourning, however, ought not to be continued for 
 years. Its uses are more for the first few months of sorrow, 
 when it serves the mourner as a safeguard from intrusion, 
 insuring quiet and leisure in which to reunite the broken 
 threads of life, and to gather strength for a return to its 
 duties. But to wear mourning garments and forego society 
 for two or three years after the loss of any friend, however 
 dear, I cannot but regard as a morbid, unhealthy nursing 
 of sorrow, unworthy of a Christian." 
 
228 HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS 
 
 " And yet," said my wife, " to such an unhealthy degree 
 does this custom prevail, that I have actually known young 
 girls who have never worn any other dress than mourning, 
 and consequently never been into society, during the entire 
 period of their girlhood. First, the death of a father ne 
 cessitated three years of funereal garments and abandon 
 ment of social relations ; then the death of a brother added 
 two years more ; and before that mourning was well ended, 
 another of a wide circle of relatives being taken, the 
 habitual seclusion was still protracted. What must a child 
 think of the Christian doctrine of life and death who has 
 never seen life except through black crape ? We profess 
 to believe in a better life to which the departed good are 
 called, to believe in the shortness of our separation, 
 the certainty of reunion, and that all these events are 
 arranged in all their relations by an infinite tenderness 
 which cannot err. Surely, Christian funerals too often 
 seem to say that affliction cometh of the dust, and not 
 from above." 
 
 " But," said Bob, " after all, death is a horror ; you can 
 make nothing less of it. You can t smooth it over, nor 
 dress it with flowers ; it is what Nature shudders at." 
 
 "It is precisely for this reason," said I, "that Christians 
 should avoid those customs which aggravate and intensify 
 this natural dread. Why overpower the senses with doleful 
 and funereal images in the hour of weakness and bereave 
 ment, when the soul needs all her force to rise above the 
 gloom of earth, and to realize the mysteries of faith ? 
 Why shut the friendly sunshine from the mourner s room ? 
 Why muffle in a white shroud every picture that speaks a 
 cheerful household word to the eye ? Why make a house 
 look stiff and ghastly and cold as a corpse ? In some of 
 our cities, on the occurrence of a death in the family, all 
 the shutters on the street are closed and tied with black 
 crape, and so remain for months. What an oppressive 
 
HOME RELIGION 229 
 
 gloom must this bring on a house ! how like the very 
 shadow of death ! It is enlisting the nerves and the senses 
 against our religion, and making more difficult the great 
 duty of returning to life and its interests. I would have 
 flowers and sunshine in the deserted rooms, and make them 
 symbolical of the cheerful mansions above, to which our 
 beloved ones are gone. Home ought to be so religiously 
 cheerful, so penetrated by the life of love and hope and 
 Christian faith, that the other world may be made real by 
 it. Our home life should be a type of the higher life. 
 Our home should be so sanctified, its joys and its sorrows 
 so baptized and hallowed, that it shall not be sacrilegious 
 to think of heaven as a higher form of the same thing, 
 a Father s house in the better country, whose mansions are 
 many, whose love is perfect, whose joy is eternal." 
 
THE CHIMNEY-COKNER 
 I 
 
 WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH HER? OB, THE WOMAN 
 QUESTION 
 
 " WELL, what will you do with her ? " said I to my wife. 
 
 My wife had just come down from an interview with a 
 pale, faded-looking young woman in rusty black attire, who 
 had called upon me on the very common supposition that I 
 was an editor of the " Atlantic Monthly." 
 
 By the by, this is a mistake that brings me, Christopher 
 Crowfield, many letters that do not belong to me, and which 
 might with equal pertinency be addressed, " To the Man in 
 the Moon." Yet these letters often make my heart ache, 
 they speak so of people who strive and sorrow and want 
 help ; and it is hard to be called on in plaintive tones for 
 help which you know it is perfectly impossible for you to 
 give. 
 
 For instance, you get a letter in a delicate hand, setting 
 forth the old distress, she is poor, and she has looking to 
 her for support those that are poorer and more helpless than 
 herself : she has tried sewing, but can make little at it ; 
 tried teaching, but cannot now get a school, all places 
 being filled, and more than filled ; at last has tried litera 
 ture, and written some little things, of which she sends you 
 a modest specimen, and wants your opinion whether she can 
 gain her living by writing. You run over the articles, and 
 perceive at a glance that there is no kind of hope or use in 
 
232 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 her trying to do anything at literature ; and then you ask 
 yourself mentally, " What is to be done with her ? What 
 can she do ? " 
 
 Such was the application that had come to me this morn 
 ing, only, instead of by note, it came, as I have said, in 
 the person of the applicant, a thin, delicate, consumptive- 
 looking being, wearing that rusty mourning which speaks 
 sadly at once of heart bereavement and material poverty. 
 
 My usual course is to turn such cases over to Mrs. Crow- 
 field ; and it is to be confessed that this worthy woman 
 spends a large portion of her time, and wears out an extraor 
 dinary amount of shoe-leather, in performing the duties of 
 a self-constituted intelligence office. Talk of giving money 
 to the poor ! what is that, compared to giving sympathy, 
 thought, time, taking their burdens upon you, sharing their 
 perplexities ? They who are able to buy off every applica 
 tion at the door of their heart with a five or ten dollar bill 
 are those who free themselves at least expense. 
 
 My wife had communicated to our friend, in the gentlest 
 tones and in the blandest manner, that her poor little pieces, 
 however interesting to her own household circle, had nothing 
 in them wherewith to enable her to make her way in the 
 thronged and crowded thoroughfare of letters, that they 
 had no more strength or adaptation to win bread for her 
 than a broken- winged butterfly to draw a plough ; and it 
 took some resolution in the background of her tenderness to 
 make the poor applicant entirely certain of this. In cases 
 like this, absolute certainty is the very greatest, the only 
 true kindness. 
 
 It was grievous, my wife said, to see the discouraged 
 shade which passed over her thin, tremulous features when 
 this certainty forced itself upon her. It is hard, when sink 
 ing in the waves, to see the frail bush at which the hand 
 clutches uprooted ; hard, when alone in the crowded thor 
 oughfare of travel, to have one s last bank-note declared a 
 
WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH HER 233 
 
 counterfeit. I knew I should not be able to see her face, 
 under the shade of this disappointment ; and so, coward that 
 I was, I turned this trouble, where I have turned so many 
 others, upon my wife. 
 
 " Well, what shall we do with her ? " said I. 
 
 " I really don t know, 7 said my wife musingly. 
 
 " Do you think we could get that school in Taunton for 
 her ? " 
 
 " Impossible ; Mr. Herbert told me he had already twelve 
 applicants for it." 
 
 " Could n t you get her plain sewing ? Is she handy 
 with her needle ? " 
 
 " She has tried that, but it brings on a pain in her side, 
 and cough ; and the doctor has told her it will not do for 
 her to confine herself." 
 
 " How is her handwriting ? Does she write a good 
 hand ? " 
 
 " Only passable." 
 
 " Because," said I, te I was thinking if I could get Ste.ele 
 and Simpson to give her law papers to copy." 
 
 " They have more copyists than they need now ; and, in 
 fact, this woman does not write the sort of hand at all that 
 would enable her to get on as a copyist." 
 
 " Well," said I, turning uneasily in my chair, and at last 
 hitting on a bright masculine expedient, " I 11 tell you 
 what must be done. She must get married." 
 
 " My dear," said my wife, " marrying for a living is the 
 very hardest way a woman can take to get it. Even mar 
 rying for love often turns out badly enough. Witness poor 
 Jane." 
 
 Jane was one of the large number of people whom it 
 seemed my wife s fortune to carry through life on her back. 
 She was a pretty, smiling, pleasing daughter of Erin, who 
 had been in our family originally as nursery-maid. I 
 had been greatly pleased in watching a little idyllic affair 
 
234 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 growing up between her and a joyous, good-natured young 
 Irishman, to whom at last we married her. Mike soon 
 after, however, took to drinking and unsteady courses ; and 
 the result has been to Jane only a yearly baby, with poor 
 health and no money. 
 
 " In fact," said my wife, " if Jane had only kept single, 
 she could have made her own way well enough, and might 
 have now been in good health and had a pretty sum in the 
 savings bank. As it is, I must carry not only her, but her 
 three children, on my back." 
 
 " You ought to drop her, my dear. You really ought 
 not to burden yourself with other people s affairs as you 
 do," said I inconsistently. 
 
 " How can I drop her ? Can I help knowing that she 
 is poor and suffering ? And if I drop her, who will take 
 her up ? " 
 
 Now there is a way of getting rid of cases of this kind, 
 spoken of in a quaint old book, which occurred strongly to 
 me at this moment : 
 
 " If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily 
 food, and one of you say unto them, ( Depart in peace, be 
 ye warmed and filled, notwithstanding ye give them not 
 those things which are needful to the body, what doth it 
 profit ? " 
 
 I must confess, notwithstanding the strong point of the 
 closing question, I looked with an evil eye of longing on 
 this very easy way of disposing of such cases. A few sym 
 pathizing words, a few expressions of hope that I did not 
 feel, a line written to turn the case into somebody else s 
 hands, any expedient, in fact, to hide the longing eyes 
 and imploring hands from my sight, was what my carnal 
 nature at this moment greatly craved. 
 
 " Besides," said my wife, resuming the thread of her 
 thoughts in regard to the subject just now before us, " as 
 to marriage, it s out of the question at present for this poor 
 
WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH HER 235 
 
 child ; for the man she loved and would have married lies 
 low in one of the graves before Richmond. It ? s a sad 
 story, one of a thousand like it. She brightened for a 
 few moments, and looked almost handsome, when she spoke 
 of his bravery and goodness. Her father and lover have 
 both died in this war. Her only brother has returned from 
 it a broken-down cripple, and she has him and her poor old 
 mother to care for, and so she seeks work. I told her to 
 come again to-morrow, and I would look about for her a 
 little to-day." 
 
 " Let me see, how many are now down on your list to 
 be looked about for, Mrs. Crowfield ? some twelve or 
 thirteen, are there not ? You ve got Tom s sister disposed 
 of finally, I hope, that s a comfort ! " 
 
 " Well, I m sorry to say she came back on my hands 
 yesterday," said my wife patiently. " She is a foolish 
 young thing, and said she didn t like living out in the 
 country. I m sorry, because the Morrises are an excellent 
 family, and she might have had a life home there, if she 
 had only been steady, and chosen to behave herself properly. 
 But yesterday I found her back on her mother s hands 
 again ; and the poor woman told me that the dear child 
 never could bear to be separated from her, and that she 
 had n t the heart to send her back." 
 
 " And in short," said I, " she gave you notice that you 
 must provide for Miss O Connor in some more agreeable 
 way. Cross that name oft your list, at any rate. That 
 woman and girl need a few hard raps in the school of expe 
 rience before you can do anything for them." 
 
 " I think I shall," said my long-suffering wife ; " but it 7 s 
 a pity to see a young thing put in the direct road to ruin." 
 
 " It is one of the inevitables,"said I, " and we must save 
 our strength for those that are willing to help themselves." 
 
 " What s all this talk about ? " said Bob, coming in 
 upon us rather brusquely. 
 
236 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 " Oh, as usual, the old question/ said I, " < What s 
 to be done with her ? 
 
 " Well," said Bob, " it s exactly what I ? ve come to talk 
 with mother about. Since she keeps a distressed women s 
 agency office, I ve come to consult her about Marianne. 
 That woman will die before six months are out, a victim to 
 high civilization and the Paddies. There we are, twelve 
 miles out from Boston, in a country villa so convenient that 
 every part of it might almost do its own work, every 
 thing arranged in the most convenient, contiguous, self-ad 
 justing, self-acting, patent- right, perfective manner, and 
 yet I tell you Marianne will die of that house. It will 
 yet be recorded on her tombstone, Died of conveniences. 
 For myself, what I languish for is a log-cabin, with a bed 
 in one corner, a trundle-bed underneath for the children, a 
 fireplace only six feet off, a table, four chairs, one kettle, 
 a coffee-pot, and a tin baker, that s all. I lived deli- 
 ciously in an establishment of this kind last summer, when 
 I was up at Lake Superior ; and I am convinced, if I could 
 move Marianne into it at once, that she would become a 
 healthy and a happy woman. Her life is smothered out 
 of her with comforts ; we have too many rooms, too many 
 carpets, Too many vases and knickknacks, too much china 
 and silver ; she has too many laces and dresses and bon 
 nets ; the children all have too many clothes : in fact, to 
 put it scripturally, our riches are corrupted, our garments 
 are moth-eaten, our gold and our silver is cankered, and, in 
 short, Marianne is sick in bed, and I have come to the 
 agency office for distressed women to take you out to attend 
 to her. 
 
 " The fact is," continued Bob, " that since our cook mar 
 ried, and Alice went to California, there seems to be no 
 possibility of putting our domestic cabinet upon any perma 
 nent basis. The number of female persons that have been 
 through our house, and the ravages they have wrought on 
 
WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH HER 237 
 
 it for the last six months, pass belief. I had yesterday a 
 bill of sixty dollars plumbing to pay for damages of various 
 kinds which had had to be repaired in our very convenient 
 water-works ; and the blame of each particular one had been 
 bandied like a shuttlecock among our three household divini 
 ties. Biddy privately assured my wife that Kate was in 
 the habit of emptying dustpans of rubbish into the main 
 drain from the chambers, and washing any little extra bits 
 down through the bowls ; and. in fact, when one of the 
 bathing-room bowls had overflowed so as to damage the 
 frescoes below, my wife, with great delicacy and precaution, 
 interrogated Kate as to whether she had followed her in 
 structions in the care of the water-pipes. Of course she 
 protested the most immaculate care and circumspection. 
 Sure, and she knew how careful one ought to be, and 
 was n t of the likes of thim as would n t mind what throuble 
 they made, like Biddy, who would throw trash and hair 
 in the pipes, and niver listen to her tellin ; sure, and 
 had n t she broken the pipes in the kitchen, and lost the 
 stoppers, as it was a shame to see in a Christian house ? 
 Ann, the third girl, being privately questioned, blamed Biddy 
 on Monday, and Kate on Tuesday ; on Wednesday, however, 
 she exonerated both ; but on Thursday, being in a high 
 quarrel with both, she departed, accusing them severally, 
 not only of all the evil practices aforesaid, but of lying and 
 stealing, and all other miscellaneous wickednesses that came 
 to hand. Whereat the two thus accused rushed in, be 
 wailing themselves and cursing Ann in alternate strophes, 
 averring that she had given the baby laudanum, and, tak 
 ing it out riding, had stopped for hours with it in a filthy 
 lane where the scarlet fever was said to be rife, in short, 
 made so fearful a picture that Marianne gave up the child s 
 life at once, and has taken to her bed. I have endeavored 
 all I could to quiet her, by telling her that the scarlet fever 
 story was probably an extemporaneous work of fiction, got 
 
238 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 up to gratify the Hibernian anger at Ann ; and that it 
 was n t in the least worth while to believe one thing more 
 than another from the fact that any of the tribe said it. 
 But she refuses to be comforted, and is so Utopian as to lie 
 there crying, Oh, if I only could get one that I could trust, 
 one that would really speak the truth to me, one that 
 I might know really went where she said she went, and 
 really did as she said she did ! To have to live so, she 
 says, and bring up little children with those she can t trust 
 out of her sight, whose word is good for nothing, to feel 
 that her beautiful house and her lovely things are all going 
 to rack and ruin, and she can t take care of them, and can t 
 see where or when or how the mischief is done, in short, 
 the poor child talks as women do who are violently attacked 
 with housekeeping fever tending to congestion of the brain. 
 She actually yesterday told me that she wished, on the 
 whole, she never had got married, which I take to be the 
 most positive indication of mental alienation." 
 
 " Here," said I, " we behold at this moment two women 
 dying for the want of what they can mutually give one 
 another, each having a supply of what the other needs, 
 but held back by certain invisible cobwebs, slight but strong, 
 from coming to each other s assistance. Marianne has 
 money enough, but she wants a helper in her family, such 
 as all her money has been hitherto unable to buy ; and 
 here, close at hand, is a woman who wants home shelter, 
 healthy, varied, active, cheerful labor, with nourishing food, 
 kind care, and good wages. What hinders these women 
 from rushing to the help of one another, just as two drops 
 of water on a leaf rush together and make one ? Nothing 
 but a miserable prejudice, but a prejudice so strong that 
 women will starve in any other mode of life rather than 
 accept competency and comfort in this." 
 
 " You don t mean," said my wife, " to propose that our 
 protegee should go to Marianne as a servant ? " 
 
WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH HER 239 
 
 " I do say it would be the best thing for her to do, 
 the only opening that I see, and a very good one, too, it is. 
 Just look at it. Her bare living at this moment cannot 
 cost her less than five or six dollars a week, everything 
 at the present time is so very dear in the city. Now by 
 what possible calling open to her capacity can she pay her 
 board and washing, fuel and lights, and clear a hundred and 
 some odd dollars a year ? She could not do it as a district 
 school teacher; she certainly cannot, with her feeble health, 
 do it by plain sewing ; she could not do it as a copyist. A 
 robust woman might go into a factory and earn more ; but 
 factory work is unintermitted, twelve hours daily, week in 
 and out, in the same movement, in close air, amid the clatter 
 of machinery ; and a person delicately organized soon sinks 
 under it. It takes a stolid, enduring temperament to bear 
 factory labor. Now look at Marianne s house and family, 
 and see what is insured to your protegee there. 
 
 " In the first place, a home, a neat, quiet chamber, quite 
 as good as she has probably been accustomed to, the very 
 best of food, served in a pleasant, light, airy kitchen, which 
 is one of the most agreeable rooms in the house, and the 
 table and table service quite equal to those of most farmers 
 and mechanics. Then her daily tasks would be light and 
 varied, some sweeping, some dusting, the washing and 
 dressing of children, the care of their rooms and the nur 
 sery, all of it the most healthful, the most natural work 
 of a woman, work alternating with rest, and diverting 
 thought from painful subjects by its variety, and, what is 
 more, a kind of work in which a good Christian woman 
 might have satisfaction, as feeling herself useful in the 
 highest and best way ; for the child s nurse, if she be a 
 pious, well-educated woman, may make the whole course of 
 nursery life an education in goodness. Then, what is far 
 different from any other modes of gaining a livelihood, a 
 woman in this capacity can make and feel herself really 
 
240 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 and truly beloved. The hearts of little children are easily 
 gained, and their love is real and warm, and no true woman 
 can become the object of it without feeling her own life 
 made brighter. Again, she would have in Marianne a sin 
 cere, warm-hearted friend, who would care for her tenderly, 
 respect her sorrows, shelter her feelings, be considerate of 
 her wants, and in every way aid her in the cause she has 
 most at heart, the succor of her family. There are many 
 ways besides her wages in which she would infallibly be 
 assisted by Marianne, so that the probability would be that 
 she could send her little salary almost untouched to those 
 for whose support she was toiling, all this on her part." 
 
 " But," added my wife, " on the other hand, she would 
 be obliged to associate and be ranked with common Irish 
 servants." 
 
 "Well," I answered, " is there any occupation, by which 
 any of us gain our living, which has not its disagreeable 
 side ? Does not the lawyer spend all his days either in a 
 dusty office or in the foul air of a court-room ? Is he not 
 brought into much disagreeable contact with the lowest 
 class of society ? Are not his labors dry and hard and 
 exhausting ? Does not the blacksmith spend half his life 
 in soot and grime, that he may gain a competence for the 
 other half ? If this woman were to work in a factory, 
 would she not often be brought into associations distasteful 
 to her ? Might it not be the same in any of the arts and 
 trades in which a living is to be got ? There must be un 
 pleasant circumstances about earning a living in any w r ay, 
 only I maintain that those which a woman would be likely 
 to meet with as a servant in a refined, well-bred Christian 
 family would be less than in almost any other calling. 
 Are there no trials to a woman, I beg to know, in teach 
 ing a district school, where all the boys, big and little, 
 of a neighborhood congregate ? For my part, were it my 
 daughter or sister who was in necessitous circumstances, I 
 
WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH HER 241 
 
 would choose for her a position such as I name, in a kind, 
 intelligent, Christian family, before many of those to which 
 women do devote themselves." 
 
 " Well," said Bob, " all this has a good sound enough, 
 but it s quite impossible. It s true, I verily believe, that 
 such a kind of servant in our family would really prolong 
 Marianne s life years, that it would improve her health, 
 and be an unspeakable blessing to her, to me, and the chil 
 dren, and I would almost go down on my knees to a 
 really well - educated, good American woman who would 
 come into our family and take that place ; but I know it s 
 perfectly vain and useless to expect it. You know we have 
 tried the experiment two or three times of having a person 
 in our family who should be on the footing of a friend, yet 
 do the duties of a servant, and that we never could make 
 it work well. These half-and-half people are so sensitive, 
 so exacting in their demands, so hard to please, that we 
 have come to the firm determination that we will have no 
 sliding- scale in our family, and that whoever we are to 
 depend on must come with bona fide willingness to take 
 the position of a servant, such as that position is in our 
 house ; and that, I suppose, your protegee would never do, 
 even if she could thereby live easier, have less hard work, 
 better health, and quite as much money as she could earn 
 in any other way." 
 
 " She would consider it a personal degradation, I sup 
 pose," said my wife. 
 
 " And yet, if she only knew it," said Bob, " I should 
 respect her far more profoundly for her willingness to take 
 that position, when adverse fortune has shut other doors." 
 
 "Well, now," said I, "this woman is, as I understand, 
 the daughter of a respectable stone-mason, and the domestic 
 habits of her early life have probably been economical and 
 simple. Like most of our mechanics daughters, she has 
 received in one of our high schools an education which has 
 
212 THK CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 cultivated anil developed her mind far beyond those of her 
 parents and the associates of her childhood. This is a com 
 mon fact in our American life. By our high schools the 
 daughters of plain workingmon arc raised to a stale, of in 
 tellectual culture which seems to make the disposition of 
 them in any kind of industrial calling a dithcult one. They 
 all want to teach school, and sehoolteaching, consequently, 
 is an overcrowded profession, and, failing that, there- is 
 only millinery and dressmaking. Of late, it is true, efforts 
 have heen made in various directions to widen their sphere. 
 Typesetting and bookkeeping are in some instances begin 
 ning to be open to them. 
 
 "All this time there is lying, neglected and despised, a 
 calling to which womanly talents and instincts are pecu 
 liarly fitted, a calling full of opportunities of the most 
 lasting usefulness; a calling which insures a settled home. 
 respectable protection, healthful exercise, good air, good food, 
 and good wages; a calling in which a woman may make real 
 friends, and secure to herself warm ailect ion : and yet this 
 calling is the one always refused, shunned, contemned, left 
 to the alien and the stranger, and that simply and solely 
 localise it bears the name of semint. A Christian wo 
 man, who holds the name of Christ in her heart in true 
 devotion, woidd think it the greatest possible misfortune 
 and degradation to become like him in taking upon her 
 the form of a servant. The founder of Christianity says : 
 Whether is greater, ho that sitteth at meat or he that 
 serveth ? Hut / am among you as he that serveth. l^ut 
 notwithstanding these so plain declarations of Jesus, we 
 lind that scarce any one in a Christian land will accept real 
 advantages of position and employment that come with 
 that name and condition." 
 
 " I suppose," said my wife, " I could prevail upon this 
 woman to do all the duties of the situation, if she could be, 
 as they phrase it, treated us one of the family. 
 
WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH HER 243 
 
 " That is to say," said Bob, " if she could sit with us at 
 the same table, be introduced to our friends, and be in all 
 respects as one of us. Now, as to this, I am free to say 
 that I have no false aristocratic scruples. I consider every 
 well-educated woman as fully my equal, not to say my supe 
 rior; but it does not follow from this that she would be 
 one whom I should wish to make a third party with me 
 and my wife at meal-times. Our meals are often our sea 
 sons of privacy, the times when we wish in perfect un 
 reserve to speak of matters that concern ourselves and our 
 family alone. Even invited guests and family friends 
 would not be always welcome, however agreeable at times. 
 Now a woman may be perfectly worthy of respect, and we 
 may be perfectly respectful to her, whom nevertheless we 
 do not wish to take into the circle of intimate friendship. 
 I regard the position of a woman who comes to perform 
 domestic service as I do any other business relation. We 
 have a very respectable young lady in our employ who 
 does legal copying for us, and all is perfectly pleasant and 
 agreeable in our mutual relations ; but the case would be far 
 otherwise were she to take it into her head that we treated 
 her with contempt, because my wife did not call on her, and 
 because she was not occasionally invited to tea. Besides, 
 I apprehend that a woman of quick sensibilities, employed 
 in domestic service, and who was so far treated as a member 
 of the family as to share our table, would find her position 
 even more painful and embarrassing than if she took once 
 for all the position of a servant. We could not control the 
 feelings of our friends ; we could not always insure that 
 they would be free from aristocratic prejudice, even were 
 we so ourselves. We could not force her upon their ac 
 quaintance, and she might feel far more slighted than she 
 would in a position where no attentions of any kind were to 
 be expected. Besides which, I have always noticed that 
 persons standing in this uncertain position are objects of 
 
244 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 peculiar antipathy to the servants in full ; that they are the 
 cause of constant and secret cabals and discontents ; and 
 that a family where the two orders exist has always raked 
 up in it the smouldering embers of a quarrel ready at any 
 time to burst out into open feud." 
 
 " Well," said I, " here lies the problem of American life. 
 Half our women, like Marianne, are being faded and made 
 old before their time by exhausting endeavors to lead a life 
 of high civilization and refinement with only such untrained 
 help as is washed up on our shores by the tide of emigration. 
 Our houses are built upon a plan that precludes the necessity 
 of much hard labor, but requires rather careful and nice 
 handling. A well-trained, intelligent woman, who had vi 
 talized her finger-ends by means of a well-developed brain, 
 could do all the work of such a house with comparatively 
 little physical fatigue. So stands the case as regards our 
 houses. Now, over against the women that are perishing in 
 them from too much care, there is another class of American 
 women that are wandering up and down, perishing for lack 
 of some remunerating employment. That class of women, 
 whose developed brains and less developed muscles mark 
 them as peculiarly fitted for the performance of the labors of 
 a high civilization, stand utterly aloof from paid domestic 
 service. Sooner beg, sooner starve, sooner marry for money, 
 sooner hang on as dependents in families where they know 
 they are not wanted, than accept of a quiet home, easy, 
 healthful work, and certain wages, in these refined and 
 pleasant modern dwellings of ours." 
 
 " What is the reason of this ? " said Bob. 
 
 " The reason is, that we have not yet come to the full 
 development of Christian democracy. The taint of old aris 
 tocracies is yet pervading all parts of our society. We have 
 not yet realized fully the true dignity of labor, and the sur 
 passing dignity of domestic labor. And I must say that 
 the valuable and courageous women who have agitated the 
 
WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH HER 245 
 
 doctrines of Woman s Rights among us have not in all 
 things seen their way clear in this matter." 
 
 " Don t talk to me of those creatures," said Bob, " those 
 men-women, those anomalies, neither flesh nor fish, with 
 their conventions, and their cracked woman- voices strained 
 in what they call public speaking, but which I call public 
 squeaking ! No man reverences true women more than I 
 do. I hold a real, true, thoroughly good woman, whether 
 in my parlor or my kitchen, as my superior. She can al 
 ways teach me something that I need to know. She has 
 always in her somewhat of the divine gift of prophecy ; but 
 in order to keep it, she must remain a woman. When she 
 crops her hair, puts on pantaloons, and strides about in con 
 ventions, she is an abortion, and not a woman." 
 
 " Come ! come ! " said I, " after all, speak with deference. 
 We that choose to wear soft clothing and dwell in kings 
 houses must respect the Baptists, who wear leathern girdles, 
 and eat locusts and wild honey. They are the voices cry 
 ing in the wilderness, preparing the way for a coming good. 
 They go down on their knees in the mire of life to lift up 
 and brighten and restore a neglected truth ; and we that 
 have not the energy to share their struggle should at least 
 refrain from criticising their soiled garments and ungraceful 
 action. There have been excrescences, eccentricities, pecu 
 liarities, about the camp of these reformers ; but the body 
 of them have been true and noble women, and worthy of 
 all the reverence due to such. They have already in many 
 of our States reformed the laws relating to woman s posi 
 tion, and placed her on a more just and Christian basis. 
 It is through their movements that in many of our States 
 a woman can hold the fruits of her own earnings, if it be 
 her ill luck to have a worthless, drunken spendthrift for 
 a husband. It is owing to their exertions that new trades 
 and professions are opening to woman ; and all that I have 
 to say to them is, that in the suddenness of their zeal for 
 
246 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 opening new paths for her feet, they have not sufficiently 
 considered the propriety of straightening, widening, and 
 mending the one broad, good old path of domestic labor, 
 established by God himself. It does appear to me, that, 
 if at least a portion of their zeal could be spent in remov 
 ing the stones out of this highway of domestic life, and 
 making it pleasant and honorable, they would effect even 
 more. I would not have them leave undone what they are 
 doing ; but I would, were I worthy to be considered, humbly 
 suggest to their prophetic wisdom and enthusiasm, whether, 
 in this new future of women which they wish to introduce, 
 women s natural, God-given employment of domestic sendee 
 is not to receive a new character, and rise in a new form. 
 
 " To love and serve is a motto worn with pride on some 
 aristocratic family shields in England. It ought to be graven 
 on the Christian shield. . Servant is the name which Christ 
 gives to the Christian ; and in speaking of his kingdom as 
 distinguished from earthly kingdoms, he distinctly said, that 
 rank there should be conditioned, not upon desire to com 
 mand, but on willingness to serve. 
 
 " ( Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise do 
 minion over them, and they that are great exercise authority 
 upon them. But it shall not be so among you : but who 
 soever will be great among you, let him be your minister 5 
 and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your 
 servant. 
 
 " Why is it, that this name of servant, which Christ says 
 is the highest in the kingdom of heaven, is so dishonored 
 among us professing Christians, that good women will beg 
 or starve, will suffer almost any extreme of poverty and pri 
 vation, rather than accept home, competence, security, with 
 this honored name ? " 
 
 "The fault with many of our friends of the Woman s 
 Rights order," said my wife, "is the depreciatory tone in 
 which they have spoken of the domestic labors of a family 
 
WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH HER 247 
 
 as being altogether below the scope of the faculties of wo 
 man. Domestic drudgery they call it, an expression 
 that has done more harm than any two words that ever were 
 put together. 
 
 " Think of a woman s calling clear-starching and ironing 
 domestic drudgery, and to better the matter turning to type 
 setting in a grimy printing office ! Call the care of china 
 and silver, the sweeping of carpets, the arrangement of par 
 lors and sitting-rooms, drudgery ; and go into a factory and 
 spend the day amid the whir and clatter and thunder of 
 machinery, inhaling an atmosphere loaded with wool and 
 machine grease, and keeping on the feet for twelve hours, 
 nearly continously ! Think of its being called drudgery to 
 take care of a clean, light, airy nursery, to wash and dress 
 and care for two or three children, to mend their clothes, 
 tell them stories, make them playthings, take them out walk 
 ing or driving ; and rather than this, to wear out the whole 
 livelong day, extending often deep into the night, in endless 
 sewing, in a close room of a dressmaking establishment ! Is 
 it any less drudgery to stand all day behind a counter, serv 
 ing customers, than to tend a door-bell and wait on a table ? 
 For my part," said my wife, " I have often thought the 
 matter over, and concluded, that, if I were left in straitened 
 circumstances, as many are in a great city, I would seek a 
 position as a servant in one of our good families/ 
 
 " I envy the family that you even think of in that con 
 nection," said I. "I fancy the amazement which would 
 take possession of them as you began to develop among 
 them." 
 
 " I have always held," said my wife, " that family work, 
 in many of its branches, can be better performed by an 
 educated woman than an uneducated one. Just as an army 
 where even the bayonets think is superior to one of mere 
 brute force and mechanical training, so, I have heard it said, 
 some of our distinguished modern female reformers show 
 
248 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 an equal superiority in the domestic sphere, and I do not 
 doubt it. Family work was never meant to be the special 
 province of untaught brains. I have sometimes thought I 
 should like to show what I could do as a servant." 
 
 " Well," said Bob, " to return from all this to the ques 
 tion, What J s to be done with her ? Are you going to my 
 distressed woman ? If you are, suppose you take your dis 
 tressed woman along, and ask her to try it. I can promise 
 her a pleasant house, a quiet room by herself, healthful and 
 not too hard work, a kind friend, and some leisure for read 
 ing, writing, or whatever other pursuit of her own she may 
 choose for her recreation. We are always quite willing to 
 lend books to any who appreciate them. Our house is sur 
 rounded by pleasant grounds, which are open to our servants 
 as to ourselves. So let her come and try us. I am quite 
 sure that country air, quiet security, and moderate exercise 
 in a good home, will bring up her health ; and if she is 
 willing to take the one or two disagreeables which may 
 come with all this, let her try us." 
 
 " Well," said I, " so be it ; and would that all the women 
 seeking homes and employment could thus fall in with 
 women who have homes and are perishing in them for want 
 of educated helpers ! " 
 
 On this question of woman s work I have yet more to 
 say, but must defer it till another time. 
 
II 
 
 "WHAT do you think of this Woman s Eights question ? " 
 said Bob Stephens. " From some of your remarks, I appre 
 hend that you think there is something in it. I may be 
 wrong, but I must confess that I have looked with disgust 
 on the whole movement. No man reverences women as I 
 do ; but I reverence them as women. I reverence them for 
 those very things in which their sex differs from ours ; but 
 when they come upon our ground, and begin to work and 
 fight after our manner and with our weapons, I regard them 
 as fearful anomalies, neither men nor women. These Wo 
 man s Bights Conventions appear to me to have ventilated 
 crudities, absurdities, and blasphemies. To hear them talk 
 about men, one would suppose that the two sexes were 
 natural-born enemies, and wonder whether they ever had 
 fathers and brothers. One would think, upon their show 
 ing, that all men were a set of ruffians, in league against 
 women, they seeming, at "the same time, to forget how 
 on their very platforms the most constant and gallant 
 defenders of their rights are men. Wendell Phillips and 
 Went worth Higginson have put at the service of the cause 
 masculine training and manly vehemence, and complacently 
 accepted the wholesale abuse of their own sex at the hands 
 of their warrior sisters. One would think, were all they 
 say of female powers true, that our Joan-of-Arcs ought to 
 have disdained to fight under male captains." 
 
 " I think, 7 said my wife, " that, in all this talk about 
 the rights of men, and the rights of women, and the rights 
 
250 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 of children, the world seems to be forgetting what is quite 
 as important, the duties of men and women and children. 
 We all hear of our rights till we forget our duties y and 
 even theology is beginning to concern itself more with what 
 man has a right to expect of his Creator than what the 
 Creator has a right to expect of man." 
 
 " You say the truth/ said I ; " there is danger of just 
 this overaction ; and yet rights must be discussed ; because, 
 in order to understand the duties we owe to any class, we 
 must understand their rights. To know our duties to men, 
 women, and children, we must know what the rights of 
 men, women, and children justly are. As to the i Woman s 
 Rights movement, it is not peculiar to America, it is part 
 of a great wave in the incoming tide of modern civilization ; 
 the swell is felt no less in Europe, but it combs over and 
 breaks on our American shore, because our great wide beach 
 affords the best play for its waters ; and as the ocean waves 
 bring with them kelp, seaweed, mud, sand, gravel, and 
 even putrefying debris, which lie unsightly on the shore, 
 and yet, on the whole, are healthful and refreshing, so 
 the Woman s Eights movement, with its conventions, its 
 speech-makings, its crudities, and eccentricities, is neverthe 
 less a part of a healthful and necessary movement of the 
 human race towards progress. This question of Woman 
 and her Sphere is now, perhaps, the greatest of the age. 
 We have put Slavery under foot, and with the downfall of 
 Slavery the only obstacle to the success of our great demo 
 cratic experiment is overthrown, and there seems no limit 
 to the splendid possibilities which it may open before the 
 human race. 
 
 " In the reconstruction that is now coming there lies 
 more than the reconstruction of States and the arrangement 
 of the machinery of government. We need to know and 
 feel, all of us, that, from the moment of the death of Slavery, 
 we parted finally from the regime and control of all the old 
 
WOMAN S SPHERE 251 
 
 ideas formed under old oppressive systems of society, and 
 came upon a new plane of life. 
 
 " In this new life we must never forget that we are a 
 peculiar people, that we have to walk in paths unknown to 
 the Old World, paths where its wisdom cannot guide us, 
 where its precedents can be of little use to us, and its criti 
 cisms, in most cases, must be wholly irrelevant. The his 
 tory of our war has shown us of how little service to us 
 in any important crisis the opinions and advice of the Old 
 World can be. We have been hurt at what seemed to us 
 the want of sympathy, the direct antagonism, of England. 
 We might have been less hurt if we had properly understood 
 that Providence had placed us in a position so far ahead of 
 her ideas or power of comprehension that just judgment or 
 sympathy was not to be expected from her. 
 
 " As we went through our great war with no help but 
 that of God, obliged to disregard the misconceptions and 
 impertinences which the foreign press rained down upon us, 
 so, if we are wise, we shall continue to do. Our object 
 must now be to make the principles on which our govern 
 ment is founded permeate consistently the mass of society, 
 and to purge out the leaven of aristocratic and Old World 
 ideas. So long as there is an illogical working in our 
 actual life, so long as there is any class denied equal rights 
 with other classes, so long will there be agitation and 
 trouble." 
 
 " Then," said my wife, " you believe that women ought 
 to vote ? " 
 
 " If the principle on which we founded our government 
 is true, that taxation must not exist without representation, 
 and if women hold property and are taxed, it follows that 
 women should be represented in the State by their votes, 
 or there is an illogical working of our government." 
 
 " But, my dear, don t you think that this will have a bad 
 effect on the female character ? " 
 
252 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 " Yes," said Bob, " it will make women caucus holders, 
 political candidates/ 
 
 " It may make this of some women, just as of some men," 
 said I. " But all men do not take any great interest in 
 politics ; it is very difficult to get some of the best of them 
 to do their duty in voting, and the same will be found true 
 among women." 
 
 " But, after all," said Bob, " what do you gain ? What 
 will a woman s vote be but a duplicate of that of her hus 
 band or father, or whatever man happens to be her adviser ? " 
 
 " That may be true on a variety of questions ; but there 
 are subjects on which the vote of women would, I think, be 
 essentially different from that of men. On the subjects of 
 temperance, public morals, and education, I have no doubt 
 that the introduction of the female vote into legislation, in 
 States, counties, and cities, would produce results very dif 
 ferent from that of men alone. There are thousands of 
 women who would close grogshops, and stop the traffic in 
 spirits, if they had the legislative power ; and it would be 
 well for society if they had. In fact, I think that a State 
 can no more afford to dispense with the vote of women in 
 its affairs than a family. Imagine a family where the fe 
 male has no voice in the housekeeping ! A State is but a 
 larger family, and there are many of its concerns which, 
 equally with those of a private household, would be bettered 
 by female supervision." 
 
 f{ But fancy women going to those horrible voting-places ! 
 It is more than I can do myself," said Bob. 
 
 " But you forget," said I, " that they are horrible and 
 disgusting principally because women never go to them. 
 All places where women are excluded tend downward to 
 barbarism ; but the moment she is introduced, there come 
 in with her courtesy, cleanliness, sobriety, and order. When 
 a man can walk up to the ballot-box with his wife or his 
 sister on his arm, voting-places will be far more agreeable 
 
WOMAN S SPHERE 253 
 
 than now, and the polls will not be such bear-gardens that 
 refined men will be constantly tempted to omit their politi 
 cal duties there. 
 
 " If for nothing else, I would have women vote, that the 
 business of voting may not be so disagreeable and intolera 
 ble to men of refinement as it now is ; and I sincerely be 
 lieve that the cause of good morals, good order, cleanliness, 
 and public health would be a gainer not merely by the 
 added feminine vote, but by the added vote of a great many 
 excellent but too fastidious men, who are now kept from 
 the polls by the disagreeables they meet there. 
 
 "Do you suppose that, if women had equal representa 
 tion with men in the municipal laws of New York, its repu 
 tation for filth during the last year would have gone so far 
 beyond that of Cologne, or any other city renowned for bad 
 smells ? I trow not. I believe a lady mayoress would 
 have brought in a dispensation of brooms and whitewash, 
 and made a terrible searching into dark holes and vile cor 
 ners, before now. Female New York, I have faith to be 
 lieve, has yet left in her enough of the primary instincts of 
 womanhood to give us a clean, healthy city, if female votes 
 had any power to do it." 
 
 " But," said Bob, " you forget that voting would bring 
 together all the women of the lower classes." 
 
 " Yes ; but, thanks to the instincts of their sex, they 
 would come in their Sunday clothes ; for where is the 
 woman that has n t her finery, and will not embrace every 
 chance to show it ? Biddy s parasol, and hat with pink 
 ribbons, would necessitate a clean shirt in Pat as much as 
 on Sunday. Voting would become a fete, and we should 
 have a population at the polls as well dressed as at church. 
 Such is my belief." 
 
 " I do not see," said Bob, " but you go to the full ex 
 tent with our modern female reformers." 
 
 " There are certain neglected truths, which have been 
 
254 THE CHIMNEY-COKNER 
 
 held up by these reformers, that are gradually being accepted 
 and infused into the life of modern society ; and their recog 
 nition will help to solidify and purify democratic institutions. 
 They are : 
 
 "1. The right of every woman to hold independent 
 property. 
 
 "2. The right of every woman to receive equal pay with 
 man for work which she does equally well. 
 
 " 3. The right of any woman to do any work for which, 
 by her natural organization and talent, she is peculiarly 
 adapted. 
 
 " Under the first head, our energetic sisters have already, 
 by the help of their gallant male adjutants, reformed the 
 laws of several of our States, so that a married woman is no 
 longer left the unprotected legal slave of any unprincipled, 
 drunken spendthrift who may be her husband, but, in 
 case of the imbecility or improvidence of the natural head 
 of the family, the wife, if she have the ability, can conduct 
 business, make contracts, earn and retain money for the 
 good of the household ; and I am sure no one can say that 
 immense injustice and cruelty are not thereby prevented. 
 
 " It is quite easy for women who have the good fortune 
 to have just and magnanimous husbands to say that they 
 feel no interest in such reforms, and that they would will 
 ingly trust their property to the man to whom they give 
 themselves ; but they should remember that laws are not 
 made for the restraint of the generous and just, but of the 
 dishonest and base. The law which enables a married 
 woman to hold her own property does not forbid her to give 
 it to the man of her heart, if she so pleases ; and it does 
 protect many women who otherwise would be reduced to 
 the extremest misery. I once knew an energetic milliner 
 who had her shop attached four times, and a flourishing 
 business broken up in four different cities, because she was 
 tracked from city to city by a worthless spendthrift, who 
 
WOMAN S SPHEKE 255 
 
 only waited till she had amassed a little property in a new 
 place to swoop down upon and carry it off. It is to be 
 hoped that the time is not distant when every State will 
 give to woman a fair chance to the ownership and use of her 
 own earnings and her own property. 
 
 " Under the head of the right of every woman to do any 
 work for which by natural organization and talent she is 
 especially adapted, there is a word or two to be said. 
 
 " The talents and tastes of the majority of women are 
 naturally domestic. The family is evidently their sphere, 
 because in all ways their organization fits them for that 
 more than for anything else. 
 
 " But there are occasionally women who are exceptions 
 to the common law, gifted with peculiar genius and adapta 
 tions. With regard to such women, there has never seemed 
 to be any doubt in the verdict of mankind that they ought 
 to follow their nature, and that their particular sphere was 
 the one to which they are called. Did anybody ever think 
 that Mrs. Siddons and Mrs. Kemble and Ristori had better 
 have applied themselves sedulously to keeping house, be 
 cause they were women, and woman s noblest station is 
 retreat > ? 
 
 " The world has always shown a fair average of good 
 sense in this matter, from the days of the fair Hypatia in 
 Alexandria, who, we are told, gave lectures on philosophy 
 behind a curtain, lest her charms should distract the atten 
 tion of too impressible young men, down to those of Anna 
 Dickinson. Mankind are not, after all, quite fools, and 
 seem in these cases to have a reasonable idea that excep 
 tional talents have exceptional laws, and make their own 
 code of proprieties. 
 
 " Now there is no doubt that Miss Dickinson, though as 
 relating to her femininity she is quite as pretty and modest 
 a young woman as any to be found in the most sheltered 
 circle, has yet a most exceptional talent for public speaking, 
 
250 THE CHIMNEY-COKXER 
 
 which draws crowds to hear her, and makes lecturing for 
 her a lucrative profession, as well as a means of advocating 
 just and generous sentiments, and of stimulating her own 
 sex to nobler purposes ; and the same law which relates to 
 Siddons and Kemble and Ristori relates also to her. 
 
 " The doctrine of vocations is a good one and a safe one. 
 If a woman mistakes her vocation, so much the worse for 
 her ; the world does not suffer, but she does, and the suffer 
 ing speedily puts her where she belongs. There is not near 
 so much danger from attempts to imitate Anna Dickinson 
 as there is from the more common feminine attempts to 
 rival the demi-monde of Paris in fantastic extravagance and 
 luxury. 
 
 " As to how a woman may determine whether she has 
 any such vocation, there is a story quite in point. A good 
 Methodist elder was listening to an ardent young mechanic 
 who thought he had a call to throw up his shop and go to 
 preaching. 
 
 " I feel, said the young ardent, that I have a call to 
 preach. 
 
 " Hast thou noticed whether people seem to have a call 
 to hear thee ? said the shrewd old man. I have always 
 noticed that a true call of the Lord may be known by this, 
 that people have a call to hear. 
 
 " Well," said Bob, " the most interesting question still 
 remains : What are to be the employments of woman ? 
 What ways are there for her to use her talents, to earn her 
 livelihood and support those who are dear to her, when 
 Providence throws that necessity upon her ? This is be 
 coming more than ever one of the pressing questions of our 
 age. The war has deprived so many thousands of women 
 of their natural protectors, that everything must be thought 
 of that may possibly open a way for their self-support." 
 
 " Well, let us look over the field," said my wife. " What 
 is there for woman ? " 
 
WOMAN S SPHERE 257 
 
 " In the first place," said I, " come the professions re 
 quiring natural genius, authorship, painting, sculpture, 
 with the subordinate arts of photographing, coloring, and 
 finishing ; but when all is told, these furnish employment 
 to a very limited number, almost as nothing to the whole. 
 Then there is teaching, which is profitable in its higher 
 branches, and perhaps the very pleasantest of all the call 
 ings open to woman ; but teaching is at present an over 
 crowded profession, the applicants everywhere outnumbering 
 the places. Architecture and landscape gardening are arts 
 every way suited to the genius of woman, and there are 
 enough who have the requisite mechanical skill and mathe 
 matical education ; and, though never yet thought of for the 
 sex, that I know of, I do not despair of seeing those who 
 shall find in this field a profession at once useful and ele 
 gant. When women plan dwelling-houses, the vast body 
 of tenements to be let in our cities will wear a more domes 
 tic and comfortable air, and will be built more with refer 
 ence to the real wants of their inmates." 
 
 " I have thought," said Bob, " that agencies of various 
 sorts, as canvassing the country for the sale of books, maps, 
 and engravings, might properly employ a great many 
 women. There is a large class whose health suffers from 
 confinement and sedentary occupations, who might, I think, 
 be both usefully and agreeably employed in business of this 
 sort, and be recruiting their health at the same time." 
 
 " Then," said my wife, " there is the medical profession." 
 
 " Yes," said I. " The world is greatly obliged to Miss 
 Blackwell and other noble pioneers who faced and overcame 
 the obstacles to the attainment of a thorough medical educa 
 tion by females. Thanks to them, a new and lucrative 
 profession is now open to educated women in relieving the 
 distresses of their own sex ; and we may hope that in time, 
 through their intervention, the care of the sick may also 
 become the vocation of cultivated, refined, intelligent wo- 
 
258 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 men, instead of being left, as heretofore, to the ignorant 
 and vulgar. The experience of our late war has shown us 
 what women of a high class morally and intellectually can 
 do in this capacity. Why should not this experience in 
 augurate a new and sacred calling for refined and educated 
 women ? Why should not NURSING become a vocation 
 equal in dignity and in general esteem to the medical pro 
 fession, of which it is the right hand ? Why should our 
 dearest hopes, in the hour of their greatest peril, be com 
 mitted into the hands of Sairey Gamps, when the world has 
 seen Florence Nightingales ? " 
 
 " Yes, indeed," said my wife ; " I can testify, from my 
 own experience, that the sufferings and dangers of the sick 
 bed, for the want of intelligent, educated nursing, have been 
 dreadful. A prejudiced, pig-headed, snuff- taking old woman, 
 narrow-minded and vulgar, and more confident in her own 
 way than seven men that can render a reason, enters your 
 house at just the hour and moment when all your dearest 
 earthly hopes are brought to a crisis. She becomes abso 
 lute dictator over your delicate, helpless wife and your frail 
 babe, the absolute dictator of all in the house. If it be 
 her sovereign will and pleasure to enact all sorts of physio 
 logical absurdities in the premises, who shall say her nay ? 
 1 She knows her business, she hopes ! And if it be her 
 edict, as it was of one of her class whom I knew, that each 
 of her babies shall eat four baked beans the day it is four 
 days old, eat them it must ; and if the baby die in convul 
 sions four days after, it is set down as the mysterious will 
 of an overruling Providence. 
 
 " I know and have seen women lying upon laced pillows, 
 under silken curtains, who have been bullied and dominated 
 over in the hour of their greatest helplessness by ignorant 
 and vulgar tyrants, in a way that would scarce be thought 
 possible in civilized society, and children that have been 
 injured or done to death by the same means. A celebrated 
 
WOMAN S SPHERE 259 
 
 physician told me of a babe whose eyesight was nearly 
 ruined by its nurse taking a fancy to wash its eyes with 
 camphor, { to keep it from catching cold/ she said. I 
 knew another infant that was poisoned by the nurse giving 
 it laudanum in some of those patent nostrums which these 
 ignorant creatures carry secretly in their pockets, to secure 
 quiet in their little charges. I knew one delicate woman who 
 never recovered from the effects of being left at her first 
 confinement in the hands of an ill-tempered, drinking nurse, 
 and whose feeble infant was neglected and abused by this 
 woman in a way to cause lasting injury. In the first four 
 weeks of infancy the constitution is peculiarly impressible ; 
 and infants of a delicate organization may, if frightened and 
 ill-treated, be the subjects of just such a shock to the ner 
 vous system as in mature age comes from the sudden stroke 
 of a great affliction or terror. A bad nurse may affect 
 nerves predisposed to weakness in a manner they never will 
 recover from. I solemnly believe that the constitutions of 
 more women are broken up by bad nursing in their first 
 confinement than by any other cause whatever. And yet 
 there are at the same time hundreds and thousands of 
 women, wanting the means of support, whose presence in a 
 sick-room would be a benediction. I do trust that Miss 
 Blackwell s band of educated nurses will not be long in 
 coming, and that the number of such may increase till they 
 effect a complete revolution in this vocation. A class of 
 cultivated, well-trained, intelligent nurses would soon ele 
 vate the employment of attending on the sick into the no 
 ble calling it ought to be, and secure for it its appropriate 
 rewards." 
 
 " There is another opening for woman," said I, " in 
 the world of business. The system of commercial colleges 
 now spreading over our land is a new and most important 
 development of our times. There that large class of young 
 men who have either no time or no inclination for an ex- 
 
260 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 tended classical education can learn what will fit them for 
 that active material life which in our broad country needs 
 so many workers. But the most pleasing feature of these 
 institutions is, that the complete course is open to women 
 no less than to men, and women there may acquire that 
 knowledge of bookkeeping and accounts, and of the forms 
 and principles of business transactions, which will qualify 
 them for some of the lucrative situations hitherto monopo 
 lized by the other sex. And the expenses of the course 
 of instruction are so arranged as to come within the scope 
 of very moderate means. A fee of fifty dollars entitles a 
 woman to the benefit of the whole course, and she has the 
 privilege of attending at any hours that may suit her own 
 engagements and convenience." 
 
 " Then, again," said my wife, " there are the depart 
 ments of millinery and dressmaking, and the various branches 
 of needlework, which afford employment to thousands of 
 women ; there is typesetting, by which many are beginning 
 to get a living ; there are the manufactures of cotton, woolen, 
 silk, and the numberless useful articles which employ female 
 hands in their fabrication, all of them opening avenues 
 by which, with more or less success, a subsistence can be 
 gained." 
 
 " Well, really," said Bob, " it would appear, after all, 
 that there are abundance of openings for women. What is 
 the cause of the outcry and distress ? How is it that we 
 hear of women starving, driven to vice and crime by want, 
 when so many doors of useful and profitable employment 
 stand open to them ? " 
 
 " The question would easily be solved," said my wife, 
 " if you could once see the kind and class of women who 
 thus suffer and starve. There may be exceptions, but too 
 large a portion of them are girls and women who can or will 
 do no earthly thing well, and, what is worse, are not will 
 ing to take the pains to be taught to do anything well. I 
 
WOMAN S SPHERE 261 
 
 will describe to you one girl, and you will find in every in 
 telligence-office a hundred of her kind to five thoroughly 
 trained ones. 
 
 " Imprimis : she is rather delicate and genteel-looking, 
 and you may know from the arrangement of her hair just 
 what the last mode is of disposing of rats or waterfalls. 
 She has a lace bonnet with roses, a silk mantilla, a silk 
 dress trimmed with velvet, a white skirt with sixteen tucks 
 and an embroidered edge, a pair of cloth gaiters, underneath 
 which are a pair of stockings without feet, the only pair in 
 her possession. She has no under-linen, and sleeps at night 
 in the working-clothes she wears in the day. She never 
 seems to have in her outfit either comb, brush, or tooth 
 brush of her own, neither needles, thread, scissors, nor 
 pins ; her money, when she has any, being spent on more 
 important articles, such as the lace bonnet or silk mantilla, 
 or the rats and waterfalls that glorify her head. When she 
 wishes to sew, she borrows what is needful of a convenient 
 next neighbor ; and if she gets a place in a family as second 
 girl, she expects to subsist in these respects by borrowing of 
 the better-appointed servants, or helping herself from the 
 family stores. 
 
 " She expects, of course, the very highest wages, if she 
 condescends to live out ; and by help of a trim outside ap 
 pearance, and the many vacancies that are continually occur 
 ring in households, she gets places, where her object is to 
 do just as little of any duty assigned to her as possible, to 
 hurry through her performances, put on her fine clothes, and 
 go a-gadding. She is on free-and-easy terms with all the 
 men she meets, and ready at jests and repartee, sometimes 
 far from seemly. Her time of service in any one place lasts 
 indifferently from a fortnight to two or three months, when 
 she takes her wages, buys her a new parasol in the latest 
 style, and goes back to the intelligence-office. In the differ 
 ent families where she has lived she has been told a hun- 
 
262 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 died times the proprieties of household life, how to make 
 beds, arrange rooms, wash china, glass, and silver, and set 
 tables ; but her habitual rule is to try in each place how 
 small and how poor services will be accepted. When she 
 finds less will not do, she gives more. When the mistress 
 follows her constantly, and shows an energetic determina 
 tion to be well served, she shows that she can serve well ; 
 but the moment such attention relaxes, she slides back again. 
 She is as destructive to a house as a fire ; the very spirit of 
 wastefulness is in her ; she cracks the china, dents the sil 
 ver, stops the water-pipes with rubbish, and, after she is 
 gone, there is generally a sum equal to half her wages to be 
 expended in repairing the effects of her carelessness. And 
 yet there is one thing to be said for her : she is quite as 
 careful of her employer s things as of her own. The full 
 amount of her mischiefs often does not appear at once, as 
 she is glib of tongue, adroit in apologies, and lies with as 
 much alertness and as little thought of conscience as a black 
 bird chatters. It is difficult for people who have been trained 
 from childhood in the school of verities, who have been 
 lectured for even the shadow of a prevarication, and shut 
 up in disgrace for a lie, till truth becomes a habit of their 
 souls, it is very difficult for people so educated to under 
 stand how to get on with those who never speak the truth 
 except by mere accident, who assert any and every thing that 
 comes into their heads with all the assurance and all the 
 energy of perfect verity. 
 
 " What becomes of this girl ? She finds means, by beg 
 ging, borrowing, living out, to keep herself extremely trim 
 and airy for a certain length of time, till the rats and water 
 falls, the lace hat and parasol, and the glib tongue, have 
 done their work in making a fool of some honest young 
 mechanic who earns three dollars a day. She marries him 
 with no higher object than to have somebody to earn money 
 for her to spend. And what comes of such marriages ? 
 
WOMAN S SPHERE 263 
 
 "That is one ending of her career; the other is on the 
 street, in haunts of vice, in prison, in drunkenness, and 
 death. 
 
 " Whence come these girls ? They are as numerous as 
 yellow butterflies in autumn ; they flutter up to cities from 
 the country ; they grow up from mothers who ran the same 
 sort of career before them ; and the reason why in the end 
 they fall out of all reputable employment and starve on 
 poor wages is, that they become physically, mentally, and 
 morally incapable of rendering any service which society 
 will think worth paying for." 
 
 " I remember," said I, "that the head of the most cele 
 brated dressmaking establishment in New York, in reply to 
 the appeals of the needlewomen of the city for sympathy 
 and wages, came out with published statements to this effect : 
 that the difficulty lay, not in unwillingness of employers to 
 pay what work was worth, but in finding any work worth pay 
 ing for ; that she had many applicants, but among them few 
 who could be of real use to her ; that she, in common with 
 everybody in this country who has any kind of serious re 
 sponsibilities to carry, was continually embarrassed for want 
 of skilled workpeople who could take and go on with the 
 labor of her various departments without her constant super 
 vision ; that, out of a hundred girls, there would not be 
 more than five to whom she could give a dress to be made 
 and dismiss it from her mind as something certain to be 
 properly done. 
 
 " Let people individually look around their own little 
 sphere, and ask themselves if they know any woman really 
 excelling in any valuable calling or accomplishment who is 
 suffering for want of work. All of us know seamstresses, 
 dressmakers, nurses, and laundresses who have made them 
 selves such a reputation, and are so beset and overcrowded 
 with work, that the whole neighborhood is constantly on its 
 knees to them with uplifted hands. The fine seamstress, 
 
264 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 who can cut and make trousseaus and layettes in elegant per 
 fection, is always engaged six months in advance ; the pet 
 dressmaker of a neighborhood must be engaged in May for 
 September, and in September for May ; a laundress who 
 sends your clothes home in nice order always has all the 
 work that she can do. Good work in any department is 
 the rarest possible thing in our American life ; and it is a 
 fact that the great majority of workers, both in the family 
 and out, do only tolerably well, not so badly that it ac 
 tually cannot be borne, yet not so well as to be a source 
 of real, thorough satisfaction. The exceptional worker in 
 every neighborhood, who does things really well, can always 
 set her own price, and is always having more offering than 
 she can possibly do. 
 
 " The trouble, then, in finding employment for women 
 lies deeper than the purses or consciences of the employers : 
 it lies in the want of education in women ; the want of ed 
 ucation, I say, meaning by education that which fits a 
 woman for practical and profitable employment in life, and 
 not mere common-school learning." 
 
 " Yes," said my wife ; " for it is a fact that the most 
 troublesome and helpless persons to provide for are often 
 those who have a good medium education, but no feminine 
 habits, no industry, no practical calculation, no muscular 
 strength, and no knowledge of any one of woman s peculiar 
 duties. In the earlier days of New England, women, as a 
 class, had far fewer opportunities for acquiring learning, yet 
 were far better educated, physically and morally, than now. 
 The high school did not exist ; at the common school they 
 learned reading, writing, and arithmetic, and practiced spell 
 ing ; while at home they did the work of the household. 
 They were cheerful, bright, and active, ever on the alert, 
 able to do anything, from the harnessing and driving of a 
 horse to the finest embroidery. The daughters of New 
 England in those days looked the world in the face without a 
 
WOMAN S SPHERE 265 
 
 fear. They shunned no labor ; they were afraid of none ; 
 and they could always find their way to a living." 
 
 " But although less instructed in school learning/ said 
 I, " they showed no deficiency in intellectual acumen. I 
 see no such women, nowadays, as some I remember of that 
 olden time, women whose strong minds and ever-active 
 industry carried on reading and study side by side with 
 household toils. 
 
 a I remember a young lady friend of mine, attending a 
 celebrated boarding-school, boarded in the family of a wo 
 man who had never been to school longer than was neces 
 sary to learn to read and write, yet who was a perfect cyclo 
 pedia of general information. The young scholar used to 
 take her Chemistry and Natural Philosophy into the kitchen, 
 where her friend was busy with her household work, and 
 read her lessons to her, that she might have the benefit of 
 her explanations ; and so, while the good lady scoured her 
 andirons or kneaded her bread, she lectured to her protegee 
 on mysteries of science far beyond the limits of the text 
 book. Many of the graduates of our modern high schools 
 would find it hard to shine in conversation on the subjects 
 they had studied, in the searching presence of some of these 
 vigorous matrons of the olden time, whose only school had 
 been the leisure hours gained by energy and method from 
 their family cares." 
 
 " And in those days," said my wife, " there lived in our 
 families a class of American domestics, women of good sense 
 and good powers of reflection, who applied this sense and 
 power of reflection to household matters. In the early part 
 of my married life, I myself had American help ; and 
 they were not only excellent servants, but trusty and inval 
 uable friends. But now, all this class of applicants for do 
 mestic service have disappeared, I scarce know why or how. 
 All I know is, there is no more a Betsey or a Lois, such as 
 used to take domestic cares off my shoulders so completely." 
 
266 THE CHIMNEY-COKNER 
 
 " Good heavens ! where are they ? " cried Bob. "Where 
 do they hide ? I would search through the world after 
 such a prodigy ! " 
 
 " The fact is," said I, " there has been a slow and grad 
 ual reaction against household labor in America. Mothers 
 began to feel that it was a sort of curse, to be spared, if 
 possible, to their daughters ; women began to feel that they 
 were fortunate in proportion as they were able to be en 
 tirely clear of family responsibilities. Then Irish labor 
 began to come in, simultaneously with a great advance in 
 female education. 
 
 " For a long while nothing was talked of, written of, 
 thought of, in teachers meetings, conventions, and assem 
 blies, but the neglected state of female education ; and the 
 whole circle of the arts and sciences was suddenly intro 
 duced into our free-school system, from which needlework 
 as gradually and quietly was suffered to drop out. The 
 girl who attended the primary and high school had so much 
 study imposed on her that she had no time for sewing or 
 housework ; and the delighted mother was only too happy 
 to darn her stockings and do the housework alone, that her 
 daughter might rise to a higher plane than she herself had 
 attained to. The daughter, thus educated, had, on coming 
 to womanhood, no solidity of muscle, no manual dexterity, 
 no practice or experience in domestic life ; and if she were 
 to seek a livelihood, there remained only teaching, or some 
 feminine trade, or the factory." 
 
 " These factories," said my wife, " have been the ruin 
 of hundreds and hundreds of our once healthy farmers 
 daughters and others from the country. They go there 
 young and unprotected ; they live there in great boarding- 
 houses, and associate with a promiscuous crowd, without 
 even such restraints of maternal supervision as they would 
 have in great boarding-schools ; their bodies are enfeebled 
 by labor often necessarily carried on in a foul and heated 
 
WOMAN S SPHERE 267 
 
 atmosphere ; and at the hours when off duty, they are ex 
 posed to all the dangers of unwatched intimacy with the 
 other sex. 
 
 " Moreover, the factory girl learns and practices but one 
 thing, some one mechanical movement, which gives no 
 scope for invention, ingenuity, or any other of the powers 
 called into play by domestic labor ; so that she is in real 
 ity unfitted in every way for family duties. 
 
 " Many times it has been my lot to try, in my family 
 service, girls who have left factories ; and I have found them 
 wholly useless for any of the things which a woman ought 
 to be good for. They knew nothing of a house, or what 
 ought to be done in it ; they had imbibed a thorough con 
 tempt of household labor, and looked upon it but as a dernier 
 ressort ; and it was only the very lightest of its tasks that 
 they could even begin to think of. I remember I tried to 
 persuade one of these girls, the pretty daughter of a fisher 
 man, to take some lessons in washing and ironing. She 
 was at that time engaged to be married to a young me 
 chanic, who earned something like two or three dollars a 
 day. 
 
 " My child/ said I, you will need to understand all 
 kinds of housework if you are going to be married. 
 
 " She tossed her little head, 
 
 " l Indeed, she was n t going to trouble herself about 
 that. 
 
 " But who will get up your husband s shirts ? 
 
 " Oh, he must put them out. I m not going to be mar 
 ried to make a slave of myself ! ? 
 
 l< Another young factory girl, who came for table and 
 parlor work, was so full of airs and fine notions that it 
 seemed as difficult to treat with her as with a princess. She 
 could not sweep, because it blistered her hands, which, in 
 fact, were long and delicate ; she could not think of putting 
 them into hot dish-water, and for that reason preferred 
 
268 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 washing the dishes in cold water ; she required a full hour 
 in the morning to make her toilet ; she was laced so tightly 
 that she could not stoop without vertigo ; and her hoops were 
 of dimensions which seemed to render it impossible for her 
 to wait upon table ; she was quite exhausted with the elfort 
 of ironing the table-napkins and chamber-towels : yet she 
 could not think of living out under two dollars a week. 
 
 " Both these girls had had a good free-school education, 
 and could read any amount of novels, write a tolerable 
 letter, but had not learned anything with sufficient accuracy 
 to fit them for teachers. They were pretty, and their des 
 tiny was to marry and lie a deadweight on the hands of 
 fcome honest man, and to increase, in their children, the 
 number of incapables." 
 
 " Well," said Bob, " what would you have ? What is 
 to be done ? " 
 
 " In the first place," said I, " I would have it felt, by 
 jthose who are seeking to elevate woman, that the work is 
 be done, not so much by creating for her new spheres 
 of action as by elevating her conceptions of that domestic 
 vocation to which God and Nature have assigned her. It is 
 all very well to open to her avenues of profit and advance 
 ment in the great outer world ; but, after all, to make and 
 keep a home is, and ever must be, a woman s first glory, 
 her highest aim. No work of art can compare with a per 
 fect home ; the training and guiding of a family must be 
 recognized as the highest work a woman can perform ; and 
 female education ought to be conducted with special refer 
 ence to this. 
 
 " Men are trained to be lawyers, to be physicians, to be 
 mechanics, by long and self-denying study and practice. 
 A man cannot even make shoes merely by going to the 
 high school and learning reading, writing, and mathematics ; 
 he cannot be a bookkeeper or a printer simply from general 
 education. 
 
 via 
 
 Tto 
 
WOMAN S SPHERE 269 
 
 " Now women have a sphere and profession of their own, 
 a profession for which they are fitted by physical organ 
 ization, by their own instincts, and to which they are di 
 rected by the pointing and manifest finger of God, and 
 that sphere is family life. Duties to the state and to public 
 life they may have ; but the public duties of women must 
 bear to their family ones the same relation that the family 
 duties of men bear to their public ones. The defect in the 
 late efforts to push on female education is, that it has been 
 for her merely general, and that it has left out and excluded 
 all that is professional ; and she undertakes the essential 
 duties of womanhood, when they do devolve on her, with 
 out any adequate preparation." 
 
 " But is it possible for a girl to learn at school the things 
 which fit for her family life ? " said Bob. 
 
 " Why not ? " I replied. " Once it was thought impos 
 sible in school to teach girls geometry or algebra, or the 
 higher mathematics ; it was thought impossible to put them 
 through collegiate courses ; but it has been done, and we 
 see it. Women study treatises on political economy in 
 schools, and why should not the study of domestic economy 
 form a part of every school course ? A young girl will 
 stand up at the blackboard, and draw and explain the com 
 pound blowpipe, and describe all the processes of making 
 oxygen and hydrogen. Why should she not draw and ex 
 plain a refrigerator as well as an air-pump ? Both are to be 
 explained on philosophical principles. When a schoolgirl, 
 in her chemistry, studies the reciprocal action of acids and 
 alkalies, what is there to hinder the teaching her its appli 
 cation to the various processes of cooking where acids and 
 alkalies are employed ? Why should she not be led to see 
 how effervescence and fermentation can be made to perform 
 their office in the preparation of light and digestible bread ? 
 Why should she not be taught the chemical substances by 
 which food is often adulterated, and the test by which such 
 
270 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 adulterations are detected ? Why should she not understand 
 the processes of confectionery, and know how to guard 
 against the deleterious or poisonous elements that are in 
 troduced into children s sugar-plums and candies ? Why, 
 when she learns the doctrine of mordants, the substances 
 by which different colors are set, should she not learn it 
 with some practical view to future life, so that she may know 
 how to set the color of a fading calico or restore the color 
 of a spotted one ? Why, in short, when a girl has labored 
 through a profound chemical work, and listened to courses of 
 chemical lectures, should she come to domestic life, which 
 presents a constant series of chemical experiments and 
 changes, and go blindly along as without chart or compass, 
 unable to tell what will take out a stain, or what will 
 brighten a metal, what are common poisons and what their 
 antidotes, and not knowing enough of the laws of caloric to 
 understand how to warm a house, or of the laws of atmos 
 phere to know how to ventilate one ? Why should the 
 preparation of food, that subtile art on which life, health, 
 cheerfulness, good temper, and good looks so largely depend, 
 forever be left in the hands of the illiterate and vulgar ? 
 
 u A benevolent gentleman has lately left a large fortune 
 for the founding of a university for women ; and the object 
 is stated to be to give to women who have already acquired 
 a general education the means of acquiring a professional 
 one, to fit themselves for some employment by which they 
 may gain a livelihood. 
 
 " In this institution the women are to be instructed in 
 bookkeeping, stenography, telegraphing, photographing, 
 drawing, modeling, and various other arts ; but, so far as 
 I remember, there is no proposal to teach domestic economy 
 as at least one of woman s professions. 
 
 " Why should there not be a professor of domestic economy 
 in every large female school ? W r hy should not this profes 
 sor give lectures, first on house planning and building, illus- 
 
WOMAN S SPHERE 271 
 
 trated by appropriate apparatus ? Why should not the pupils 
 have presented to their inspection models of houses planned 
 with reference to economy, to ease of domestic service, to 
 warmth, to ventilation, and to architectural appearance ? 
 Why should not the professor go on to lecture further on 
 house- fixtures, with models of the best mangles, w r ashing- 
 machines, clothes-wringers, ranges, furnaces, and cooking- 
 stoves, together with drawings and apparatus illustrative of 
 domestic hydraulics, showing the best contrivances for bath 
 ing-rooms and the obvious principles of plumbing, so that 
 the pupils may have some idea how to work the machinery 
 of a convenient house when they have it, and to have such 
 conveniences introduced when wanting ? If it is thought 
 worth while to provide at great expense apparatus for teach 
 ing the revolutions of Saturn s moons and the precession of 
 the equinoxes, why should there not be some also to teach 
 what it may greatly concern a woman s earthly happiness 
 to know ? 
 
 " Why should not the professor lecture on home chemis 
 try, devoting his first lecture to bread-making ? and why 
 might not a batch of bread be made and baked and ex 
 hibited to the class, together with specimens of morbid 
 anatomy in the bread line, the sour cotton bread of the 
 baker ; the rough, big-holed bread ; the heavy, fossil bread 
 the bitter bread of too much yeast, and the causes of their 
 defects pointed out ? And so with regard to the various 
 articles of food, why might not chemical lectures be 
 given on all of them, one after another ? In short, it 
 would be easy to trace out a course of lectures on common 
 things to occupy a whole year, and for which the pupils, 
 whenever they come to have homes of their own, will thank 
 the lecturer to the last day of their life. 
 
 " Then there is no impossibility in teaching needlework, 
 the cutting and fitting of dresses, in female schools. The 
 thing is done very perfectly in English schools for the work- 
 
272 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 ing classes. A girl trained at one of these schools came into 
 a family I once knew. She brought with her a sewing-book, 
 in which the process of making various articles was exhibited 
 in miniature. The several parts of a shirt were first shown, 
 each perfectly made, and fastened to a leaf of the book by 
 itself, and then the successive steps of "uniting the parts, till 
 finally appeared a miniature model of the whole. The sew 
 ing was done with red thread, so that every stitch might 
 show, and any imperfections be at once remedied. The same 
 process was pursued with regard to other garments, and a 
 good general idea of cutting and fitting them was thus given 
 to an entire class of girls. 
 
 " In the same manner the care and nursing of young 
 children and the tending of the sick might be made the sub 
 ject of lectures. Every woman ought to have some general 
 principles to guide her with regard to what is to be done in 
 case of the various accidents that may befall either children 
 or grown people, and of their lesser illnesses, and ought to 
 know how to prepare comforts and nourishment for the sick. 
 Hawthorne s satirical remarks upon the contrast between the 
 elegant Zenobia s conversation, and the smoky porridge she 
 made for him when he was an invalid, might apply to the 
 volunteer cookery of many charming women. 7 
 
 " I think," said Bob, " that your Professor of Domestic 
 Economy would find enough to occupy his pupils." 
 
 " In fact," said I, " were domestic economy properly hon 
 ored and properly taught, in the manner described, it would 
 open a sphere of employment to so many women in the home 
 life, that we should not be obliged to send our women out 
 to California or the Pacific to put an end to an anxious and 
 aimless life. 
 
 " When domestic work is sufficiently honored to be taught 
 as an art and science in our boarding-schools and high-schools, 
 then possibly it may acquire also dignity in the eyes of our 
 working classes, and young girls who have to earn their 
 
WOMAN S SPHERE 273 
 
 own living may no longer feel degraded in engaging in do 
 mestic service. The place of a domestic in a family may 
 become as respectable in their eyes as a place in a factory, 
 in a printing-office, in a dressmaking or millinery establish 
 ment, or behind the counter of a shop. 
 
 " In America there is no class which will confess itself 
 the lower class, and a thing recommended solely for the 
 benefit of any such class finds no one to receive it. 
 
 " If the intelligent and cultivated look down on house 
 hold work with disdain ; if they consider it as degrading, a 
 thing to be shunned by every possible device, they may 
 depend upon it that the influence of such contempt of 
 woman s noble duties will flow downward, producing a like 
 contempt in every class in life. 
 
 " Our sovereign princesses learn the doctrine of equality 
 very quickly, and are not going to sacrifice themselves to 
 what is not considered de bon ton by the upper classes ; 
 and the girl with the laced hat and parasol, without under 
 clothes, who does her best to shirk her duties as house 
 maid, and is looking for marriage as an escape from work, is 
 a fair copy of her mistress, who married for much the same 
 reason, who hates housekeeping, and would rather board or 
 do anything else than have the care of a family. The one 
 is about as respectable as the other. 
 
 " When housekeeping becomes an enthusiasm, and its 
 study and practice a fashion, then we shall have in America 
 that class of persons to rely on for help in household labors 
 who are now going to factories, to printing-offices, to every 
 kind of toil, forgetful of the best life and sphere of woman." 
 
Ill 
 
 A FAMILY TALK ON RECONSTRUCTION 
 
 OUR Chimney-Corner, of which we have spoken some 
 what, has, besides the wonted domestic circle, its habitues 
 who have a frequent seat there. Among these, none is 
 more welcome than Theophilus Thoro. 
 
 Friend Theophilus was born on the shady side of Nature, 
 and endowed by his patron saint with every grace and gift 
 which can make a human creature worthy and available, 
 except the gift of seeing the bright side of things. His 
 bead-roll of Christian virtues includes all the graces of the 
 spirit except hope ; and so, if one wants to know exactly 
 the flaw, the defect, the doubtful side, and to take into 
 account all the untoward possibilities of any person, place, 
 or thing, he had best apply to friend Theophilus. He can 
 tell you just where and how the best-laid scheme is likely 
 to fail, just the screw that will fall loose in the smoothest- 
 working machinery, just the flaw in the most perfect char 
 acter, just the defect in the best-written book, just the vari 
 ety of thorn that must accompany each particular species of 
 rose. 
 
 Yet Theophilus is without guile or malice. His want 
 of faith in human nature is not bitter and censorious, but 
 melting and pitiful. "We are all poor trash, miserable 
 dogs together," he seems to say, as he looks out on the 
 world and its ways. There is not much to be expected of 
 or for any of us ; but let us love one another and be patient. 
 
 Accordingly, Theophilus is one of the most incessant 
 workers for human good, and perseveringly busy in every 
 
A FAMILY TALK ON RECONSTRUCTION 275 
 
 scheme of benevolent enterprise, in all which he labors with 
 melancholy steadiness without hope. In religion he has 
 the soul of a martyr, nothing would suit him better than 
 to be burned alive for his faith ; but his belief in the suc 
 cess of Christianity is about on a par with that of the 
 melancholy disciple of old, who, when Christ would go to 
 Judaea, could only say, " Let us also go, that we may die 
 with him." Theophilus is always ready to die for the truth 
 and the right, for which he never sees anything but defeat 
 and destruction ahead. 
 
 During the late war, Theophilus has been a despairing 
 patriot, dying daily, and giving all up for lost in every re 
 verse from Bull Run to Fredericksburg. The surrender of 
 Richmond and the capitulation of Lee shortened his visage 
 somewhat ; but the murder of the President soon brought 
 it back to its old length. It is true that, while Lincoln 
 lived, he was in a perpetual state of dissent from all his 
 measures. He had broken his heart for years over the 
 miseries of the slaves, but he shuddered at the Emancipation 
 Proclamation ; a whirlwind of anarchy was about to sweep 
 over the country, in which the black and the white would 
 dash against each other, and be shivered like potters vessels. 
 He was in despair at the accession of Johnson, believing 
 the worst of the unfavorable reports that clouded his repu 
 tation. Nevertheless he was among the first of loyal citi 
 zens to rally to the support of the new administration, be 
 cause, though he had no hope in that, he could see nothing 
 better. 
 
 You must not infer from all this that friend Theophilus 
 is a social wet blanket, a goblin shadow at the domestic 
 hearth. By no means. Nature has gifted him with that 
 vein of humor and that impulse to friendly joviality which 
 are frequent developments in sad-natured men, and often 
 deceive superficial observers as to their real character. He 
 who laughs well and makes you laugh is often called a man 
 
276 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 of cheerful disposition, yet in many cases nothing can be 
 further from it than precisely this kind of person. 
 
 Theophilus frequents our chimney-corner, perhaps he- 
 cause Mrs. Crowfield and myself are, so to speak, children 
 of the light and the day. My wife has precisely the oppo 
 site talent to that of our friend. She can discover the 
 good point, the sound spot, where others see only defect 
 and corruption. I myself am somewhat sanguine, and prone 
 rather to expect good than evil, and with a vast stock of 
 faith in the excellent things that may turn up in the future. 
 The millennium is one of the prime articles of my creed ; 
 and all the ups and downs of society I regard only as so 
 many jolts on a very rough road that is taking the world 
 on, through many upsets and disasters, to that final consum 
 mation. 
 
 Theophilus holds the same belief theoretically ; but it is 
 apt to sink so far out of sight in the mire of present dis 
 aster as to be of very little comfort to him. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " we are going to ruin, in my view, about 
 as fast as we can go. Miss Jenny, I will trouble you for 
 another small lump of sugar in my tea." 
 
 " You have been saying that, about our going to ruin, 
 every time you have taken tea here for four years past," 
 said Jenny ; " but I always noticed that your fears never 
 spoiled your relish either for tea or muffins. People talk 
 about being on the brink of a volcano, and the country 
 going to destruction, and all that, just as they put pepper on 
 their potatoes ; it is an agreeable stimulant in conversation, 
 that s all." 
 
 " For my part," said my wife, " I can speak in another 
 vein. When had we ever in all our history so bright pros 
 pects, so much to be thankful for ? Slavery is abolished ; 
 the last stain of disgrace is wiped from our national honor. 
 We stand now before the world self-consistent with our 
 principles. We have come out of one of the severest 
 
A FAMILY TALK ON RECONSTRUCTION 277 
 
 struggles that ever tried a nation, purer and stronger in 
 morals and religion, as well as more prosperous in material 
 things." 
 
 " My dear madam, excuse me," said Theophilus ; " but 
 I cannot help being reminded of what an English reviewer 
 once said, that a lady s facts have as much poetry in them 
 as Tom Moore s lyrics. Of course poetry is always agree- 
 ble, even though of no statistical value." 
 
 "I see no poetry in my facts," said Mrs. Crowfield. "Is 
 not slavery forever abolished, by the confession of its best 
 friends, even of those who declare its abolition a misfor 
 tune, and themselves ruined in consequence ? " 
 
 " I confess, my dear madam, that we have succeeded, as 
 we human creatures commonly do, in supposing that we 
 have destroyed an evil, when we have only changed its 
 name. We have contrived to withdraw from the slave just 
 that fiction of property relation which made it for the inter 
 est of some one to care for him a little, however imperfectly j 
 and, having destroyed that, we turn him out defenseless to 
 shift for himself in a community every member of which is 
 embittered against him. The whole South resounds with 
 the outcries of slaves suffering the vindictive wrath of for 
 mer masters ; laws are being passed hunting them out of 
 this State and out of that ; the animosity of race at all 
 times the most bitter and unreasonable of animosities is 
 being aroused all over the land. And the free States take 
 the lead in injustice to them. Witness a late vote of Con 
 necticut on the suffrage question. The efforts of govern 
 ment to protect the rights of these poor defenseless creatures 
 are about as energetic as such efforts always have been and 
 always will be while human nature remains what it is. For 
 a while the obvious rights of the weaker party will be con 
 fessed, with some show of consideration, in public speeches ; 
 they will be paraded by philanthropic sentimentalists, to 
 give point to their eloquence ; they will be here and there 
 
278 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 sustained in governmental measures, when there is no strong 
 temptation to the contrary, and nothing better to be done ; 
 but the moment that political combinations begin to be 
 formed, all the rights and interests of this helpless people 
 will be bandied about as so many make-weights in the politi 
 cal scale. Any troublesome lion will have a negro thrown 
 to him to keep him quiet. All their hopes will be dashed 
 to the ground by the imperious Southern white, no longer 
 feeling for them even the interest of a master, and regard 
 ing them with a mixture of hatred and loathing as the 
 cause of all his reverses. Then if, driven to despair, they 
 seek to defend themselves by force, they will be crushed by 
 the power of the government and ground to powder, as the 
 weak have always been under the heel of the strong. 
 
 fl So much for our abolition of slavery. As to our mate 
 rial prosperity, it consists of an inflated paper currency, an 
 immense debt, a giddy, foolhardy spirit of speculation and 
 stock-gambling, and a perfect furor of extravagance, which 
 is driving everybody to live beyond his means, and cast 
 ing contempt on the republican virtues of simplicity and 
 economy. 
 
 " As to advancement in morals, there never was so much 
 intemperance in our people before, and the papers are full 
 of accounts of frauds, defalcations, forgeries, robberies, 
 assassinations, and arsons. Against this tide of corruption 
 the various organized denominations of religion do nothing 
 effectual. They are an army shut up within their own in- 
 trenchments, holding their own with difficulty, and in no 
 situation to turn back the furious assaults of the enemy." 
 
 " In short," said Jenny, " according to your showing, 
 the whole country is going to destruction. Now, if things 
 really are so bad, if you really believe all you have been 
 saying, you ought not to be sitting drinking your tea as you 
 are now, or to have spent the afternoon playing croquet 
 with us girls ; you ought to gird yourself with sackcloth, 
 
A FAMILY TALK ON RECONSTRUCTION 279 
 
 and go up and down the land, raising the alarm, and say 
 ing, Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. 
 
 " Well," said Theophilus, while a covert smile played 
 about his lips, " you know the saying, Let us eat and. 
 drink, for to-morrow, etc. Things are not yet gone to de 
 struction, only going, and why not have a good time on 
 deck before the ship goes to pieces ? Your chimney-corner 
 is a tranquil island in the ocean of trouble, and your muffins 
 are absolutely perfect. I 11 take another, if you 11 please 
 to pass them." 
 
 " I ve a great mind not to pass them," said Jenny. 
 " Are you in earnest in what you are saying, or are you 
 only saying it for sensation ? How can people believe such 
 things and be comfortable ? I could not. If I believed all 
 you have been saying I could not sleep nights, I should 
 be perfectly miserable ; and you cannot really believe all 
 this, or you would be." 
 
 " My dear child," said Mrs. Crowfield, " our friend s 
 picture is the truth painted with all its shadows and none 
 of its lights. All the dangers he speaks of are real and 
 great, but he omits the counterbalancing good. Let me 
 speak now. There never has been a time in our history 
 when so many honest and just men held power in our land 
 as now, never a government before in which the public 
 councils recognized with more respect the just and the right. 
 There never was an instance of a powerful government show 
 ing more tenderness in the protection of a weak and de 
 fenseless race than ours has shown in the care of the freed- 
 men hitherto. There never was a case in which the people 
 of a country were more willing to give money and time and 
 disinterested labor to raise and educate those who have thus 
 been thrown on their care. Considering that we have had 
 a great, harassing, and expensive war on our hands, I think 
 the amount done by government and individuals for the 
 f reedmen unequaled in the history of nations j and I do 
 
280 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 not know why it should be predicted from this past fact 
 that, in the future, both government and people are about 
 to throw them to the lions, as Mr. Theophilus supposes. 
 Let us wait, at least, and see. So long as government 
 maintains a freedmen s bureau, administered by men of such 
 high moral character, we must think, at all events, that 
 there are strong indications in the right direction. Just 
 think of the immense advance of public opinion within four 
 years, and of the grand successive steps of this advance, 
 Emancipation in the District of Columbia, the Repeal of the 
 Fugitive Slave Law, the General Emancipation Act, the 
 Amendment of the Constitution. All these do not look as 
 if the black were about to be ground to powder beneath the 
 heel of the white. If the negroes are oppressed in the 
 South, they can emigrate ; no laws hold them ; active, in 
 dustrious laborers will soon find openings in any part of the 
 Union." 
 
 " No," said Theophilus, " there will be black laws like 
 those of Illinois and Tennessee ; there will be turbulent 
 uprisings of the Irish, excited by political demagogues, that 
 will bar them out of Northern States. Besides, as a class, 
 they w ill be idle and worthless. It will not be their fault, 
 but it will be the result of their slave education. All their 
 past observation of their masters has taught them that lib 
 erty means licensed laziness, that work means degradation ; 
 and therefore they will loathe work, and cherish laziness 
 as the sign of liberty. { Am not I free ? Have I not as 
 good a right to do nothing as you ? will be the cry. 
 
 " Already the lazy whites, who never lifted a hand in 
 any useful employment, begin to raise the cry that ( niggers 
 won t work ; and I suspect the cry may not be without 
 reason. Industrious citizens can never be made in a com 
 munity where the higher class think useful labor a disgrace. 
 The whites will oppose the negro in every effort to rise ; 
 they will debar him of every civil and social right ; they 
 
A FAMILY TALK ON KECONSTRUCTION 281 
 
 will set him the worst possible example, as they have been 
 doing for hundreds of years ; and then they will hound and 
 hiss at him for being what they made him. This is the old 
 track of the world, the good, broad, reputable road on 
 which all aristocracies and privileged classes have been al 
 ways traveling ; and it s not likely that we shall have much 
 of a secession from it. The millennium is n t so near- us as 
 that, by a great deal." 
 
 " It s all very well arguing from human selfishness and 
 human sin in that way," said I ; " but you can t take up a 
 newspaper that does n t contain abundant facts to the con 
 trary. Here, now," and I turned to the " Tribune," 
 " is one item that fell under my eye accidentally ? as you 
 were speaking : 
 
 " ( The Superintendent of Freedmen s Affairs in Louisiana, 
 in making up his last Annual Report, says he bus 1,952 
 blacks settled temporarily on 9,650 acres of land, \vho last 
 year raised crops to the value of $175,000, and that he 
 had but few worthless blacks under his care ; and t,hat, as 
 a class, the blacks have fewer vagrants than can be found 
 among any other class of persons. 
 
 " Such testimonies gem the newspapers like stars." 
 
 " Newspapers of your way of thinking, very likely," s aid 
 Theophilus ; " but if it comes to statistics, I can briing 
 counter-statements, numerous and dire, from scores o.f 
 Southern papers, of vagrancy, laziness, improvidence, and 
 wretchedness." 
 
 "Probably both are true," said I, "according to the 
 greater or less care which has been taken of the blacks in 
 different regions. Left to themselves, they tend downward, 
 pressed down by the whole weight of semi-barbarous white 
 society ; but when the free North protects and guides, the 
 results are as you see." 
 
 " And do you think the free North has salt enough in it 
 to save this whole Southern mass from corruption ? I wish 
 
,282 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 j. could think so ; but all I can see in the free North at 
 present is a raging, tearing, headlong chase after money. 
 Now money is of significance only as it gives people the 
 power of expressing their ideal of life. And what does 
 this ideal prove to be among us ? Is it not to ape all the 
 splendors and vices of old aristocratic society ? Is it not to 
 be able to live in idleness, without useful employment, a 
 life of glitter and nutter and show ? What do our New 
 York dames of fashion seek after ? To avoid family care, 
 to find servants at any price who will relieve them of home 
 responsibilities, and take charge of their houses and children 
 while thoy shine at ball and opera, and drive in the park. 
 And the servants who learn of these mistresses, what do 
 they seeK after ? They seek also to get rid of care, to live 
 as nearly as possible without work, to dress and shine in 
 their secondary sphere, as the mistresses do in the primary 
 one. High wages with little work and plenty of company 
 express Biddy s ideal of life, which is a little more respect 
 able thfin that of her mistress, who wants high wages with 
 no wor k. The house and the children are not Biddy s ; and 
 why should she care more for their well-being than the 
 mistress and the mother ? 
 
 " Hence come wranglings and meanings. Biddy uses 
 a f jhest of tea in three months, and the amount of the 
 batcher s bill is fabulous ; Jane gives the baby laudanum 
 J co quiet it, while she slips out to her parties ; and the 
 upper classes are shocked at the demoralized state of the 
 Irish, their utter want of faithfulness and moral principle ! 
 How dreadful that there are no people who enjoy the self- 
 denials and the cares which they dislike, that there are no 
 people who rejoice in carrying that burden of duties which 
 they do not wish to touch with one of their fingers ! The 
 outcry about the badness of servants means just this : that 
 everybody is tired of self - helpfulness, the servants as 
 thoroughly as the masters and mistresses. All want the 
 
A FAMILY TALK ON RECONSTRUCTION 283 
 
 cream of life, without even the trouble of skimming ; and 
 the great fight now is, who shall drink the skim-milk, which 
 nobody wants. Work, honorable toil, manly, womanly 
 endeavor, is just what nobody likes ; and this is as much 
 a fact in the free North as in the slave South. 
 
 " What are all the young girls looking for in marriage ? 
 Some man with money enough to save them from taking 
 any care or having any trouble in domestic life, enabling 
 them, like the lilies of the field, to rival Solomon in all 
 his glory, while they toil not, neither do they spin ; and 
 when they find that even money cannot purchase freedom 
 from care in family life, because their servants are exactly 
 of the same mind with themselves, and hate to do their 
 duties as cordially as they themselves do, then are they 
 in anguish of spirit, and wish for slavery, or aristocracy, 
 or anything that would give them power over the lower 
 classes." 
 
 " But surely, Mr. Theophilus," said Jenny, " there is no 
 sin in disliking trouble, and wanting to live easily and 
 have a good time in one s life, it s so very natural. 7 
 
 " No sin, my dear, I admit; but there is a certain amount 
 of work and trouble that somebody must take to carry on 
 the family and the world ; and the mischief is, that all are 
 agreed in wanting to get rid of it. Human nature is above 
 all things lazy. I am lazy myself. Everybody is. The 
 whole struggle of society is as to who shall eat the hard 
 bread-and-cheese of labor, which must be eaten by some 
 body. Nobody wants it, neither you in the parlor, nor 
 Biddy in the kitchen. 
 
 " i The mass ought to labor, and we lie on sofas, is a sen 
 tence that would unite more subscribers than any confession 
 of faith that ever was presented, whether religious or poli 
 tical ; and its subscribers would be as numerous and sincere 
 in the free States as in the slave States, or I am much 
 mistaken in my judgment. The negroes are men and wo- 
 
284 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 men, like any of the rest of us, and particularly apt in the 
 imitation of the ways and ideas current in good society ; 
 and consequently to learn to play on the piano and to have 
 nothing in particular to do will be the goal of aspiration 
 among colored girls and women, and to do housework will 
 seem to them intolerable drudgery, simply because it is so 
 among the fair models to whom they look up in humble 
 admiration. You see, my dear, what it is to live in a de 
 mocracy. It deprives us of the vantage-ground on which 
 we cultivated people can stand and say to our neighbor, 
 The cream is for me, and the skim-milk for you ; the 
 white bread for me, and the brown for you. I am born 
 to amuse myself and have a good time, and you are born 
 to do everything that is tiresome and disagreeable to me. 
 The My Lady Ludlows of the Old World can stand on 
 their platform and lecture the lower classes from the Church 
 Catechism, to ( order themselves lowly and reverently to all 
 their betters ; and they can base their exhortations on the 
 old established law of society by which some are born to 
 inherit the earth, and live a life of ease and pleasure, and 
 others to toil without pleasure or amusement, for their 
 support and aggrandizement. An aristocracy, as I take it, 
 is a combination of human beings to divide life into two 
 parts, one of which shall comprise all social and moral ad 
 vantages, refinement, elegance, leisure, ease, pleasure, and 
 amusement, and the other, incessant toil, with the ab 
 sence of every privilege and blessing of human existence. 
 Life thus divided, we aristocrats keep the good for our 
 selves and our children, and distribute the evil as the lot 
 of the general mass of mankind. The desire to monopo 
 lize and to dominate is the most rooted form of human 
 selfishness ; it is the hydra with many heads, and, cut off 
 in one place, it puts out in another. 
 
 " Nominally, the great aristocratic arrangement of Amer 
 ican society has just been destroyed ; but really, I take it, 
 
A FAMILY TALK ON RECONSTRUCTION 285 
 
 the essential animus of the slave system still exists, and 
 pervades the community, North as well as South. Every 
 body is wanting to get the work done by somebody else, 
 and to take the money himself ; the grinding between em 
 ployers and employed is going on all the time, and the field 
 of controversy has only been made wider by bringing in a 
 whole new class of laborers. The Irish have now the op 
 portunity to sustain their aristocracy over the negro. Shall 
 they not have somebody to look down upon ? 
 
 " All through free society, employers and employed are 
 at incessant feud ; and the more free and enlightened the 
 society, the more bitter the feud. The standing complaint 
 of life in America is the badness of servants ; and England, 
 which always follows at a certain rate behind us in our 
 social movements, is beginning to raise very loudly the same 
 complaint. The condition of service has been thought 
 worthy of public attention in some of the leading British 
 prints ; and Ruskin, in a summing-up article, speaks of it 
 as a deep ulcer in society, a thing hopeless of remedy." 
 
 " My dear Mr. Theophilus," said my wife, " I cannot 
 imagine whither you are rambling, or to what purpose you 
 are getting up these horrible shadows. You talk of the 
 world as if there were no God in it, overruling the selfish 
 ness of men, and educating it up to order and justice. I do 
 not deny that there is a vast deal of truth in what you say. 
 Nobody doubts that, in general, human nature is selfish, 
 callous, unfeeling, willing to engross all good to itself, and 
 to trample on the rights of others. Nevertheless, thanks 
 to God s teaching and fatherly care, the world has worked 
 along to the point of a great nation founded on the principles 
 of strict equality, forbidding all monopolies, aristocracies, 
 privileged classes, by its very constitution ; and now, by 
 God s wonderful providence, this nation has been brought, 
 and forced, as it were, to overturn and abolish the only 
 aristocratic institution that interfered with its free develop- 
 
286 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 ment. Does not this look as if a Mightier Power than ours 
 were working in and for us, supplementing our weakness 
 and infirmity ? and if we believe that man is always ready 
 to drop everything and let it run back to evil, shall we not 
 have faith that God will not drop the noble work he has so 
 evidently taken in hand in this nation ? " 
 
 " And I want to know," said Jenny, " why your illustra 
 tions of selfishness are all drawn from the female sex. Why 
 do you speak of girls that marry for money, any more than 
 men ? of mistresses of families that want to be free from 
 household duties and responsibilities, rather than of mas 
 ters ? " 
 
 " My charming young lady," said Theophilus, " it is a 
 fact that in America, except the slaveholders, women have 
 hitherto been the only aristocracy. Women have been the 
 privileged class, the only one to which our rough demo 
 cracy has always and everywhere given the precedence, 
 and consequently the vices of aristocrats are more developed 
 in them as a class than among men. The leading principle 
 of aristocracy, which is to take pay without work, to live 
 on the toils and earnings of others, is one which obtains 
 more generally among women than among men in this 
 country. The men of our country, as a general thing, even 
 in our uppermost classes, always propose to themselves some 
 work or business by which they may acquire a fortune, or 
 enlarge that already made for them by their fathers. The 
 women of the same class propose to themselves nothing but 
 to live at their ease on the money made for them by the 
 labors of fathers and husbands. As a consequence, they 
 become enervated and indolent, averse to any bracing, 
 wholesome effort, either mental or physical. The unavoid 
 able responsibilities and cares of a family, instead of being 
 viewed by them in the light of a noble life work, in which 
 they do their part in the general labors of the world, seem 
 to them so many injuries and wrongs ; they seek to turn 
 
A FAMILY TALK ON RECONSTRUCTION 287 
 
 them upon servants, and find servants unwilling to take 
 them ; and so selfish are they, that I have heard more than 
 one lady declare that she did n t care if it was unjust, she 
 should like to have slaves, rather than be plagued with ser 
 vants who had so much liberty. All the novels, poetry, 
 and light literature of the world, which form the general 
 staple of female reading, are based upon aristocratic institu 
 tions, and impregnated with aristocratic ideas ; and women 
 among us are constantly aspiring to foreign and aristocratic 
 modes of life rather than to those of native republican sim 
 plicity. How many women are there, think you, that would 
 not go in for aristocracy and aristocratic prerogatives, if they 
 were only sure that they themselves should be of the privi 
 leged class ? To be My Lady Duchess, and to have a 
 right by that simple title to the prostrate deference of all 
 the lower orders ! How many would have firmness to vote 
 against such an establishment merely because it was bad 
 for society ? Tell the fair Mrs. Feathercap, In order that 
 you may be a duchess, and have everything a paradise of 
 elegance and luxury around you and your children, a hun 
 dred poor families must have no chance for anything better 
 than black bread and muddy water all their lives, a hundred 
 poor men must work all their lives on such wages that a 
 fortnight s sickness will send their families to the almshouse, 
 and that no amount of honesty and forethought can lay up 
 any provision for old age. : 
 
 " Come now, sir," said Jenny, " don t tell me that there 
 are any girls or women so mean and selfish as to want aris 
 tocracy or rank so purchased ! You are too bad, Mr. Theo- 
 philus ! " 
 
 " Perhaps they might not, were it stated in just these 
 terms ; yet I think, if the question of the establishment of 
 an order of aristocracy among us were put to vote, we should 
 find more women than men who would go for it ; and they 
 would flout at the consequences to society with the lively 
 
288 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 wit and the musical laugh which make feminine selfishness 
 so genteel and agreeable. 
 
 " No ! It is a fact that in America, the women, in the 
 wealthy classes, are like the noblemen of aristocracies, and 
 the men are the workers. And in all this outcry that has 
 been raised about women s wages being inferior to those 
 of men there is one thing overlooked, and that is, that 
 women s work is generally inferior to that of men, because 
 in every rank they are the pets of society and are excused 
 from the laborious drill and training by which men are fitted 
 for their callings. Our fair friends come in generally by 
 some royal road to knowledge, which saves them the dire ne 
 cessity of real work, a sort of feminine hop-skip-and-jump 
 into science or mechanical skill, nothing like the uncom 
 promising hard labor to which the boy is put who would be 
 a mechanic or farmer, a lawyer or physician. 
 
 " I admit freely that we men are to blame for most of 
 the faults of our fair nobility. There is plenty of heroism, 
 abundance of energy, and love of noble endeavor lying dor 
 mant in these sheltered and petted daughters of the better 
 classes ; but we keep it down and smother it. Fathers and 
 brothers think it discreditable to themselves not to give 
 their daughters and sisters the means of living in idleness ; 
 and any adventurous fair one, who seeks to end the ennui of 
 utter aimlessness by applying herself to some occupation 
 whereby she may earn her own living, infallibly draws down 
 on her the comments of her whole circle : ( Keeping school, 
 is she ? Is n t her father rich enough to support her ? 
 What could possess her ? ; 
 
 " I am glad, my dear Sir Oracle, that you are beginning 
 to recollect yourself and temper your severities on our sex," 
 said my wife. " As usual, there is much truth lying about 
 loosely in the vicinity of your assertions ; but they are as 
 far from being in themselves the truth as would be their 
 exact opposites. 
 
A FAMILY TALK ON RECONSTRUCTION 289 
 
 " The class of American women who travel, live abroad, 
 and represent our country to the foreign eye, have acquired 
 the reputation of being Sybarites in luxury and extrava 
 gance, and there is much in the modes of life that are creep 
 ing into our richer circles to justify this. 
 
 " Miss Murray, ex-maid-of-honor to the Queen of Eng 
 land, among other impressions which she received from an 
 extended tour through our country, states it as her convic 
 tion that young American girls of the better classes are less 
 helpful in nursing the sick and in the general duties of 
 family life than the daughters of the aristocracy of England ; 
 and I am inclined to believe it, because even the Queen has 
 taken special pains to cultivate habits of energy and self- 
 helpfulness in her children. One of the toys of the 
 Princess Royal was said to be a cottage of her own, fur 
 nished with every accommodation for cooking and housekeep 
 ing, where she from time to time enacted the part of house 
 keeper, making bread and biscuit, boiling potatoes which 
 she herself had gathered from her own garden-patch, and 
 inviting her royal parents to meals of her own preparing ; 
 and report says, that the dignitaries of the German court 
 have been horrified at the energetic determination of the 
 young royal housekeeper to overlook her own linen closets 
 and attend to her own affairs. But as an offset to what I 
 have been saying, it must be admitted that America is a 
 country where a young woman can be self-supporting with 
 out forfeiting her place in society. All our New England 
 and Western towns show us female teachers who are as well 
 received and as much caressed in society, and as often con 
 tract advantageous marriages, as any women whatever ; and 
 the productive labor of American women, in various arts, 
 trades, and callings, would be found, I think, not inferior 
 to that of any women in the world. 
 
 "Furthermore, the history of the late war has shown 
 them capable of every form of heroic endeavor. We have 
 
290 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 had hundreds of Florence Nightingales, and an amount of 
 real hard work has been done by female hands not inferior 
 to that performed by men in the camp and field, and enough 
 to make sure that American womanhood is not yet so ener 
 vated as seriously to interfere with the prospects of free 
 republican society." 
 
 " I wonder," said Jenny, " what it is in our country 
 that spoils the working classes that come into it. They say 
 that the emigrants, as they land here, are often simple- 
 hearted people, willing to work, accustomed to early hours 
 and plain living, decorous and respectful in their manners. 
 It would seem as if aristocratic drilling had done them 
 good. In a f Aw months they become brawling, impertinent, 
 grasping, want high wages, and are very unwilling to work. 
 I went to several intelligence-offices the other day to look 
 for a girl for Marianne, and I thought, by the way the can 
 didates catechized the ladies, and the airs they took upon 
 them, that they considered themselves the future mistresses 
 interrogating their subordinates. 
 
 " Does ye expect me to do the washin with the cookin ? 
 
 " < Yes. 
 
 " Thin I 11 niver go to that place ! 
 
 " i And does ye expect me to get the early breakfast for 
 yer husband to be off in the train every mornin ? 
 
 " < Yes. 
 
 " ( I niver does that, that ought to be a second girl s 
 work. 
 
 " How many servants does ye keep, ma am ? 
 
 " Two. 
 
 " I niver lives with people that keeps but two servants. 7 
 
 " How many has ye in yer family ? 
 
 Seven. 
 
 " That s too large a family. Has ye much company ? " 
 
 " Yes, we have company occasionally. 
 
 " Thin I can t come to ye ; it 11 be too hand a place. 
 
A FAMILY TALK ON RECONSTRUCTION 291 
 
 " In fact, the thing they were all in quest of seemed to 
 be a very small family, with very high wages, and many 
 perquisites and privileges. 
 
 " This is the kind of work-people our manners and insti 
 tutions make of people that come over here. I remember 
 one day seeing a coachman touch his cap to his mistress 
 when she spoke to him, as is the way in Europe, and hear 
 ing one or two others saying among themselves, 
 
 " That chap s a greenie ; he 11 get over that soon. ; 
 
 " All these things show," said I, " that the staff of power 
 has passed from the hands of gentility into those of labor. 
 We may think the working classes somewhat unseemly in 
 their assertion of self-importance ; but, after all, are they, 
 considering their inferior advantages of breeding, any more 
 overbearing and impertinent than the upper classes have 
 always been to them in all ages and countries ? 
 
 " When Biddy looks long, hedges in her work with many 
 conditions, and is careful to get the most she can for the 
 least labor, is she, after all, doing any more than you or I 
 or all the rest of the world ? I myself will not write arti 
 cles for five dollars a page, when there are those who will 
 give me fifteen. I would not do double duty as an editor 
 on a salary of seven thousand, when I could get ten thou 
 sand for less work. 
 
 " Biddy and her mistress are two human beings, with 
 the same human wants. Both want to escape trouble, to 
 make their life comfortable and easy, with the least outlay 
 of expense. Biddy s capital is her muscles and sinews ; and 
 she wants to get as many greenbacks in exchange for them 
 as her wit and shrewdness will enable her to do. You feel, 
 when you bargain with her, that she is nothing to you, ex 
 cept so far as her strength and knowledge may save you 
 care and trouble ; and she feels that you are nothing to 
 her, except so far as she can get your money for her work. 
 The free-and-easy airs of those seeking employment show 
 
292 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 one thing, that the country in general is prosperous, and 
 that openings for profitable employment are so numerous 
 that it is not thought necessary to try to conciliate favor. 
 If the community were at starvation-point, and the loss of 
 a situation brought fear of the almshouse, the laboring-class 
 would be more subservient. As it is, there is a little spice 
 of the bitterness of a past age of servitude in their present 
 attitude, a bristling, self-defensive impertinence, which 
 will gradually smooth away as society learns to accommo 
 date itself to the new order of things." 
 
 " Well, but, papa," said Jenny, " don t you think all 
 this a very severe test, if applied to us women particularly, 
 more than to the men ? Mr. Theophilus seems to think 
 women are aristocrats, and go for enslaving the lower classes 
 out of mere selfishness ; but I say that we are a great deal 
 more strongly tempted than men, because all these annoy 
 ances and trials of domestic life come upon us. It is very 
 insidious, the aristocratic argument, as it appeals to us ; 
 there seems much to be said in its favor. It does appear 
 to me that it is better to have servants and work-people 
 tidy, industrious, respectful, and decorous, as they are in 
 Europe, than domineering, impertinent, and negligent, as 
 they are here, and it seems that there is something in 
 our institutions that produces these disagreeable traits ; and 
 I presume that the negroes will eventually be traveling the 
 same road as the Irish, and from the same influences. 
 
 " When people see all these things, and feel all the in 
 conveniences of them, I don t wonder that they are tempted 
 not to like democracy, and to feel as if aristocratic institu 
 tions made a more agreeable state of society. It is not such 
 a blank, bald, downright piece of brutal selfishness as Mr. 
 Theophilus there seems to suppose, for us to wish there 
 were some quiet, submissive, laborious lower class, who 
 would be content to work for kind treatment and moderate 
 wages." 
 
A FAMILY TALK ON RECONSTRUCTION 293 
 
 " But, my little dear/ said I, " the matter is not left to 
 our choice. Wish it or not wish it, it s what we evidently 
 can t have. The day for that thing is past. The power is 
 passing out of the hands of the cultivated few into those of 
 the strong, laborious many. Numbers is the king of our 
 era j and he will reign over us, whether we will hear or 
 whether we will forbear. The sighers for an obedient lower 
 class and the mourners for slavery may get ready their crape 
 and have their pocket-handkerchiefs bordered with black; 
 for they have much weeping to do, and for many years to 
 come. The good old feudal times, when two thirds of the 
 population thought themselves born only for the honor, 
 glory, and profit. of the other third, are gone, with all their 
 beautiful devotions, all their trappings of song and story. 
 In the land where such institutions were most deeply rooted 
 and most firmly established, they are assailed every day by 
 hard hands and stout hearts ; and their position resembles 
 that of some of the picturesque ruins of Italy, which are 
 constantly being torn away to build prosaic modern shops 
 and houses. 
 
 " This great democratic movement is coming down into 
 modern society with a march as irresistible as the glacier 
 moves down from the mountains. Its front is in America, 
 and behind are England, France, Italy, Prussia, and the 
 Mohammedan countries. In all, the rights of the laboring 
 masses are a living force, bearing slowly and inevitably all 
 before it. Our war has been a marshaling of its armies, 
 commanded by a hard-handed, inspired man of the working- 
 class. An intelligent American, recently resident in Egypt, 
 says it was affecting to notice the interest with which the 
 working classes there were looking upon our late struggle in 
 America, and the earnestness of their wishes for the tri 
 umph of the Union. ( It is our cause, it is for us, they 
 said, as said the cotton spinners of England and the silk 
 weavers of Lyons. The forces of this mighty movement are 
 
294 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 still directed by a man from the lower orders, the sworn foe 
 of exclusive privileges and landed aristocracies. If Andy 
 Johnson is consistent with himself, with the principles 
 which raised him from a tailor s bench to the head of a 
 mighty nation, he will see to it that the work that Lincoln 
 began is so thoroughly done, that every man and every 
 woman in America, of whatever race or complexion, shall 
 have exactly equal rights before the law, and be free to rise 
 or fall according to their individual intelligence, industry, 
 and moral worth. So long as everything is not strictly 
 in accordance with our principles of democracy, so long as 
 there is in any part of the country an aristocratic upper 
 class who despise labor, and a laboring lower class that is 
 denied equal political rights, so long this grinding and dis 
 cord between the two will never cease in America. It will 
 make trouble not only in the South, but in the North, 
 trouble between all employers and employed, trouble in 
 every branch and department of labor, trouble in every 
 parlor and every kitchen. 
 
 " What is it that has driven every American woman out 
 of domestic service, when domestic service is full as well 
 paid, is easier, healthier, and in many cases far more agree 
 able, than shop and factory work ? It is, more than any 
 thing else, the influence of slavery in the South, its in 
 sensible influence on the minds of mistresses, giving them 
 false ideas of what ought to be the position and treatment 
 of a female citizen in domestic service, and its very marked 
 influence on the minds of freedom-loving Americans, causing 
 them to choose any position- rather than one which is re 
 garded as assimilating them to slaves. It is difficult to say 
 what are the very worst results of a system so altogether 
 bad as that of slavery ; but one of the worst is certainly the 
 utter contempt it brings on useful labor, and the consequent 
 utter physical and moral degradation of a large body of the 
 whites ; and this contempt of useful labor has been con- 
 
A FAMILY TALK ON KECONSTRUCTION 295 
 
 stantly spreading like an infection from the Southern to the 
 Northern States, particularly among women, who, as our 
 friend here has truly said, are by our worship and exalta 
 tion of them made peculiarly liable to take the malaria of 
 aristocratic society. Let anybody observe the conversation 
 in good society for an hour or two, and hear the tone in 
 which servant-girls, seamstresses, mechanics, and all who 
 work for their living, are sometimes mentioned, and he will 
 see that, while every one of the speakers professes to regard 
 useful labor as respectable, she is yet deeply imbued with 
 the leaven of aristocratic ideas. 
 
 " In the South the contempt for labor bred of slavery 
 has so permeated society, that we see great, coarse, vulgar 
 lazzaroni lying about in rags and vermin, and dependent 
 on government rations, maintaining, as their only source of 
 self-respect, that they never have done and never will do a 
 stroke of useful work in all their lives. In the North there 
 are, I believe, no men who would make such a boast ; but I 
 think there are many women beautiful, fascinating laz- 
 zaroni of the parlor and boudoir who make their boast 
 of elegant helplessness and utter incompetence for any of 
 woman s duties with equal naivete. The Spartans made 
 their slaves drunk, to teach their children the evils of intoxi 
 cation ; and it seems to be the policy of a large class in the 
 South now to keep down and degrade the only working 
 class they have, for the sake of teaching their children to 
 despise work. 
 
 " We of the North, who know the dignity of labor, who 
 know the value of free and equal institutions, who have en 
 joyed advantages for seeing their operation, ought, in true 
 brotherliness, to exercise the power given us by the present 
 position of the people of the Southern States, and put things 
 thoroughly right for them, well knowing, that, though they 
 may not like it at the moment, they will like it in the end, 
 and that it will bring them peace, plenty, and settled pros- 
 
296 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 perity, such as they have long envied here in the North. It 
 is no kindness to an invalid brother, half recovered from 
 delirium, to leave him a knife to cut his throat with, should 
 he be so disposed. We should rather appeal from Philip 
 drunk to Philip sober, and do real kindness, trusting to the 
 future for our meed of gratitude. 
 
 " Giving equal political rights to all the inhabitants of 
 the Southern States will be their shortest way to quiet and 
 to wealth. It will avert what is else almost certain, a 
 war of races ; since all experience shows that the ballot in 
 troduces the very politest relations between the higher and 
 lower classes. If the right be restricted, let it be by require 
 ments of property and education, applying to all the popu 
 lation equally. 
 
 " Meanwhile, we citizens and citizenesses of the North 
 should remember that Reconstruction means something more 
 than setting things right in the Southern States. We have 
 saved our government and institutions, but we have paid a 
 fearful price for their salvation ; and we ought to prove now 
 that they are worth the price. 
 
 " The empty chair, never to be filled ; the light gone out 
 on its candlestick, never on earth to be rekindled ; gallant 
 souls that have exhaled to heaven in slow torture and star 
 vation ; the precious blood that has drenched a hundred 
 battlefields, all call to us with warning voices, and tell us 
 not to let such sacrifices be in vain. They call on us by 
 our clear understanding of the great principles of democratic 
 equality, for which our martyred brethren suffered and died, 
 to show to all the world that their death was no mean and 
 useless waste, but a glorious investment for the future of 
 mankind. 
 
 " This war, these sufferings, these sacrifices, ought to 
 make every American man and woman look on himself and 
 herself as belonging to a royal priesthood, a peculiar people. 
 The blood of our slain ought to be a gulf, wide and deep as the 
 
A FAMILY TALK ON RECONSTRUCTION 297 
 
 Atlantic, dividing us from the opinions and the practices of 
 countries whose government and society are founded on other 
 and antagonistic ideas. Democratic republicanism has never 
 yet been perfectly worked out either in this or any other 
 country. It is a splendid edifice, half built, deformed by 
 rude scaffolding, noisy with the clink of trowels, blinding 
 the eyes with the dust of lime, and endangering our heads 
 with falling brick. We make our way over heaps of shav 
 ings and lumber to view the stately apartments, we en 
 danger our necks in climbing ladders standing in the place 
 of future staircases ; but let us not for all this cry out that 
 the old rat-holed mansions of former ages, with their mould, 
 and moss, and cockroaches, are better than this new palace. 
 There is no lime-dust, no clink of trowels, no rough scaffold 
 ing there, to be sure, and life goes on very quietly ; but there 
 is the foul air of slow and sure decay. 
 
 ec Republican institutions in America are in a transition 
 state ; they have not yet separated themselves from foreign 
 and antagonistic ideas and traditions, derived from old coun 
 tries ; and the labors necessary for the upbuilding of society 
 are not yet so adjusted that there is mutual pleasure and 
 comfort in the relations of employer and employed. We 
 still incline to class distinctions and aristocracies. We in 
 cline to the scheme of dividing the world s work into two 
 orders : first, physical labor, which is held to be rude and 
 vulgar, and the province of a lower class ; and second, brain 
 labor, held to be refined and aristocratic, and the province 
 of a higher class. Meanwhile, the Creator, who is the great 
 est of levelers, has given to every human being both a 
 physical system, needing to be kept in order by physical 
 labor, and an intellectual or brain power, needing to be kept 
 in order by brain labor. Work, use, employment, is the 
 condition of health in both 5 and he who works either to 
 the neglect of the other lives but a half-life, and is an im 
 perfect human being. 
 
298 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 " The aristocracies of the Old World claim that their only 
 labor should be that of the brain ; and they keep their physi 
 cal system in order by violent exercise, which is made gen 
 teel from the fact only that it is not useful or productive. 
 It would be losing caste to refresh the muscles by handling 
 the plough or the axe ; and so foxes and hares must be kept 
 to be hunted, and whole counties turned into preserves, in 
 order that the nobility and gentry may have physical ex 
 ercise in a way befitting their station, that is to say, in 
 a way that produces nothing, and does good only to them 
 selves. 
 
 " The model republican uses his brain for the highest 
 purposes of brain work, and his muscles in productive physi 
 cal labor ; and useful labor he respects above that which is 
 merely agreeable. When this equal respect for physical and 
 mental labor shall have taken possession of every American 
 citizen, there will be no so-called laboring class ; there will 
 no more be a class all muscle without brain power to guide 
 it, and a class all brain without muscular power to execute. 
 The labors of society will be lighter, because each individual 
 will take his part in them ; they will be performed better, 
 because no one will be overburdened. In those days, Miss 
 Jenny, it will be an easier matter to keep house, because, 
 housework being no longer regarded as degrading drudgery, 
 you will find a superior class of women ready to engage in it. 
 
 " Every young girl and woman, who in her sphere and 
 by her example shows that she is not ashamed of domestic 
 labor, and that she considers the necessary work and duties 
 of family life as dignified and important, is helping to bring 
 on this good day. Louis Philippe once jestingly remarked, 
 ( I have this qualification for being a king in these days, 
 that I have blacked my own boots, and could black them 
 again. 
 
 " Every American ought to cultivate, as his pride and 
 birthright, the habit of self-helpfulness. Our command of 
 
A FAMILY TALK ON RECONSTRUCTION 299 
 
 the labors of good employees in any department is liable to 
 such interruptions, that he who has blacked his own boots, 
 and can do it again, is, on the whole, likely to secure the 
 most comfort in life. 
 
 " As to that which Mr. Ruskin pronounces to be a deep, 
 irremediable ulcer in society, namely, domestic service, we 
 hold that the last workings of pure democracy will cleanse 
 and heal it. When right ideas are sufficiently spread ; when 
 everybody is self-helpful and capable of being self-support 
 ing ; when there is a fair start for every human being in the 
 race of life, and all its prizes are, without respect of persons, 
 to be obtained by the best runner ; when every kind of use 
 ful labor is thoroughly respected, then there will be a 
 clear, just, wholesome basis of intercourse on which employ 
 ers and employed can move without wrangling or discord. 
 
 " Renouncing all claims to superiority on the one hand, 
 and all thought of servility on the other, service can be 
 rendered by fair contracts and agreements, with that mutual 
 respect and benevolence which every human being owes to 
 every other. But for this transition period, which is wear 
 ing out the life of so many women, and making so many 
 households uncomfortable, I have some alleviating sugges 
 tions, which I shall give in my next chapter." 
 
IV 
 
 IS WOMAN A WORKER 
 
 " PAPA, do you see what the Evening Post says of your 
 New Year s article on Reconstruction ? " said Jenny, as we 
 were all sitting in the library after tea. 
 
 " I have not seen it." 
 
 " Well, then, the charming writer, whoever he is, takes 
 up for us girls and women, and maintains that no work of 
 any sort ought to be expected of us ; that our only mission 
 in life is to be beautiful, and to refresh and elevate the 
 spirits of men by being so. If I get a husband, my mission 
 is to be always becomingly dressed, to display most captivat 
 ing toilettes, and to be always in good spirits, as, under 
 the circumstances, I always should be, and thus renew 
 his spirits when he conies in weary with the toils of life. 
 Household cares are to be far from me : they destroy my 
 cheerfulness and injure my beauty. 
 
 " He says that the New England standard of excellence 
 as applied to woman has been a mistaken one ; and, in conse 
 quence, though the girls are beautiful, the matrons are faded, 
 overworked, and uninteresting ; and that such a state of soci 
 ety tends to immorality, because, when wives are no longer 
 charming, men are open to the temptation to desert their 
 firesides, and get into mischief generally. He seems particu 
 larly to complain of your calling ladies who do nothing the 
 fascinating lazzaroni of the parlor and boudoir. : 
 
 " There was too much truth back of that arrow not to 
 wound," said Theophilus Thoro, who was ensconced, as 
 usual, in his dark corner, whence he supervises our discus 
 sions. 
 
IS WOMAN A WOEKER 301 
 
 " Come, Mr. Thoro, we won t have any of your bitter 
 moralities/ said Jenny ; " they are only to be taken as the 
 invariable bay-leaf which Professor Blot introduces into all 
 his recipes for soups and stews, a little elegant bitterness, 
 to be kept tastefully in the background. You see now, 
 papa, I should like the vocation of being beautiful. It 
 would just suit me to wear point-lace and jewelry, and to 
 have life revolve round me, as some beautiful star, and feel 
 that I had nothing to do but shine and refresh the spirits 
 of all gazers, and that in this way I was truly useful, and 
 fulfilling the great end of my being ; but alas for this doc 
 trine ! all women have not beauty. The most of us can 
 only hope not to be called ill-looking, and, when we get 
 ourselves up with care, to look fresh and trim and agree 
 able ; which fact interferes with the theory." 
 
 "Well, for my part," said young Rudolph, "I go for 
 the theory of the beautiful. If ever I marry, it is to find 
 an asylum for ideality. I don t want to make a culinary 
 marriage or a business partnership. I want a being whom 
 I can keep in a sphere of poetry and beauty, out of the 
 dust and grime of every -day life." 
 
 "Then," said Mr. Theophilus, "you must either be a 
 rich man in your own right, or your fair ideal must have a 
 handsome fortune of her own." 
 
 " I never will marry a rich wife," quoth Rudolph. 
 " My wife must be supported by me, not I by her." 
 
 Rudolph is another of the habitues of our chimney-corner, 
 representing the order of young knighthood in America, and 
 his dreams and fancies, if impracticable, are always of a kind 
 to make every one think him a good fellow. He who has no 
 romantic dreams at twenty-one will be a horribly dry peascod 
 at fifty ; therefore it is that I gaze reverently at all Ru 
 dolph s chateaus in Spain, which want nothing to complete 
 them except solid earth to stand on. 
 
 " And pray," said Theophilus, " how long will it take 
 
302 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 a young lawyer or physician, starting with no heritage but 
 his own brain, to create a sphere of poetry and beauty in 
 which to keep his goddess ? How much a year will be 
 necessary, as the English say, to do this garden of Eden, 
 whereinto shall enter only the poetry of life ? " 
 
 " I don t know. I have n t seen it near enough to con 
 sider. It is because I know the difficulty of its attain 
 ment that I have no present thoughts of marriage. Mar 
 riage is to me in the bluest of all blue distances, far off, 
 mysterious, and dreamy as the Mountains of the Moon or 
 sources of the Nile. It shall come only when I have secured 
 a fortune that shall place my wife above all necessity of 
 work or care." 
 
 " I desire to hear from you," said Theophilus, " when 
 you have found the sum that will keep a woman from care. 
 I know of women now inhabiting palaces, waited on at 
 every turn by servants, with carriages, horses, jewels, laces, 
 Cashmeres, enough for princesses, who are eaten up by care. 
 One lies awake all night on account of a wrinkle in the 
 waist of her dress ; another is dying because no silk of a 
 certain inexpressible shade is to be found in New York ; a 
 third has had a dress sent home, which has proved such a fail 
 ure that life seems no longer worth having. If it were not 
 for the consolations of religion, one does n t know what would 
 become of her. The fact is, that care and labor are as 
 much correlated to human existence as shadow is to light ; 
 there is no such thing as excluding them from any mortal 
 lot. You may make a canary-bird or a gold-fish live in 
 absolute contentment without a care or labor, but a human 
 being you cannot. Human beings are restless and active 
 in their very nature, and will do something, and that some 
 thing will prove a care, a labor, and a fatigue, arrange it 
 how you will. As long as there is anything to be desired 
 and not yet attained, so long its attainment will be at 
 tempted ;, so long as that attainment is doubtful or difficult, 
 
IS WOMAN A WORKER 303 
 
 so long will there be care and anxiety. When boundless 
 wealth releases woman from every family care, she immedi 
 ately makes herself a new set of cares in another direction, 
 and has just as many anxieties as the most toilful house 
 keeper, only they are of a different kind. Talk of labor, 
 and look at the upper classes in London or in New York 
 in the fashionable season. Do any women work harder ? 
 To rush from crowd to crowd all night, night after night, 
 seeing what they are tired of, making the agreeable over an 
 abyss of inward yawning, crowded, jostled, breathing hot 
 air, and crushed in halls and stairways, without a moment 
 of leisure for months and months, till brain and nerve and 
 sense reel, and the country is longed for as a period of re 
 suscitation and relief ! Such is the release from labor and 
 fatigue brought by wealth. The only thing that makes 
 all this labor at all endurable is, that it is utterly and en 
 tirely useless, and does no good to any one in creation ; 
 this alone makes it genteel, and distinguishes it from the 
 vulgar toils of a housekeeper. These delicate creatures, who 
 can go to three or four parties a night for three months, 
 would be utterly desolate if they had to watch one night in a 
 sick-room ; and though they can exhibit any amount of phy 
 sical endurance and vigor in crowding into assembly rooms, 
 and breathe tainted air in an opera-house with the most mar 
 tyr-like constancy, they could not sit one half-hour in the 
 close room where the sister of charity spends hours in consol 
 ing the sick or aged poor." 
 
 " Mr. Theophilus is quite at home now," said Jenny ; 
 " only start him on the track of fashionable life, and he 
 takes the course like a hound. But hear, now, our cham 
 pion of the Evening Post : 
 
 " f The instinct of women to seek a life of repose, their 
 eagerness to attain the life of elegance, does not mean con 
 tempt for labor, but it is a confession of unfitness for labor. 
 Women were not intended to work, not because work is 
 
301 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 ignoble, but because it is as disastrous to tbe beauty of a 
 woman as is friction to the bloom and softness of a flower. 
 Woman is to be kept in the garden of life ; she is to rest, 
 to receive, to praise ; she is to be kept from the workshop 
 world, where innocence is snatched with rude hands, and 
 softness is blistered into unsightliness or hardened into 
 adamant. No social truth is more in need of exposition 
 and illustration than this one ; and, above all, the people 
 of New England need to know it, and, better, they need to 
 believe it. 
 
 " { It is therefore with regret that we discover Christopher 
 Crowfield applying so harshly, and, as we think so indis- 
 criminatingly, the theory of work to women, and teaching 
 a society made up of women sacrificed in the workshops of 
 the State, or to the dustpans and kitchens of the house, 
 that women must work, ought to work, and are dishonored 
 if they do not work ; and that a woman committed to the 
 drudgery of a household is more creditably employed than 
 when she is charming, fascinating, irresistible, in the parlor 
 or boudoir. The consequence of this fatal mistake is mani 
 fest throughout New England, in New England where 
 the girls are all beautiful and the wives and mothers faded, 
 disfigured, and without charm or attractiveness. The moment 
 a girl marries, in New England, she is apt to become a drudge 
 or a lay figure on which to exhibit the latest fashions. She 
 never has beautiful hands, and she would not have a beau 
 tiful face if a utilitarian society could " apply " her face to 
 anything but the pleasure of the eye. Her hands lose their 
 shape and softness after childhood, and domestic drudgery 
 destroys her beauty of form and softness and bloom of com 
 plexion after marriage. To correct, or rather to break up, 
 this despotism of household cares, or of work, over woman, 
 American society must be taught that women will inevitably 
 fade and deteriorate, unless it insures repose and comfort to 
 them. It must be taught that reverence for beauty is the 
 
IS WOMAN A WORKER 305 
 
 normal condition, while the theory of work, applied to women, 
 is disastrous alike to beauty and morals. Work, when it is 
 destructive to men or women, is forced and unjust. 
 
 " i All the great masculine or creative epochs have been 
 distinguished by spontaneous work on the part of men, and 
 universal reverence arid care for beauty. The praise of 
 work, and sacrifice of women to this great heartless devil 
 of work, belong only to, and are the social doctrine of, a 
 mechanical age and a utilitarian epoch. And if the New 
 England idea of social life continues to bear so cruelly on 
 woman, we shall have a reaction somewhat unexpected and 
 shocking. 
 
 " Well now, say what you will," said Rudolph, " you 
 have expressed my idea of the conditions of the sex. 
 Woman was not made to work ; she was made to be taken 
 care of by man. All that is severe and trying, whether in 
 study or in practical life, is and ought to be in its very na 
 ture essentially the work of the male sex. The value of 
 woman is precisely the value of those priceless works of art 
 for which we build museums, which we shelter and guard 
 as the world s choicest heritage ; and a lovely, cultivated, 
 refined woman, thus sheltered, and guarded, and developed, 
 has a worth that cannot be estimated by any gross, material 
 standard. So I subscribe to the sentiments of Miss Jenny s 
 friend without scruple." 
 
 " The great trouble in settling all these society ques 
 tions," said I, "lies in the gold- washing the cradling I 
 think the miners call it. If all the quartz were in one 
 stratum and all the gold in another, it would save us a vast 
 deal of trouble. In the ideas of Jenny s friend of the 
 Evening Post there is a line of truth and a line of false 
 hood so interwoven and threaded together that it is impos 
 sible wholly to assent or dissent. So with your ideas, Ru 
 dolph, there is a degree of truth in them, but there is also 
 a fallacy. 
 
306 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 " It is a truth, that woman as a sex ought not to do the 
 hard work of the world, either social, intellectual, or moral. 
 These are evidences in her physiology that this was not in 
 tended for her, and our friend of the Evening Post is right 
 in saying that any country will advance more rapidly in 
 civilization and refinement where woman is thus sheltered 
 and protected. And I think, furthermore, that there is no 
 country in the world where women are so much considered 
 and cared for and sheltered, in every walk of life, as in 
 America. In England and France, all over the conti 
 nent of Europe, in fact, the other sex are deferential to 
 women only from some presumption of their social standing, 
 or from the fact of acquaintanceship ; but among strangers, 
 and under circumstances where no particular rank or posi 
 tion can be inferred, a woman traveling in England or 
 France is jostled and pushed to the wall, and left to take 
 her own chance, precisely as if she were not a woman. 
 Deference to delicacy and weakness, the instinct of protec 
 tion, does not appear to characterize the masculine popu 
 lation of any other quarter of the world so much as that 
 of America. In France, les Messieurs will form a circle 
 round the fire in the receiving-room of a railroad station, 
 and sit, tranquilly smoking their cigars, while ladies who do 
 not happen to be of their acquaintance are standing shiver 
 ing at the other side of the room. In England, if a lady is 
 incautiously booked for an outside place on a coach, in hope 
 of seeing the scenery, and the day turns out hopelessly 
 rainy, no gentleman in the coach below ever thinks of offer 
 ing to change seats with her, though it pour torrents. In 
 America, the roughest backwoods steamboat or canal-boat cap 
 tain always, as a matter of course, considers himself charged 
 with the protection of the ladies. { Place anx dames is 
 written in the heart of many a shaggy fellow who could 
 not utter a French word any more than could a buffalo. 
 It is just as I have before said, women are the recog- 
 
IS WOMAN A WORKER 307 
 
 nized aristocracy, the only aristocracy, of America ; and, so 
 far from regarding this fact as objectionable, it is an un 
 ceasing source of pride in my country. 
 
 " That kind of knightly feeling towards woman which 
 reverences her delicacy, her frailty, which protects and cares 
 for her, is, I think, the crown of manhood ; and without it 
 a man is only a rough animal. But our fair aristocrats and 
 their knightly defenders need to be cautioned lest they lose 
 their position, as many privileged orders have before done, 
 by an arrogant and selfish use of power. 
 
 " I have said that the vices of aristocracy are more devel 
 oped among women in America than among men, and that, 
 while there are no men in the Northern States who are not 
 ashamed of living a merely idle life of pleasure, there are 
 many women who make a boast of helplessness and igno 
 rance in woman s family duties which any man would be 
 ashamed to make with regard to man s duties, as if such 
 helplessness and ignorance were a grace and a charm. 
 
 " There are women who contentedly live on, year after 
 year, a life of idleness, while the husband and father is 
 straining every nerve, growing prematurely old and gray, 
 abridged of almost every form of recreation or pleasure, 
 all that he may keep them in a state of careless ease 
 and festivity. It may be very fine, very generous, very 
 knightly, in the man who thus toils at the oar that his 
 princesses may enjoy their painted voyages ; but what is it 
 for the women ? 
 
 " A woman is a moral being an immortal soul before 
 she is a woman ; and as such she is charged by her Maker 
 with some share of the great burden of work which lies on 
 the world. 
 
 " Self-denial, the bearing of the cross, are stated by Christ 
 as indispensable conditions to the entrance into his kingdom, 
 and no exception is made for man or woman. Some task, 
 some burden, some cross, each one must carry ; and there 
 
308 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 must be something done in every true and worthy life, not 
 as amusement, but as duty, not as play, but as earnest 
 twork, and no human being can attain to the Christian 
 standard without this. 
 
 " When Jesus Christ took a towel and girded himself, 
 poured water into a basin, and washed his disciples feet, he 
 performed a significant and sacramental act. which no man 
 or woman should ever forget. If wealth and rank and power 
 absolve from the services of life, then certainly were Jesus 
 Christ absolved, as he says : ( Ye call me Master, and Lord. 
 If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, 
 ye also ought to wash one another s feet. For I have 
 given you an example, that ye should do as I have done 
 to you. 
 
 " Let a man who seeks to make a terrestrial paradise for 
 the woman of his heart, to absolve her from all care, 
 from all labor, to teach her to accept and to receive the 
 labor of others without any attempt to offer labor in return, 
 consider whether he is not thus going directly against 
 the fundamental idea of Christianity ; taking the direct way 
 to make his idol selfish and exacting, to rob her of the high 
 est and noblest beauty of womanhood. 
 
 " In that chapter of the Bible where the relation between 
 man and woman is stated, it is thus said, with quaint simpli 
 city : It is not good that the man should be alone ; I will 
 make him an help meet for him. Woman the helper of 
 man, not his toy, not a picture, not a statue, not a work 
 of art, but a HELPER, a doer, such is the view of the 
 Bible and the Christian religion. 
 
 a It is not necessary that women should work physically 
 or morally to an extent which impairs beauty. In France, 
 where woman is harnessed with an ass to the plough which 
 her husband drives, where she digs, and wields the pick 
 axe, she becomes prematurely hideous ; but in America, 
 where woman reigns as queen in every household, she may 
 
IS WOMAN A WORKER 309 
 
 surely be a good and thoughtful housekeeper, she may have 
 physical strength exercised in lighter domestic toils, not only 
 without injuring her beauty, but with manifest advantage 
 to it. Almost every growing young girl would be the bet 
 ter in health, and therefore handsomer, for two hours of 
 active housework daily ; and the habit of usefulness thereby 
 gained would be an equal advantage to her moral develop 
 ment. The labors of modern, well-arranged houses are not 
 in any sense severe ; they are as gentle as any kind of exer 
 cise that can be devised, and they bring into play muscles 
 that ought to be exercised to be healthily developed. 
 
 " The great danger to the beauty of American women does 
 not lie, as the writer of the Post contends, in an overwork 
 ing of the physical system which shall stunt and deform ; on 
 the contrary, American women of the comfortable classes are 
 in danger of a loss of physical beauty from the entire deteri 
 oration of the muscular system for want of exercise. Take 
 the life of any American girl in one of our large towns, and 
 see what it is. We have an educational system of public 
 schools which for intellectual culture is a just matter of pride 
 to any country. From the time that the girl is seven years 
 old, her first thought, when she rises in the morning, is to eat 
 her breakfast and be off to her school. There really is no 
 more time than enough to allow her to make that complete 
 toilet which every well-bred female ought to make, and to 
 take her morning meal before her school begins. She re 
 turns at noon with just time to eat her dinner, and the 
 afternoon session begins. She comes home at night with 
 books, slate, and lessons enough to occupy her evening. 
 What time is there for teaching her any household work, 
 for teaching her to cut or fit or sew, or to inspire her with 
 any taste for domestic duties ? Her arms have no exercise ; 
 her chest and lungs, and all the complex system of muscles 
 which are to be perfected by quick and active movement, 
 are compressed while she bends over book and slate and 
 
310 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 drawing-board ; while the ever active brain is kept all the 
 while going at the top of its speed. She grows up spare, thin, 
 and delicate ; and while the Irish girl, who sweeps the par 
 lors, rubs the silver, and irons the muslins, is developing a 
 finely rounded arm and bust, the American girl has a pair 
 of bones at her sides, and a bust composed of cotton pad 
 ding, the work of a skillful dressmaker. Nature, who is no 
 respecter of persons, gives to Colleen Bawn, who uses her 
 arms and chest, a beauty which perishes in the gentle, lan 
 guid Edith, who does nothing but study and read." 
 
 " But is it not a fact," said Eudolph, " as stated by our 
 friend of the c Post, that American matrons are perishing, 
 and their beauty and grace all withered, from overwork ? " 
 
 " It is," said my wife ; " but why ? It is because they 
 are brought up without vigor or muscular strength, without 
 the least practical experience of household labor, or those 
 means of saving it which come by daily practice ; and then, 
 after marriage, when physically weakened by maternity, 
 embarrassed by the care of young children, they are often 
 suddenly deserted by every efficient servant, and the whole 
 machinery of a complicated household left in their weak, 
 inexperienced hands. In the country, you see a household 
 perhaps made void some fine morning by Biddy s sudden 
 departure, and nobody to make the bread, or cook the steak, 
 or sweep the parlors, or do one of the complicated offices of 
 a family, and no bakery, cook-shop, or laundry to turn to 
 for alleviation. A lovely, refined home becomes in a few 
 hours a howling desolation ; and then ensues a long season 
 of breakage, waste, distraction, as one wild Irish immigrant 
 after another introduces the style of Irish cottage life into 
 an elegant dwelling. 
 
 " Now suppose I grant to the Evening Post that wo 
 man ought to rest, to be kept in the garden of life, and 
 all that, how is this to be done in a country where a state 
 of things like this is the commonest of occurrences ? And 
 
IS WOMAN A WORKER 311 
 
 is it any kindness or reverence to woman, to educate her 
 for such an inevitable destiny by a life of complete physical 
 delicacy and incapacity ? Many a woman who has been 
 brought into these cruel circumstances would willingly ex 
 change all her knowledge of German and Italian, and all 
 her graceful accomplishments, for a good physical develop 
 ment, and some respectable savoir faire in ordinary life. 
 
 " Moreover, American matrons are overworked because 
 some unaccountable glamour leads them to continue to 
 bring up their girls in the same inefficient physical habits 
 which resulted in so much misery to themselves. House 
 work as they are obliged to do it, untrained, untaught, ex 
 hausted, and in company with rude, dirty, unkempt for 
 eigners, seems to them a degradation which they will spare 
 to their daughters. The daughter goes on with her schools 
 and accomplishments, and leads in the family the life of an 
 elegant little visitor during all those years when a young 
 girl might be gradually developing and strengthening her 
 muscles in healthy household work. It never occurs to 
 her that she can or ought to fill any of the domestic gaps 
 into which her mother always steps ; and she comforts her 
 self with the thought, I don t know how ; I can t ; I 
 have n t the strength. I can t sweep ; it blisters my hands. 
 If I should stand at the ironing-table an hour, I should 
 be ill for a week. As to cooking, I don t know anything 
 about it. And so, when the cook, or the chambermaid, or 
 nurse, or all together, vacate the premises, it is the mamma 
 who is successively cook, and chambermaid, and nurse ; and 
 this is the reason why matrons fade and are overworked. 
 
 " Now, Mr. Rudolph, do you think a woman any less 
 beautiful or interesting because she is a fully developed phy 
 sical being, because her muscles have been rounded and 
 matured into strength, so that she can meet the inevitable 
 emergencies of life without feeling them to be distressing 
 hardships ? If there be a competent, well-trained servant to 
 
312 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 sweep and dust the parlor, and keep all the machinery of 
 the house in motion, she may very properly select her work 
 out of the family, in some form of benevolent helpfulness ; 
 but when the inevitable evil hour comes, which is likely to 
 come first or last in every American household, is a woman 
 any less an elegant woman because her love of neatness, 
 order, and beauty leads her to make vigorous personal ex 
 ertions to keep her own home undefiled ? For my part, 
 I think a disorderly, ill-kept home, a sordid, uninviting 
 table, has driven more husbands from domestic life than 
 the unattractiveness of any overworked woman. So long 
 as a woman makes her home harmonious and orderly, so 
 long as the hour of assembling around the family table 
 is something to be looked forward to as a comfort and a 
 refreshment, a man cannot see that the good house fairy, 
 who by some magic keeps everything so delightfully, has 
 either a wrinkle or a gray hair." 
 
 " Besides," said I, " I must tell yon, Rudolph, what you 
 fellows of twenty-one are slow to believe ; and that is, that 
 the kind of ideal paradise you propose in marriage is, in the 
 very nature of things, an impossibility, that the familiar 
 ities of every-day life between two people who keep house 
 together must and will destroy it. Suppose you are mar 
 ried to Cytherea herself, and the next week attacked with 
 a rheumatic fever. If the tie between you is that of true 
 and honest love, Cytherea will put on a gingham wrapper, 
 and with her own sculptured hands wring out the flannels 
 w T hich shall relieve your pains ; and she will be no true 
 woman if she do not prefer to do this to employing any 
 nurse that could be hired. True love ennobles and dignifies 
 the material labors of life ; and homely services rendered for 
 love s sake have in them a poetry that is immortal. 
 
 "No true-hearted woman can find herself, in real, actual 
 life, unskilled and unfit to minister to the wants and sor 
 rows of those dearest to her, without a secret sense of 
 
IS WOMAN A WORKER 313 
 
 degradation. The feeling of uselessness is an extremely un 
 pleasant one. Tom Hood, in a very humorous paper, de 
 scribes a most accomplished schoolmistress, a teacher of all 
 the arts and crafts which are supposed to make up fine 
 gentlewomen, who is stranded in a rude German inn, with 
 her father writhing in the anguish of a severe attack of 
 gastric inflammation. The helpless lady gazes on her suf 
 fering parent, longing to help him, and thinking over all 
 her various little store of accomplishments, not one of which 
 bears the remotest relation to the case. She could knit him 
 a bead purse, or make him a guard-chain, or work him a 
 footstool, or festoon him with cut tissue-paper, or sketch his 
 likeness, or crust him over with alum crystals, or stick him 
 over with little rosettes of red and white wafers ; but none 
 of these being applicable to his present case, she sits gazing 
 in resigned imbecility, till finally she desperately resolves 
 to improvise him some gruel, and, after a laborious turn in 
 the kitchen, after burning her dress and blacking her 
 fingers, succeeds only in bringing him a bowl of paste ! 
 
 " Not unlike this might be the feeling of many an ele 
 gant and accomplished woman, whose education has taught 
 and practiced her in everything that woman ought to know, 
 except those identical ones which fit her for the care of a 
 home, for the comfort of a sick-room ; and so I say again 
 that, whatever a woman may be in the way of beauty and 
 elegance, she must have the strength and skill of a practi 
 cal worker, or she is nothing. She is not simply to be the 
 beautiful, she is to make the beautiful, and preserve it ; 
 and she who makes and she who keeps the beautiful must 
 be able to work, and know how to work. Whatever offices 
 of life are performed by women of culture and refinement 
 are thenceforth elevated ; they cease to be mere servile toils, 
 and become expressions of the ideas of superior beings. If 
 a true lady makes even a plate of toast, in arranging a petit 
 souper for her invalid friend, she does it as a lady should. 
 
314 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 She does not cut blundering and uneven slices ; she does 
 not burn the edges ; she does not deluge it with bad butter, 
 and serve it cold ; but she arranges and serves all with an 
 artistic care, with a nicety and delicacy, which make it 
 worth one s while to have a lady friend in sickness. 
 
 " And I am glad to hear that Monsieur Blot is teaching 
 classes of New York ladies that cooking is not a vulgar 
 kitchen toil, to be left to blundering servants, but an ele 
 gant feminine accomplishment, better worth a woman s 
 learning than crochet or embroidery ; and that a well-kept 
 culinary apartment may be so inviting and orderly that no 
 lady need feel her ladyhood compromised by participating 
 in its pleasant toils. I am glad to know that his cooking- 
 academy is thronged with more scholars than he can accom 
 modate, and from ladies in the best classes of society. 
 
 " Moreover, I am glad to see that in New Bedford, re 
 cently, a public course of instruction in the art of bread- 
 making has been commenced by a lady, and that classes of 
 the most respectable young and married ladies in the place 
 are attending them. These are steps in the right direc 
 tion, and show that our fair countrywomen, with the grand 
 good sense which is their leading characteristic, are resolved 
 to supply whatever in our national life is wanting. 
 
 (( I do not fear that women of such sense and energy 
 will listen to the sophistries which would persuade them 
 that elegant imbecility and inefficiency are charms of cul 
 tivated womanhood or ingredients in the poetry of life. 
 She alone can keep the poetry and beauty of married life 
 who has this poetry in her soul ; who with energy and dis 
 cretion can throw back and out of sight the sordid and 
 disagreeable details which beset all human living, and can 
 keep in the foreground that which is agreeable ; who has 
 enough knowledge of practical household matters to make 
 unskilled and rude hands minister to her cultivated and re 
 fined tastes, and constitute her skilled brain the guide of 
 
IS WOMAN A WORKER 315 
 
 unskilled hands. From such a home, with such a mistress, 
 no sirens will seduce a man, even though the hair grow 
 gray, and the merely physical charms of early days gradu 
 ally pass a\\ ay. The enchantment that was about her per 
 son alone in the days of courtship seems in the course of 
 years to have interfused and penetrated the home which 
 she has created, and which in every detail is only an ex 
 pression of her personality. Her thoughts, her plans, her 
 provident care, are everywhere ; and the home attracts and 
 holds by a thousand ties the heart which before marriage 
 was held by the woman alone." 
 
THE TRANSITION 
 
 " THE fact is, my dear/ said my wife, " that you have 
 thrown a stone into a congregation of blackbirds, in writing 
 as you have of our family wars and wants. The response 
 comes from all parts of the country, and the task of looking 
 over and answering your letters becomes increasingly for 
 midable. Everybody has something to say, something to 
 propose." 
 
 " Give me a re sume ," said I. 
 
 " Well," said my wife, " here are three pages from an 
 elderly gentleman, to the effect that women are not what they 
 used to be, that daughters are a great care and no help, 
 that girls have no health and no energy in practical life, 
 that the expense of maintaining a household is so great that 
 young men are afraid to marry, and that it costs more now per 
 annum to dress one young woman than it used to cost to carry 
 a whole family of sons through college. In short, the poor 
 old gentleman is in a desperate state of mind, and is firmly 
 of opinion that society is going to ruin by an express train." 
 
 " Poor old fellow ! " said I, " the only comfort I can 
 offer him is what I take myself, that this sad world will 
 last out our time at least. oSTow for the next." 
 
 "The next is more concise and spicy," said my wife. 
 " I will read it. 
 
 " CHRISTOPHER CROWFIELD, ESQ. : 
 
 " Sir, If you want to know how American women 
 are to be brought back to family work, I can tell you a 
 
THE TRANSITION 317 
 
 short method. Pay them as good wages for it as they can 
 make in any other way. I get from seven to nine dollars 
 a week in a shop where I work ; if I could make the same 
 in any good family, I should have no objection to doing it. 
 " Your obedient servant, 
 
 " LETITIA." 
 
 " My correspondent Letitia does not tell me," said I, 
 " how much of this seven or nine dollars she pays out for 
 board and washing, fire and lights. If she worked in a 
 good family at two or three dollars a week, it is easily de 
 monstrable that, at the present cost of these items, she 
 would make as much clear profit as she now does at nine 
 dollars for her shop-work. 
 
 " And there are two other things, moreover, which she 
 does not consider : First, that, besides board, washing, fuel, 
 and lights, which she would have in a family, she would 
 have also less unintermitted toil. Shop-work exacts its ten 
 hours per diem ; and it makes no allowance for sickness or 
 accident. 
 
 " A good domestic in a good family finds many hours 
 when she can feel free to attend to her own affairs. Her 
 work consists of certain definite matters, which being done 
 her time is her own ; and if she have skill and address in 
 the management of her duties, she may secure many leisure 
 hours. As houses are now built, and with the many labor- 
 saving conveniences that are being introduced, the physical 
 labor of housework is no more than a healthy woman really 
 needs to keep her in health. In case, however, of those 
 slight illnesses to which all are more or less liable, and 
 which, if neglected, often lead to graver ones, the advantage 
 is still on the side of domestic service. In the shop and 
 factory, every hour of unemployed time is deducted ; an 
 illness of a day or two is an appreciable loss of just so much 
 money, while the expense of board is still going on. But 
 
318 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 in the family a good servant is always considered. When 
 ill, she is carefully nursed as one of the family, has the 
 family physician, and is subject to no deduction from her 
 wages for loss of time. I have known more than one in 
 stance in which a valued domestic has been sent, at her 
 employer s expense, to the seaside or some other pleasant 
 locality, for change of air, when her health has been run 
 down. 
 
 " In the second place, family work is more remunerative, 
 even at a lower rate of wages, than shop or factory work, 
 because it is better for the health. All sorts of sedentary 
 employment, pursued by numbers of persons together in one 
 apartment, are more or less debilitating and unhealthy, 
 through foul air and confinement. 
 
 " A woman s health is her capital. In certain ways of 
 work she obtains more income, but she spends on her capital 
 to do it. In another way she may get less income, and yet 
 increase her capital. A woman cannot work at dressmak 
 ing, tailoring, or any other sedentary employment, ten hours 
 a day, year in and out, without enfeebling her constitution, 
 impairing her eyesight, and bringing on a complication of 
 complaints, but she can sweep, wash, cook, and do the va 
 ried duties of a well-ordered house with modern arrange 
 ments, and grow healthier every year. The times, in New 
 England, when all women did housework a part of every 
 day, were the times when all women were healthy. At 
 present, the heritage of vigorous muscles, firm nerves, strong 
 backs, and cheerful physical life has gone from American 
 women, and is taken up by Irish women. A thrifty young 
 man I have lately heard of married a rosy young Irish girl, 
 quite to the horror of his mother and sisters, but defended 
 himself by the following very conclusive logic : If I marry 
 an American girl, I must have an Irish girl to take care of 
 her ; and I cannot afford to support both. 
 
 " Besides all this, there is a third consideration, which I 
 
THE TRANSITION 319 
 
 humbly commend to my friend Letitia. The turn of her 
 note speaks her a girl of good common sense, with a faculty 
 of hitting the nail square on the head ; and such a girl must 
 see that nothing is more likely to fall out than that she 
 will some day be married. Evidently, our fair friend is 
 born to rule ; and at this hour, doubtless, her foreordained 
 throne and humble servant are somewhere awaiting her. 
 
 "Now domestic service is all the while fitting a girl 
 physically, mentally, and morally for her ultimate vocation 
 and sphere, to be a happy wife and to make a happy 
 home. But factory work, shop work, and all employments 
 of that sort, are in their nature essentially undomestic, 
 entailing the constant necessity of a boarding-house life, and 
 of habits as different as possible from the quiet routine of 
 home. The girl who is ten hours on the strain of con 
 tinued, unintermitted toil feels no inclination, when even 
 ing comes, to sit down and darn her stockings, or make 
 over her dresses, or study any of those multifarious econo 
 mies which turn a wardrobe to the best account. Her 
 nervous system is nagging ; she craves company and excite 
 ment ; and her dull, narrow room is deserted for some place 
 of amusement or gay street promenade. And who can 
 blame her ? Let any sensible woman, who has had expe 
 rience of shop and factory life, recall to her mind the ways 
 and manners in which young girls grow up who leave a 
 father s roof for a crowded boarding-house, without any su 
 pervision of matron or mother, and ask whether this is the 
 best school for training young American wives and mothers. 
 
 " Doubtless there are discreet and thoughtful women who, 
 amid all these difficulties, do keep up thrifty, womanly 
 habits, but they do it by an effort greater than the majority 
 of girls are willing to make, and greater than they ought to 
 make. To sew or read or study after ten hours of factory 
 or shop work is a further drain on the nervous powers 
 which no woman can long endure without exhaustion. 
 
320 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 " When the time arrives that such a girl comes to a house 
 of her own, she comes to it as unskilled in all household 
 lore, with muscles as incapable of domestic labor and nerves 
 as sensitive, as if she had been leading the most luxurious, 
 do-nothing, fashionable life. How different would be her 
 preparation, had the forming years of her life been spent in 
 the labors of a family ! I know at this moment a lady at 
 the head of a rich country establishment, filling her station 
 in society with dignity and honor, who gained her domestic 
 education in a kitchen in our vicinity. She was the daugh 
 ter of a small farmer, and when the time came for her to be 
 earning her living, her parents wisely thought it far better 
 that she should gain it in a way which would at the same 
 time establish her health and fit her for her own future 
 home. In a cheerful, light, airy kitchen, which was kept 
 so tidy always as to be an attractive sitting-room, she and 
 another young country girl were trained up in the best of 
 domestic economies by a mistress who looked well to the 
 ways of her household, till at length they married from the 
 house with honor, and went to practice in homes of their 
 own the lessons they had learned in the home of another. 
 Formerly, in New England, such instances were not uncom 
 mon ; would that they might become so again ! " 
 
 "The fact is," said my wife, " the places which the 
 daughters of American farmers used to occupy in our fam 
 ilies are now taken by young girls from the families of 
 small farmers in Ireland. They are respectable, tidy, 
 healthy, and capable of being taught. A good mistress, 
 who is reasonable and liberal in her treatment, is able to 
 make them fixtures. They get good wages, and have few 
 expenses. They dress handsomely, have abundant leisure 
 to take care of their clothes and turn their wardrobes to 
 the best account, and they very soon acquire skill in doing 
 it equal to that displayed by any women of any country. 
 They remit money continually to relatives in Ireland, and 
 
THE TRANSITION 321 
 
 from time to time pay the passage of one and another to 
 this country, and whole families have thus been estab 
 lished in American life by the efforts of one young girl. 
 Now, for my part, I do not grudge my Irish fellow citizens 
 these advantages obtained by honest labor and good conduct ; 
 they deserve all the good fortune thus accruing to them. 
 But when I see sickly, nervous American women jostling 
 and struggling in the few crowded avenues which are open 
 to mere brain, I cannot help thinking how much better 
 their lot would have been, with good strong bodies, steady 
 nerves, healthy digestion, and the habit of looking any 
 kind of work in the face, which used to be characteristic 
 of American women generally, and of Yankee women in par 
 ticular." 
 
 "The matter becomes still graver," said I, "by the laws 
 of descent. The woman who enfeebles her muscular system 
 by sedentary occupation, and over-stimulates her brain and 
 nervous system, when she becomes a mother perpetuates 
 these evils to her offspring. Her children will be born 
 feeble and delicate, incapable of sustaining any severe strain 
 of body or mind. The universal cry now about the ill 
 health of young American girls is the fruit of some three 
 generations of neglect of physical exercise and undue stim 
 ulus of brain and nerves. Young girls now are universally 
 born delicate. The most careful hygienic treatment during 
 childhood, the strictest attention to diet, dress, and exercise, 
 succeeds merely so far as to produce a girl who is healthy 
 so long only as she does nothing. With the least strain, 
 her delicate organism gives out, now here, now there. She 
 cannot study without her eyes fail or she has headache, 
 she cannot get up her own muslins, or sweep a room, or 
 pack a trunk, without bringing on a backache, she goes 
 to a concert or a lecture, and must lie by all the next day 
 from the exertion. If she skates, she is sure to strain some 
 muscle ; or if she falls and strikes her knee or hits her 
 
322 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 ankle, a blow that a healthy girl would forget in five min 
 utes terminates in some mysterious lameness which confines 
 our poor sibyl for months. 
 
 " The young American girl of our times is a creature who 
 has not a particle of vitality to spare, no reserved stock 
 of force to draw upon in cases of family exigency. She is 
 exquisitely strung, she is cultivated, she is refined ; but she 
 is too nervous, too wiry, too sensitive, she burns away 
 too fast ; only the easiest of circumstances, the most watch 
 ful of care and nursing, can keep her within the limits of 
 comfortable health ; and yet this is the creature who must 
 undertake family life in a country where it is next to an 
 absolute impossibility to have permanent domestics. Fre 
 quent change, occasional entire breakdowns, must be the lot 
 of the majority of housekeepers, particularly those who 
 do not live in cities." 
 
 " In fact," said my wife, " we in America have so far 
 got out of the way of a womanhood that has any vigor of 
 outline or opulence of physical proportions that, when we 
 see a woman made as a woman ought to be, she strikes us 
 as a monster. Our willowy girls are afraid of nothing so 
 much as growing stout ; and if a young lady begins to round 
 into proportions like the women in Titian s and Giorgione s 
 pictures, she is distressed above measure, and begins to 
 make secret inquiries into reducing diet, and to cling des 
 perately to the strongest corset-lacing as her only hope. It 
 would require one to be better educated than most of our 
 girls are, to be willing to look like the Sistine Madonna or 
 the Venus of Milo. 
 
 " Once in a while our Italian opera-singers bring to our 
 shores those glorious physiques which formed the inspiration 
 of Italian painters ; and then American editors make coarse 
 jokes about Barnum s fat woman, and avalanches, and pre 
 tend to be struck with terror at such dimensions. 
 
 " We should be better instructed, and consider that Italy 
 
THE TRANSITION 323 
 
 does us a favor, in sending us specimens, not only of higher 
 styles of musical art, but of a warmer, richer, and more 
 abundant womanly life. The magnificent voice is only in 
 keeping with the magnificent proportions of the singer. A 
 voice which has no grate, no strain, which flows without 
 effort, which does not labor eagerly up to a high note, 
 but alights on it like a bird from above, there carelessly 
 warbling and trilling, a voice which then without effort 
 sinks into broad, rich, sombre depths of soft, heavy chest- 
 tone, can come only with a physical nature at once strong, 
 wide, and fine, from a nature such as the sun of Italy 
 ripens, as he does her golden grapes, filling it with the new 
 wine of song." 
 
 "Well," said I, "so much for our strictures on Miss 
 Letitia s letter. What comes next ? " 
 
 " Here is a correspondent who answers the question, 
 What shall we do with her ? apropos of the case of 
 the distressed young woman which we considered in our 
 first chapter. 7 
 
 " And what does he recommend ? " 
 
 " He tells us that he should advise us to make our dis 
 tressed woman Marianne s housekeeper, and to send South 
 for three or four contrabands for her to train, and, with 
 great apparent complacency, seems to think that course will 
 solve all similar cases of difficulty." 
 
 " That s quite a man s view of the subject," said Jenny. 
 " They think any woman who is n t particularly fitted to 
 do anything else can keep house." 
 
 " As if housekeeping were not the very highest craft and 
 mystery of social life," said I. " I admit that our sex speak 
 too unadvisedly on such topics, and, being well instructed 
 by my household priestesses, will humbly suggest the fol 
 lowing ideas to my correspondent. 
 
 " 1st. A woman is not of course fit to be a housekeeper 
 because she is a woman of good education and refinement. 
 
324 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 " 2d. If she were, a family with young children in it is 
 not the proper place to establish a school for untaught con 
 trabands, however desirable their training may be. 
 
 " A woman of good education and good common sense 
 may learn to be a good housekeeper, as she learns any trade, 
 by going into a good family and practicing first one and 
 then another branch of the business, till finally she shall 
 acquire the comprehensive knowledge to direct all. 
 
 " The next letter I will read : - 
 
 " DEAR MR. CROWFIELD, Your papers relating to 
 the domestic problem have touched upon a difficulty which 
 threatens to become a matter of life and death with me. 
 
 " I am a young man, with good health, good courage, 
 and good prospects. I have, for a young man, a fair 
 income, and a prospect of its increase. But my business 
 requires me to reside in a country town, near a great manu 
 facturing city. The demand for labor there has made such 
 a drain on the female population of the vicinity, that it 
 seems, for a great part of the time, impossible to keep any 
 servants at all ; and what we can hire are of the poorest 
 quality, and want exorbitant M r ages. My wife was a well- 
 trained housekeeper, and knows perfectly all that pertains 
 to the care of a family ; but she has three little children, 
 and a delicate babe only a few weeks old ; and can any one 
 woman do all that is needed for such a household ? Some 
 thing must be trusted to servants ; and what is thus trusted 
 brings such confusion and waste and dirt into our house, 
 that the poor woman is constantly distraught between the 
 disgust of having them and the utter impossibility of doing 
 without them. 
 
 " Now, it has been suggested that we remedy the trouble 
 by paying higher wages ; but I find that for the very 
 highest wages I secure only the most miserable service ; 
 and yet, poor as it is, we are obliged to put up with it ; 
 
THE TRANSITION 325 
 
 because there is an amount of work to be done in our family 
 that is absolutely beyond my wife s strength. 
 
 "I see her health wearing away under these trials, her 
 life made a burden ; I feel no power to help her, and I 
 ask you, Mr. Crowfield, What are we to do ? What is to 
 become of family life in this country ? 
 " Yours truly, 
 
 " A YOUNG FAMILY MAN." 
 
 " My friend s letter," said I, "touches upon the very 
 hinge of the difficulty of domestic life with the present 
 generation. 
 
 " The real, vital difficulty, after all, in our American life 
 is, that our country is so wide, so various, so abounding in 
 the richest fields of enterprise, that in every direction the 
 cry is of the plenteousness of the harvest and the fewness 
 of the laborers. In short, there really are not laborers 
 enough to do the work of the country. 
 
 " Since the war has thrown the whole South open to 
 the competition of free labor, the demand for workers is 
 doubled and trebled. Manufactories of all sorts are enlarg 
 ing their borders, increasing their machinery, and calling 
 for more hands. Every article of living is demanded with 
 an imperativeness and over an extent of territory which set 
 at once additional thousands to the task of production. 
 Instead of being easier to find hands to execute in all 
 branches of useful labor, it is likely to grow every year 
 more difficult, as new departments of manufacture and trade 
 divide the workers. The price of labor, even now higher in 
 this country than in any other, will rise still higher, and thus 
 complicate still more the problem of domestic life. Even if 
 a reasonable quota of intelligent women choose domestic ser 
 vice, the demand will be increasingly beyond the supply." 
 
 " And what have you to say to this," said my wife, 
 " seeing you cannot stop the prosperity of the country ? " 
 
02G THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 " Simply this, that communities will be driven to 
 organize, as they now do in Europe, to lessen the labors of 
 individual families by having some of the present domestic 
 tasks done out of the house. 
 
 " In France, for example, no housekeeper counts either 
 washing, ironing, or bread-making as part of her domestic 
 cares. All the family washing goes out to a laundry, and be 
 ing attended to by those who make that department of labor 
 a specialty, it comes home in refreshingly beautiful order. 
 
 " We in America, though we pride ourselves on our 
 Yankee thrift, are far behind the French in domestic 
 economy. If all the families of a neighborhood should 
 put together the sums they separately spend in buying or 
 fitting up and keeping in repair tubs, boilers, and other 
 accommodations for washing, all that is consumed or wasted 
 in soap, starch, bluing, fuel, together with the wages and 
 board of an extra servant, the aggregate would suffice to 
 fit up a neighborhood laundry, where one or two capable 
 women could do easily and well what ten or fifteen women 
 now do painfully and ill, and to the confusion and derange 
 ment of all other family processes. 
 
 " The model laundries for the poor in London had facili 
 ties which would enable a woman to do both the washing 
 and ironing of a small family in from two to three hours, 
 and were so arranged that a very few women could, with 
 ease, do the work of a neighborhood. 
 
 " But in the absence of an establishment of this sort, 
 the housekeepers of a country village might help them 
 selves very much by owning a mangle in common, to which 
 all the heavier parts of the ironing could be sent. Ameri 
 can ingenuity has greatly improved the machinery of the 
 mangle. It is no longer the heavy, cumbersome, structure 
 that it used to be in the Old World, but a compact, neat 
 piece of apparatus, made in three or four different sizes to 
 suit different-sized apartments. 
 
THE TRANSITION 327 
 
 " Mr. H. F. Bond, of Waltham, Massachusetts, now 
 manufactures these articles, and sends them to all parts of 
 the country. The smallest of them does not take up much 
 more room than a sewing-machine, can be turned by a boy 
 of ten or twelve, and thus in the course of an hour or two 
 the heaviest and most fatiguing part of a family ironing may 
 be accomplished. 
 
 " I should certainly advise the Young Family Man 
 with a delicate wife and uncertain domestic help to fortify 
 his kitchen with one of these fixtures. 
 
 " But after all, I still say that the quarter to which I 
 look for the solution of the American problem of domestic 
 life is a wise use of the principle of association. 
 
 " The future model village of New England, as I see it, 
 shall have for the use of its inhabitants not merely a town 
 lyceum hall and a town library, but a town laundry, fitted 
 up with conveniences such as no private house can afford, 
 and paying a price to the operators which will enable them 
 to command an excellence of work such as private families 
 seldom realize. It will also have a town bakery, where 
 the best of family bread, white, brown, and of all grains, 
 shall be compounded ; and lastly a town cook-shop, where 
 soup and meats may be bought, ready for the table. Those 
 of us who have kept house abroad remember the ease with 
 which our foreign establishments were carried on. A suite 
 of elegant apartments, a courier, and one female servant 
 were the foundation of domestic life. Our courier boarded 
 us at a moderate expense, and the servant took care of our 
 rooms. Punctually at the dinner hour every day, our din 
 ner came in on the head of a porter from a neighboring 
 cook-shop. A large chest lined with tin, and kept warm 
 by a tiny charcoal stove in the centre, being deposited in 
 an anteroom, from it came forth first soup, then fish, then 
 roasts of various names, and lastly pastry and confections, 
 far more courses than any reasonable Christian needs to 
 
328 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 keep him in healthy condition ; and dinner being over, our 
 box with its debris went out of the house, leaving a clear 
 field. 
 
 " Now I put it to the distressed Young Family Man 
 whether these three institutions of a bakery, a cook-shop, 
 and a laundry, in the village where he lives, would not vir 
 tually annihilate his household cares, and restore peace and 
 comfort to his now distracted family. 
 
 " There really is no more reason why every family should 
 make its own bread than its own butter, why every family 
 should do its own washing and ironing than its own tailor 
 ing or mantua-making. In France, where certainly the arts 
 of economy are well studied, there is some specialty for 
 many domestic needs for which we keep servants. The 
 beautiful inlaid floors are kept waxed and glossy by a pro 
 fessional gentleman who wears a brush on his foot-sole, 
 skates gracefully over the surface, and, leaving all right, 
 departeth. Many families, each paying a small sum, keep 
 this servant in common. 
 
 "Now, if ever there was a community which needed to 
 study the art of living, it is our American one ; for, at 
 present, domestic life is so wearing and so oppressive as 
 seriously to affect health and happiness. Whatever has 
 been done abroad in the way of comfort and convenience 
 can be done here ; and the first neighborhood that shall set 
 the example of dividing the tasks and burdens of life by 
 the judicious use of the principle of association will initiate 
 a most important step in the way of national happiness and 
 prosperity. 
 
 " My solution, then, of the domestic problem may be for- 
 mulized as follows : 
 
 " 1st. That women make self helpfulness and family 
 helpfulness fashionable, and every woman use her muscles 
 daily in enough household work to give her a good diges 
 tion. 
 
THE TRANSITION 329 
 
 " 2d. That the situation of a domestic be made so respec 
 table and respected that well-educated American women 
 shall be induced to take it as a training-school for their 
 future family life. 
 
 " 3d. That families by association lighten the multifari 
 ous labors of the domestic sphere. 
 
 " All of which I humbly submit to the good sense and 
 enterprise of American readers and workers." 
 
VI 
 
 BODILY RELIGION : A SERMON ON GOOD HEALTH 
 
 OXE of our recent writers has said, that " good health is 
 physical religion ; " and it is a saying worthy to be printed 
 in golden letters. But good health being physical religion, 
 it fully shares that indifference with which the human race 
 regards things confessedly the most important. The neglect 
 of the soul is the trite theme of all religious teachers ; and, 
 next to their souls, there is nothing that people neglect so 
 much as their bodies. Every person ought to be perfectly 
 healthy, just as everybody ought to be perfectly religious ; 
 but, in point of fact, the greater part of mankind are so far 
 from perfect moral or physical religion that they cannot 
 even form a conception of the blessing beyond them. 
 
 The mass of good, well-meaning Christians are not yet 
 advanced enough to guess at the change which a perfect 
 fidelity to Christ s spirit and precepts would produce in 
 them. And the majority of people who call themselves 
 well, because they are not, at present, upon any particular 
 doctor s list, are not within sight of what perfect health 
 would be. That fullness of life, that vigorous tone, and 
 that elastic cheerfulness, which make the mere fact of exis 
 tence a luxury, that suppleness which carries one like a 
 well-built boat over every wave of unfavorable chance, 
 these are attributes of the perfect health seldom enjoyed. 
 We see them in young children, in animals, and now and 
 then, but rarely, in some adult human being, who has pre 
 served intact the religion of the body through all opposing 
 influences. Perfect health supposes not a state of mere 
 
BODILY RELIGION: A SERMON ON GOOD HEALTH 331 
 
 quiescence, but of positive enjoyment in living. See that 
 little fellow, as his nurse turns him out in the morning, 
 fresh from his bath, his hair newly curled, and his cheeks 
 polished like apples. Every step is a spring or a dance ; 
 he runs, he laughs, he shouts, his face breaks into a thou 
 sand dimpling smiles at a word. His breakfast of plain 
 bread and milk is swallowed with an eager and incredible 
 delight, it is so good that he stops to laugh or thump the 
 table now and then in expression of his ecstasy. All day 
 long he runs and frisks and plays ; and when at night the 
 little head seeks the pillow, down go the eye-curtains, and 
 sleep comes without a dream. In the morning his first note 
 is a laugh and a crow, as he sits up in his crib and tries to 
 pull papa s eyes open with his fat fingers. He is an em 
 bodied joy, he is sunshine and music and laughter for all 
 the house. With what a magnificent generosity does the 
 Author of life endow a little mortal pilgrim in giving him 
 at the outset of his career such a body as this ! How mis 
 erable it is to look forward twenty years, when the same 
 child, now grown a man, wakes in the morning with a dull, 
 heavy head, the consequence of smoking and studying till 
 twelve or one the night before ; when he rises languidly to 
 a late breakfast, and turns from this and tries that, wants 
 a deviled bone, or a cutlet with Worcestershire sauce, to 
 make eating possible ; and then, with slow and plodding 
 step, finds his way to his office and his books. Verily the 
 shades of the prison-house gather round the growing boy ; 
 for, surely, no one will deny that life often begins with 
 health little less perfect than that of the angels. 
 
 But the man who habitually wakes sodden, headachy, 
 and a little stupid, and who needs a cup of strong coffee and 
 various stimulating condiments to coax his bodily system 
 into something like fair working order, does not suppose he 
 is out of health. He says, " Very well, I thank you," to 
 your inquiries, merely because he has entirely forgotten 
 
332 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 what good health is. He is well, not because of any par 
 ticular pleasure in physical existence, but well simply be 
 cause he is not a subject for prescriptions. Yet there is no 
 store of vitality, no buoyancy, no superabundant vigor, to 
 resist the strain and pressure to which life puts him. A 
 checked perspiration, a draught of air ill-timed, a crisis of 
 perplexing business or care, and he is down with a bilious 
 attack or an influenza, and subject to doctors orders for an 
 indefinite period. And if the case be so with men, how is 
 it with women ? How many women have at maturity the 
 keen appetite, the joyous love of life and motion, the elas 
 ticity and sense of physical delight in existence, that little 
 children have ? How many have any superabundance of 
 vitality with which to meet the wear and strain of life ? 
 And yet they call themselves well. 
 
 But is it possible, in maturity, to have the joyful fullness 
 of the life of childhood ? Experience has shown that the 
 delicious freshness of this dawning hour may be preserved 
 even to midday, and may be brought back and restored after 
 it has been for years a stranger. Nature, though a severe 
 disciplinarian, is still, in many respects, most patient and 
 easy to be entreated, and meets any repentant movement of 
 her prodigal children with wonderful condescension. Take 
 Bulwer s account of the first few weeks of his sojourn at 
 Malvern, and you will read, in very elegant English, the 
 story of an experience of pleasure which has surprised and 
 delighted many a patient at a water-cure. The return to 
 the great primitive elements of health water, air, and sim 
 ple food, with a regular system of exercise has brought to 
 many a jaded, weary, worn-down human being the elastic 
 spirits, the simple, eager appetite, the sound sleep, of a lit 
 tle child. Hence the rude huts and chtilets of the peasant 
 Priessnitz were crowded with battered dukes and princesses 
 and notables of every degree, who came from the hot, ener 
 vating luxury which had drained them of existence, to find 
 
BODILY RELIGION : A SERMON ON GOOD HEALTH 333 
 
 a keener pleasure in peasants bread under peasants roofs 
 than in soft raiment and palaces. No arts of French cookery 
 can possibly make anything taste so well to a feeble and 
 palled appetite as plain brown bread and milk taste to a 
 hungry water-cure patient, fresh from bath and exercise. 
 
 If the water-cure had done nothing more than establish 
 the fact that the glow and joyousness of early life are things 
 which may be restored after having been once wasted, it 
 would have done a good work. For if Nature is so forgiv 
 ing to those who have once lost or have squandered her 
 treasures, what may not be hoped for us if we can learn the 
 art of never losing the first health of childhood ? And 
 though with us, who have passed to maturity, it may be too 
 late for the blessing, cannot something be done for the chil 
 dren who are yet to come after us ? 
 
 Why is the first health of childhood lost ? Is it not the 
 answer, that childhood is the only period of life in which 
 bodily health is made a prominent object ? Take our pretty 
 boy, with cheeks like apples, who started in life with a hop, 
 skip, and dance, to whom laughter was like breathing, 
 and who was enraptured with plain bread and milk, how 
 did he grow into the man who wakes so languid and dull, 
 who wants strong coffee and Worcestershire sauce to make 
 his breakfast go down ? When and where did he drop the 
 invaluable talisman that once made everything look brighter 
 and taste better to him, however rude and simple, than now 
 do the most elaborate combinations ? What is the boy s 
 history ? Why, for the first seven years of his life his body 
 is made of some account. It is watched, cared for, dieted, 
 disciplined, fed with fresh air, and left to grow and develop 
 like a thrifty plant. But from the time school education be 
 gins, the body is steadily ignored, and left to take care of 
 itself. 
 
 The boy is made to sit six hours a day in a close, hot 
 room, breathing impure air, putting the brain and the ner- 
 
334 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 vous system upon a constant strain, while the muscular sys 
 tem is repressed to an unnatural quiet. During the six hours, 
 perhaps twenty minutes are allowed for all that play of the 
 muscles which, up to this time, has been the constant habit 
 of his life. After this he is sent home with books, slate, 
 and lessons to occupy an hour or two more in preparing for 
 the next day. In the whole of this time there is no kind 
 of effort to train the physical system by appropriate exercise. 
 Something of the sort was attempted years ago in the infant 
 schools, but soon given up ; and now, from the time study 
 first begins, the muscles are ignored in all primary schools. 
 One of the first results is the loss of that animal vigor which 
 formerly made the boy love motion for its own sake. Even 
 in his leisure hours he no longer leaps and runs as he used 
 to ; he learns to sit still, and by and by sitting and lounging 
 come to be the habit, and vigorous motion the exception, for 
 most of the hours of the day. The education thus begun 
 goes on from primary to high school, from high school to 
 college, from college through professional studies of law, 
 medicine, or theology, with this steady contempt for the 
 body, with no provision for its culture, training, or develop 
 ment, but rather a direct and evident provision for its dete 
 rioration and decay. 
 
 The want of suitable ventilation in school-rooms, recita 
 tion-rooms, lecture-rooms, offices, court-rooms/ conference- 
 rooms, and vestries, where young students of law, medicine, 
 and theology acquire their earlier practice, is something sim 
 ply appalling. Of itself it would answer for men the ques 
 tion, why so many thousand glad, active children come to a 
 middle life without joy, a life whose best estate is a sort 
 of slow, plodding endurance. The despite and hatred which 
 most men seem to feel for God s gift of fresh air, and their 
 resolution to breathe as little of it as possible, could only 
 come from a long course of education, in which they have 
 been accustomed to live without it. Let any one notice the 
 
BODILY RELIGION : A SERMON ON GOOD HEALTH 335 
 
 conduct of our American people traveling in railroad cars. 
 We will suppose that about half of them are what might be 
 called well-educated people, who have learned in books, or 
 otherwise, that the air breathed from the lungs is laden 
 with impurities, that it is noxious and poisonous ; and 
 yet, travel with these people half a day, and you would 
 suppose from their actions that they considered the external 
 air as a poison created expressly to injure them, and that 
 the only course of safety lay in keeping the cars hermeti 
 cally sealed, and breathing over and over the vapor from 
 each others lungs. If a person in despair at the intolerable 
 foulness raises a window, what frowns from all the neigh 
 boring seats, especially from great rough-coated men, who 
 always seem the first to be apprehensive ! The request to 
 " put down that window " is almost sure to follow a mo 
 ment or two of fresh air. In vain have rows of ventilators 
 been put in the tops of some of the cars, for conductors and 
 passengers are both of one mind, that these ventilators are 
 inlets of danger, and must be kept carefully closed. 
 
 Railroad traveling in America is systematically, and one 
 would think carefully, arranged so as to violate every possi 
 ble law of health. The old rule to keep the head cool and 
 the feet warm is precisely reversed. A red-hot stove heats 
 the upper stratum of air to oppression, while a stream of 
 cold air is constantly circulating about the lower extremities. 
 The most indigestible and unhealthy substances conceivable 
 are generally sold in the cars or at way -stations for the con 
 fusion and distress of the stomach. Rarely can a traveler 
 obtain so innocent a thing as a plain good sandwich of bread 
 and meat, while pie, cake, doughnuts, and all other culinary 
 atrocities are almost forced upon him at every stopping- 
 place. In France, England, and Germany, the railroad cars 
 are perfectly ventilated ; the feet are kept warm by flat 
 cases filled with hot water and covered with carpet, and 
 answering the double purpose of warming the feet and dif- 
 
336 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 fusing an agreeable temperature through the car, without 
 burning away the vitality of the air ; while the arrange 
 ments at the refreshment-rooms provide for the passenger as 
 wholesome and well-served a meal of healthy, nutritious 
 food as could be obtained in any home circle. 
 
 What are we to infer concerning the home habits of a na 
 tion of men who so resignedly allow their bodies to be poi 
 soned and maltreated in traveling over such an extent of 
 territory as is covered by our railroad lines ? Does it not 
 show that foul air and improper food are too much matters 
 of course to excite attention ? As a writer in " The Na 
 tion " has lately remarked, it is simply and only because the 
 American nation like to have unventilated cars, and to be 
 fed on pie and coffee at stopping-places, that nothing better 
 is known to our travelers ; if there were any marked dislike 
 of such a state of things on the part of the people, it would 
 not exist. We have wealth enough, and enterprise enough, 
 and ingenuity enough, in our American nation, to compass 
 with wonderful rapidity any end that really seems to us 
 desirable. An army was improvised when an army was 
 wanted, and an army more perfectly equipped, more boun 
 tifully fed, than so great a body of men ever was before. 
 Hospitals, Sanitary Commissions, and Christian Commis 
 sions all arose out of the simple conviction of the American 
 people that they must arise. If the American people were 
 equally convinced that foul air was a poison, that to have 
 cold feet and hot heads was to invite an attack of illness, 
 that maple-sugar, popcorn, peppermint candy, pie, dough 
 nuts, and peanuts are not diet for reasonable beings, they 
 would have railroad accommodations very different from 
 those now in existence. 
 
 We have spoken of the foul air of court-rooms. What 
 better illustration could be given of the utter contempt 
 with which the laws of bodily health are treated, than the 
 condition of these places ? Our lawyers are our highly 
 
BODILY RELIGION : A SERMON ON GOOD HEALTH 337 
 
 educated men. They have been through high-school and 
 college training, they have learned the properties of oxygen, 
 nitrogen, and carbonic-acid gas, and have seen a mouse die 
 under an exhausted receiver, and of course they know that 
 foul, unventilated rooms are bad for the health ; and yet 
 generation after generation of men so taught and trained 
 will spend the greater part of their lives in rooms notorious 
 for their close and impure air, without so much as an at 
 tempt to remedy the evil. A well-ventilated court-room is 
 a four-leaved clover among court-rooms. Young men are 
 constantly losing their health at the bar ; lung diseases, 
 dyspepsia, follow them up, gradually sapping their vitality. 
 Some of the brightest ornaments of the profession have ac 
 tually fallen dead as they stood pleading, victims of the 
 fearful pressure of poisonous and heated air upon the excited 
 brain. The deaths of Salmon P. Chase of Portland, uncle 
 of our present Chief Justice, and of Ezekiel Webster, the 
 brother of our great statesman, are memorable examples of 
 the calamitous effects of the errors dwelt upon ; and yet, 
 strange to say, nothing efficient is done to mend these errors, 
 and give the body an equal chance with the mind in the 
 pressure of the world s affairs. 
 
 But churches, lecture-rooms, and vestries, and all build 
 ings devoted especially to the good of the soul, are equally 
 witness of the mind s disdain of the body s needs, and the 
 body s consequent revenge upon the soul. In how many 
 of these places has the question of a thorough provision of 
 fresh air been even considered ? People would never think 
 of bringing a thousand persons into a desert place and keep 
 ing them there without making preparations to feed them. 
 Bread and butter, potatoes and meat, must plainly be found 
 for them ; but a thousand human beings are put into a 
 building to remain a given number of hours, and no one 
 asks the question whether means exist for giving each one 
 the quantum of fresh air needed for his circulation, and 
 
338 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 these thousand victims will consent to be slowly poisoned, 
 gasping, sweating, getting red in the face, with confused 
 and sleepy brains, while a minister with a yet redder face 
 and a more oppressed brain struggles and wrestles, through 
 the hot, seething vapors, to make clear to them the myste 
 ries of faith. How many churches are there that for six or 
 eight months in the year are never ventilated at all, except 
 by the accidental opening of doors ? The foul air gener 
 ated by one congregation is locked up by the sexton for 
 the use of the next assembly ; and so gathers and gathers 
 from week to week, and month to month, while devout 
 persons upbraid themselves, and are ready to tear their hair, 
 because they always feel stupid and sleepy in church. The 
 proper ventilation of their churches and vestries would re 
 move that spiritual deadness of which their prayers and 
 hymns complain. A man hoeing his corn out on a breezy 
 hillside is bright and alert, his mind works clearly, and he 
 feels interested in religion, and thinks of many a thing that 
 might be said at the prayer-meeting at night. But at night, 
 when he sits down in a little room where the air reeks with 
 the vapor of his neighbor s breath and the smoke of kero 
 sene lamps, he finds himself suddenly dull and drowsy, 
 without emotion, without thought, without feeling, and 
 he rises and reproaches himself for this state of things. He 
 calls upon his soul and all that is within him to bless the 
 Lord ; but the indignant body, abused, insulted, ignored, 
 takes the soul by the throat, and says, " If you won t let 
 me have a good time, neither shall you." Revivals of reli 
 gion, with ministers and with those people whose moral or 
 ganization leads them to take most interest in them, often 
 end in periods of bodily ill health and depression. But is 
 there any need of this ? Suppose that a revival of religion 
 required, as a formula, that all the members of a given con 
 gregation should daily take a minute dose of arsenic in con 
 cert, we should not be surprised after a while to hear of 
 
BODILY 11ELIGION: A SEEMON ON GOOD HEALTH 339 
 
 various ill effects therefrom ; and, as vestries and lecture- 
 rooms arc now arranged, a daily prayer-meeting is often 
 nothing more nor less than a number of persons spending 
 half an hour a day breathing poison from each other s lungs. 
 There is not only no need of this, but, on the contrary, a 
 good supply of pure air would make the daily prayer-meet 
 ing far more enjoyable. The body, if allowed the slightest 
 degree of fair play, so far from being a contumacious infidel 
 and opposer, becomes a very fair Christian helper, and, in 
 stead of throttling the soul, gives it wings to rise to celes 
 tial regions. 
 
 This branch of our subject we will quit with one signifi 
 cant anecdote. A certain rural church was somewhat famous 
 for its picturesque Gothic architecture, and equally famous 
 for its sleepy atmosphere, the rules of Gothic symmetry 
 requiring very small windows, which could be only partially 
 opened. Everybody was affected alike in this church; min 
 ister and people complained that it was like the enchanted 
 ground in the Pilgrim s Progress. Do Avhat they would, 
 sleep was ever at their elbows; the blue, red, and green of 
 the painted windows melted into a rainbow dimness of hazy 
 confusion ; and ere they were aware, they were off on a 
 cloud to the land of dreams. 
 
 An energetic sister in the church suggested the inquiry, 
 whether it was ever ventilated, and discovered that it was 
 regularly locked up at the close of service, and remained so 
 till opened for the next week. She suggested the inquiry, 
 whether giving the church a thorough airing on Saturday 
 would not improve the Sunday services ; but nobody acted 
 on her suggestion. Finally, she borrowed the sexton s key 
 one Saturday night, and went into the church and opened 
 all the windows herself, and let them remain so for the 
 night. The next day everybody remarked the improved 
 comfort of the church, and wondered what had produced 
 the change. Nevertheless, when it was discovered, it was 
 
340 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 not deemed a matter of enough importance to call for an 
 order on the sexton to perpetuate the improvement. 
 
 The ventilation of private dwellings in this country is 
 such as might be expected from that entire indifference to 
 the laws of health manifested in public establishments. 
 Let a person travel in private conveyance up through the 
 valley of the Connecticut, and stop for a night at the taverns 
 which he will usually find at the end of each day s stage. 
 The bedchamber into which he will be ushered will be the 
 concentration of all forms of bad air. The house is redolent 
 of the vegetables in the cellar, cabbages, turnips, and 
 potatoes ; and this fragrance is confined and retained by the 
 custom of closing the window blinds and dropping the inside 
 curtains, so that neither air nor sunshine enters in to purify. 
 Add to this the strong odor of a new feather bed and pil 
 lows, and you have a combination of perfumes most appalling 
 to a delicate sense. Yet travelers take possession of these 
 rooms, sleep in them all night without raising the window 
 or opening the blinds, and leave them to be shut up for 
 other travelers. 
 
 The spare chamber of many dwellings seems to be an 
 hermetically closed box, opened only twice a year, for spring 
 and fall cleaning ; but for the rest of the time closed to the 
 sun and the air of heaven. Thrifty country housekeepers 
 often adopt the custom of making their beds on the instant 
 after they are left, without airing the sheets and mattresses ; 
 and a bed so made gradually becomes permeated with the 
 insensible emanations of the human body, so as to be a 
 steady corrupter of the atmosphere. 
 
 In the winter, the windows are calked and listed, the 
 throat of the chimney built up with a tight brick wall, and 
 a close stove is introduced to help burn out the vitality of 
 the air. In a sitting-room like this, from five to ten persons 
 will spend about eight months of the year, with no other 
 ventilation than that gained by the casual opening and 
 
BODILY RELIGION : A SERMON ON GOOD HEALTH 341 
 
 shutting of doors. Is it any wonder that consumption every 
 year sweeps away its thousands ? that people are suffering 
 constant chronic ailments, neuralgia, nervous dyspepsia, 
 and all the host of indefinite bad feelings that rob life of 
 sweetness and flower and bloom ? 
 
 A recent writer raises the inquiry, whether the community 
 would not gain in health by the demolition of all dwelling- 
 houses. That is, he suggests the question, whether the 
 evils from foul air are not so great and so constant that 
 they countervail the advantages of shelter. Consumptive 
 patients far gone have been known to be cured by long 
 journeys, which have required them to be day and night in 
 the open air. Sleep under the open heaven, even though 
 the person be exposed to the various accidents of weather, 
 has often proved a miraculous restorer after everything else 
 had failed. But surely, if simple fresh air is so healing and 
 preserving a thing, some means might be found to keep the 
 air in a house just as pure and vigorous as it is outside. 
 
 An article in the May number of " Harpers Magazine " 
 presents drawings of a very simple arrangement by which 
 any house can be made thoroughly self-ventilating. Venti 
 lation, as this article shows, consists in two things, a 
 perfect and certain expulsion from the dwelling of all foul 
 air breathed from the lungs or arising from any other cause, 
 and the constant supply of pure air. 
 
 One source of foul air cannot be too much guarded 
 against, we mean imperfect gas-pipes. A want of thor 
 oughness in execution is the sin of our American artisans, 
 and very few gas-fixtures are so thoroughly made that more 
 or less gas does not escape and mingle with the air of the 
 dwelling. There are parlors where plants cannot be made 
 to live, because the gas kills them ; and yet their occupants 
 do not seem to reflect that an air in which a plant cannot 
 live must be dangerous for a human being. The very clem 
 ency and long-suffering of Nature to those who persistently 
 
342 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 violate her laws is one great cause why men are, physically 
 speaking, such sinners as they are. If foul air poisoned at 
 once and completely, we should have well-ventilated houses, 
 whatever else we failed to have. But because people can 
 go on for weeks, months, and years breathing poisons, and 
 slowly and imperceptibly lowering the tone of their vital 
 powers, and yet be what they call " pretty well, I thank 
 you," sermons on ventilation and fresh air go by them as 
 an idle song. " I don t see but we are well enough, and 
 we never took much pains about these things. There s 
 air enough gets into houses, of course. What with doors 
 opening and windows occasionally lifted, the air of houses is 
 generally good enough ; " and so the matter is dismissed. 
 
 One of Heaven s great hygienic teachers is now abroad in 
 the world, giving lessons on health to the children of men. 
 The cholera is like the angel whom God threatened to send 
 as leader to the rebellious Israelites. " Beware of him, obey 
 his voice, and provoke him not ; for he will not pardon your 
 transgressions." The advent of this fearful messenger seems 
 really to be made necessary by the contempt with which 
 men treat the physical laws of their being. What else could 
 have purified the dark places of New York ? What a 
 wiping-up and reforming and cleansing is going before him 
 through the country ! At last we find that Nature is in 
 earnest, and that her laws cannot be always ignored with 
 impunity. Poisoned air is recognized at last as an evil, 
 even although the poison cannot be weighed, measured, or 
 tasted ; and if all the precautions that men are now willing 
 to take could be made perpetual, the alarm would be a bless 
 ing to the world. 
 
 Like the principles of spiritual religion, the principles of 
 physical religion are few and easy to be understood. An 
 old medical apothegm personifies the hygienic forces as the 
 Doctors Air, Diet, Exercise, and Quiet : and these four will 
 be found, on reflection, to cover the whole ground of what 
 
BODILY RELIGION: A SERMON ON GOOD HEALTH 343 
 
 is required to preserve human health. A human being 
 whose lungs have always been nourished by pure air, whose 
 stomach has been fed only by appropriate food, whose mus 
 cles have been systematically trained by appropriate exer 
 cises, and whose mind is kept tranquil by faith in God and 
 a good conscience, has perfect physical religion. There is 
 a line where physical religion must necessarily overlap spir 
 itual religion and rest upon it. No human being can be 
 assured of perfect health, through all the strain and wear 
 and tear of such cares and such perplexities as life brings, 
 without the rest of faith in God. An unsubmissive, uncon- 
 fiding, unresigned soul will make vain the best hygienic 
 treatment ; and, on the contrary, the most saintly religious 
 resolution and purpose may be defeated and vitiated by an 
 habitual ignorance and disregard of the laws of the physical 
 system. 
 
 Perfect spiritual religion cannot exist without perfect 
 physical religion. Every flaw and defect in the bodily sys 
 tem is just so much taken from the spiritual vitality : we 
 are commanded to glorify God, not simply in our spirits, 
 but in our bodies and spirits. The only example of perfect 
 manhood the world ever saw impresses us more than any 
 thing else by an atmosphere of perfect healthiness. There 
 is a calmness, a steadiness, in the character of Jesus, a nat 
 uralness in his evolution of the sublimest truths under the 
 strain of the most absorbing and intense excitement, that 
 could come only from the one perfectly trained and devel 
 oped body, bearing as a pure and sacred shrine the One 
 Perfect Spirit. Jesus of Nazareth, journeying on foot from 
 city to city, always calm yet always fervent, always steady 
 yet glowing with a white heat of sacred enthusiasm, able to 
 walk and teach all day and afterwards to continue in prayer 
 all night, with unshaken nerves, sedately patient, serenely 
 reticent, perfectly self-controlled, walked the earth, the only 
 man that perfectly glorified God in His body no less than in 
 
344 THE CHIMNEY-COENER 
 
 His spirit. It is worthy of remark, that in choosing His 
 disciples He chose plain men from the laboring classes, who 
 had lived the most obediently to the simple, unperverted 
 laws of nature. He chose men of good and pure bodies, 
 simple, natural, childlike, healthy men, and baptized their 
 souls with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 The hygienic bearings of the New Testament have never 
 been sufficiently understood. The basis of them lies in the 
 solemn declaration, that our bodies are to be temples of the 
 Holy Spirit, and that all abuse of them is of the nature of 
 sacrilege. Reverence for the physical system, as the out 
 ward shrine and temple of the spiritual, is the peculiarity of 
 the Christian religion. The doctrine of the resurrection of 
 the body, and its physical immortality, sets the last crown 
 of honor upon it. That bodily system which God declared 
 worthy to be gathered back from the dust of the grave, and 
 re-created, as the soul s immortal companion, must neces 
 sarily be dear and precious in the eyes of its Creator. The 
 one passage in the New Testament in which it is spoken of 
 disparagingly is where Paul contrasts it with the brighter 
 glory of what is to come : " He shall change our vile bodies, 
 that they may be fashioned like his glorious body." From 
 this passage has come abundance of reviling of the physical 
 system. Memoirs of good men are full of abuse of it, as the 
 clog, the load, the burden, the chain. It is spoken of as 
 pollution, as corruption, in short, one would think that 
 the Creator had imitated the cruelty of some Oriental despots 
 who have been known to chain a festering corpse to a living 
 body. Accordingly, the memoirs of these pious men are 
 also mournful records of slow suicide, wrought by the per 
 sistent neglect of the most necessary and important laws of 
 the bodily system; and the body, outraged and downtrod 
 den, has turned traitor to the soul, and played the adversary 
 with fearful power. Who can tell the countless temptations 
 to evil which flow in from a neglected, disordered, deranged 
 
BODILY RELIGION: A SERMON ON GOOD HEALTH 345 
 
 nervous system, temptations to anger, to irritability, to 
 selfishness, to every kind of sin of appetite and passion ? 
 No wonder that the poor soul longs for the hour of release 
 from such a companion. 
 
 But that human body which God declares expressly was 
 made to be the temple of the Holy Spirit, which he con 
 siders worthy to be perpetuated by a resurrection and an 
 immortal existence, cannot be intended to be a clog and a 
 hindrance to spiritual advancement. A perfect body, work 
 ing in perfect tune and time, would open glimpses of hap 
 piness to the soul approaching the joys we hope for in 
 heaven. It is only through the images of things which our 
 bodily senses have taught us, that we can form any concep 
 tion of that future bliss ; and the more perfect these senses, 
 the more perfect our conceptions must be. 
 
 The conclusion of the whole matter, and the practical 
 application of this sermon, is, First, that all men set 
 themselves to form the idea of what perfect health is, and 
 resolve to realize it for themselves and their children. 
 Second, that with a view to this they study the religion of 
 the body, in such simple and popular treatises as those of 
 George Combe, Dr. Dio Lewis, and others, and with sim 
 ple and honest hearts practice what they there learn. 
 Third, that the training of the bodily system should form a 
 regular part of our common-school education, every com 
 mon school being provided with a well -instructed teacher 
 of gymnastics ; and the growth and development of each 
 pupil s body being as much noticed and marked as is now 
 the growth of his mind. The same course should be contin 
 ued and enlarged in colleges and female seminaries, which 
 should have professors of hygiene appointed to give thorough 
 instruction concerning the laws of health. 
 
 And when this is all done, we may hope that crooked 
 spines, pimpled faces, sallow complexions, stooping shoul 
 ders, and all other signs indicating an undeveloped physi- 
 
346 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 cal vitality, will, in the course of a few generations, dis 
 appear from the earth, and men will have bodies which will 
 glorify God, their great Architect. 
 
 The soul of man has got as far as it can without the 
 body. Religion herself stops and looks back, waiting for 
 the body to overtake her. The soul s great enemy and 
 hindrance can be made her best friend and most power 
 ful help ; and it is high time that this era were begun. 
 We old sinners, who have lived carelessly, and almost 
 spent our day of grace, may not gain much of its good ; but 
 the children, shall there not be a more perfect day for 
 them ? Shall there not come a day when the little child, 
 whom Christ set forth to his disciples as the type of the 
 greatest in the kingdom of heaven, shall be the type no less 
 of our physical than our spiritual advancement, when men 
 and women shall arise, keeping through long and happy 
 lives the simple, unperverted appetites, the joyous freshness 
 of spirit, the keen delight in mere existence, the dreamless 
 sleep and happy waking of early childhood ? 
 
VII 
 
 HOW SHALL WE ENTERTAIN OUR COMPANY 
 
 " THE fact is," said Marianne, " we must have a party. 
 Bob don t like to hear of it, but it must come. We are in 
 debt to everybody : we have been invited everywhere, and 
 never had anything like a party since we were married, and 
 it won t do." 
 
 " For my part, I hate parties," said Bob. " They put 
 your house all out of order, give all the women a sick-head 
 ache, and all the men an indigestion ; you never see any 
 body to any purpose ; the girls look bewitched, and the 
 women answer you at cross-purposes, and call you by the 
 name of your next-door neighbor, in their agitation of mind. 
 We stay out beyond our usual bedtime, come home and 
 find some baby crying, or child who has been sitting up till 
 nobody knows when ; and the next morning, when I must 
 be at my office by eight, and wife must attend to her chil 
 dren, we are sleepy and headachy. I protest against mak 
 ing overtures to entrap some hundred of my respectable 
 married friends into this snare which has so often entangled 
 me. If I had my way, I would never go to another party ; 
 and as to giving one I suppose, since my empress has de 
 clared her intentions, that I shall be brought into doing it ; 
 but it shall be under protest." 
 
 " But, you see, we must keep up society," said Marianne. 
 
 " But I insist on it," said Bob, "it is n t keeping up society. 
 What earthly thing do you learn about people by meeting 
 them in a general crush, where all are coming, going, laugh 
 ing, talking, and looking at each other ? No person of 
 
348 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 common sense ever puts forth any idea he cares twopence 
 about, under such circumstances ; all that is exchanged is a 
 certain set of commonplaces and platitudes which people 
 keep for parties, just as they do their kid gloves and finery. 
 Now there are our neighbors, the Browns. When they drop 
 in of an evening, she knitting, and he with the last arti 
 cle in the paper, she really comes out with a great deal of 
 fresh, lively, earnest, original talk. We have a good time, 
 and I like her so much that it quite verges on loving ; but 
 see her in a party, when she manifests herself over five 
 or six flounces of pink silk and a perfect egg-froth of tulle, 
 her head adorned with a thicket of creped hair and roses, 
 and it is plain at first view that talking with her is quite 
 out of the question. What has been done to her head on 
 the outside has evidently had some effect within, for she is 
 no longer the Mrs. Brown you knew in her every-day dress, 
 but Mrs. Brown in a party state of mind, and too distracted 
 to think of anything in particular. She has a few words 
 that she answers to everything you say, as for example, f Oh, 
 very ! Certainly ! How extraordinary ! 7 So happy to/ 
 etc. The fact is, that she has come into a state in which 
 any real communication with her mind and character must 
 be suspended till the party is over and she is rested. Now 
 I like society, which is the reason why I hate parties." 
 
 " But you see," said Marianne, " what are we to do ? 
 Everybody can t drop in to spend an evening with you. If 
 it were not for these parties, there are quantities of your 
 acquaintances whom you would never meet." 
 
 " And of what use is it to meet them ? Do you really 
 know them any better for meeting them got up in unusual 
 dresses, and sitting down together when the only thing ex 
 changed is the remark that it is hot or cold, or it rains, or 
 it is dry, or any other patent surface-fact that answers the 
 purpose of making believe you are talking when neither of 
 you is saying a word ? " 
 
HOW SHALL WE ENTERTAIN OUR COMPANY 349 
 
 " Well, now, for my part," said Marianne, " I confess I 
 like parties : they amuse me. I come home feeling kinder and 
 better to people, just for the little I see of them when they 
 are all dressed up and in good humor with themselves. To 
 be sure we don t say anything very profound, I don t think 
 the most of us have anything profound to say ; but I ask 
 Mrs. Brown where she buys her lace, and she tells me how she 
 washes it, and somebody else tells me about her baby, and 
 promises me a new sack-pattern. Then I like to see the 
 pretty, nice young girls flirting with the nice young men ; 
 and I like to be dressed up a little myself, even if my finery 
 is all old and many times made over. It does me good to 
 be rubbed up and brightened." 
 
 " Like old silver, said Bob. 
 
 " Yes, like old silver, precisely ; and even if I do come 
 home tired, it does my mind good to have that change of 
 scene and faces. You men do not know what it is to be 
 tied to house and nursery all day, and what a perfect weari 
 ness and lassitude it often brings on us women. For my 
 part I think parties are a beneficial institution of society, 
 and that it is worth a good deal of fatigue and trouble to 
 get one up." 
 
 " Then there 7 s the expense," said Bob. " What earthly 
 need is there of a grand regale of oysters, chicken salad, ice 
 creams, coffee, and champagne, between eleven and twelve 
 o clock at night, when no one of us would ever think of 
 wanting or taking any such articles upon our stomachs in 
 our own homes ? If we were all of us in the habit of hav 
 ing a regular repast at that hour, it might be well enough 
 to enjoy one with our neighbor ; but the party fare is gen 
 erally just so much in addition to the honest three meals 
 which we have eaten during the day. Now, to spend from 
 fifty to one, two, or three hundred dollars in giving all our 
 friends an indigestion from a midnight meal seems to me a 
 very poor investment. Yet if we once begin to give the 
 
350 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 party, we must have everything that is given at the other 
 parties, or wherefore do we live ? And caterers and waiters 
 rack their brains to devise new forms of expense and ex 
 travagance ; and when the bill comes in, one is sure to feel 
 that one is paying a great deal of money for a great deal of 
 nonsense. It is in fact worse than nonsense, because our dear 
 friends are, in half the cases, not only no better, but a great 
 deal worse, for what they have eaten." 
 
 But there is this advantage to society," said Rudolph, 
 " it helps us young physicians. What would the physicians 
 do if parties were abolished ? Take all the colds that are 
 caught by our fair friends with low necks and short sleeves, 
 all the troubles from dancing in tight dresses and inhaling 
 bad air, and all the headaches and indigestion from the 
 melange of lobster salad, two or three kinds of ice-cream, 
 cake, and coffee on delicate stomachs, and our profession gets 
 a degree of encouragement that is worthy to be thought 
 of." 
 
 " But the question arises," said my wife, " whether there 
 are not ways of promoting social feeling less expensive, more 
 simple and natural and rational. I am inclined to think 
 that there are." 
 
 " Yes," said Theophilus Thoro ; " for large parties are 
 not, as a general thing, given with any wish or intention 
 of really improving our acquaintance with our neighbors. 
 In many cases they are openly and avowedly a general trib 
 ute paid at intervals to society, for and in consideration of 
 which you are to sit with closed blinds and doors and be 
 let alone for the rest of the year. Mrs. Bogus, for instance, 
 lives to keep her house in order, her closets locked, her 
 silver counted and in the safe, and her china-closet in un 
 disturbed order. Her best things are put away with such 
 admirable precision, in so many wrappings and foldings, 
 and secured with so many a twist and twine, that to get 
 them out is one of the seven labors of Hercules, not to be 
 
HOW SHALL WE ENTERTAIN OUR COMPANY 351 
 
 lightly or unadvisedly taken in hand, but reverently, dis 
 creetly, and once for all, in an annual or biennial party. Then 
 says Mrs. Bogus, For Heaven s sake, let s have every crea 
 ture we can think of, and have em all over with at once. 
 For pity s sake, let s have no driblets left that we shall have 
 to be inviting to dinner or to tea. No matter whether they 
 can come or not, only send them the invitation, and our 
 part is done ; and, thank Heaven ! we shall be free for a 
 year. " 
 
 " Yes," said my wife ; "a great stand-up party bears just 
 the same relation towards the offer of real hospitality and 
 good will as Miss Sally Brass s offer of meat to the little 
 hungry Marchioness, when, with a bit uplifted on the end 
 of a fork, she addressed her, e Will you have this piece of 
 meat ? No ? Well, then, remember and don t say you 
 have n t had meat offered to you ! You are invited to a 
 general jam, at the risk of your life and health ; and if you 
 refuse, don t say you have n t had hospitality offered to you. 
 All our debts are wiped out and our slate clean ; now we 
 will have our own closed doors, no company and no trouble, 
 and our best china shall repose undisturbed on its shelves. 
 Mrs. Bogus says she never could exist in the way that Mrs. 
 Easygo does, with a constant drip of company, two or three 
 to breakfast one day, half a dozen to dinner the next, and 
 little evening gatherings once or twice a week. It must keep 
 her house in confusion all the time ; yet, for real social 
 feeling, real exchange of thought and opinion, there is more 
 of it in one half-hour at Mrs. Easygo s than in a dozen of 
 Mrs. Bogus s great parties. 
 
 " The fact is, that Mrs. Easygo really does like the 
 society of human beings. She is genuinely and heartily 
 social ; and, in consequence, though she has very limited 
 means, and no money to spend in giving great entertainments, 
 her domestic establishment is a sort of social exchange, where 
 more friendships are formed, more real acquaintance made, 
 
352 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 and more agreeable hours spent, than in any other place that 
 can be named. She never has large parties, great general 
 pay-days of social debts, but small, well-chosen circles of 
 people, selected so thoughtfully, with a view to the pleas 
 ure which congenial persons give each other, as to make the 
 invitation an act of real personal kindness. She always 
 manages to have something for the entertainment of her 
 friends, so that they are not reduced to the simple alterna 
 tive of gaping at each other s dresses and eating lobster salad 
 and ice-cream. There is either some choice music, or a read 
 ing of fine poetry, or a well-acted charade, or a portfolio 
 of photographs and pictures, to enliven the hour and start 
 conversation ; and as the people are skillfully chosen with 
 reference to each other, as there is no hurry or heat or con 
 fusion, conversation, in its best sense, can bubble up, fresh, 
 genuine, clear, and sparkling as a woodland spring, and one 
 goes away really rested and refreshed. The slight enter 
 tainment provided is just enough to enable you to eat salt 
 together in Arab fashion, not enough to form the leading 
 feature of the evening. A cup of tea and a basket of cake, 
 or a salver of ices, silently passed at quiet intervals, do not 
 interrupt conversation or overload the stomach." 
 
 " The fact is," said I, " that the art of society among us 
 Anglo-Saxons is yet in its rudest stages. We are not, as a 
 race, social and confiding, like the French and Italians and 
 Germans. We have a word for home, and our home is 
 often a moated grange, an island, a castle with its drawbridge 
 up, cutting us off from all but our own home-circle. In 
 France and Germany and Italy there are the boulevards and 
 public gardens, where people do their family living in com 
 mon. Mr. A. is breakfasting under one tree, with wife and 
 children around, and Mr. B. is breakfasting under another 
 tree, hard by ; and messages, nods, and smiles pass backward 
 and forward. Families see each other daily in these public 
 resorts, and exchange mutual offices of good will. Perhaps 
 
HOW SHALL WE ENTERTAIN OUR COMPANY 353 
 
 from these customs of society come that na ive simplicity and 
 abandon which one remarks in the Continental, in opposi 
 tion to the Anglo-Saxon, habits of conversation. A French 
 man or an Italian will talk to you of his feeling and plans 
 and prospects with an unreserve that is perfectly unaccount 
 able to you, who have always felt that such things must be 
 kept for the very innermost circle of home privacy. But the 
 Frenchman or Italian has from a child been brought up to 
 pass his family life in places of public resort, in constant 
 contact and intercommunion with other families; and the 
 social and conversational instinct has thus been daily strength 
 ened. Hence the reunions of these people have been char 
 acterized by a sprightliness and vigor and spirit that the 
 Anglo-Saxon has in vain attempted to seize and reproduce. 
 English and American conversazioni have very generally 
 proved a failure, from the rooted, frozen habit of reticence 
 and reserve which grows with our growth and strengthens 
 with our strength. The fact is, that the Angle-Saxon race 
 as a race does not enjoy talking, and, except in rare instances, 
 does not talk well. A daily convocation of people, without 
 refreshments or any extraneous object but the simple pleas 
 ure of seeing and talking with each other, is a thing that 
 can scarcely be understood in English or American society. 
 Social entertainment presupposes in the Anglo-Saxon mind 
 something to eat, and not only something, but a great deal. 
 Enormous dinners or great suppers constitute the entertain 
 ment. Nobody seems to have formed the idea that the talk 
 ing the simple exchange of social feelings is, of itself, 
 the entertainment, and that being together is the pleasure. 
 
 " Madame Recamier for years had a circle of friends who 
 met every afternoon in her salon from four to six o clock, 
 for the simple and sole pleasure of talking with each other. 
 The very first wits and men of letters and statesmen and 
 savans were enrolled in it, and each brought to the enter 
 tainment some choice morceau which he had laid aside from 
 
354 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 his own particular field to add to the feast. The daily in 
 timacy gave each one such perfect insight into all the others 7 
 habits of thought, tastes, and preferences, that the conversa 
 tion was like the celebrated music of the Conservatoire in 
 Paris, a concert of perfectly chorded instruments taught by 
 long habit of harmonious intercourse to keep exact time and 
 tune together. 
 
 " Keal conversation presupposes intimate acquaintance. 
 People must see each other often enough to wear off the 
 rough bark and outside rind of commonplaces and conven 
 tionalities in which their real ideas are enwrapped, and 
 give forth without reserve their innermost and best feel 
 ings. Now what is called a large party is the first and rud 
 est form of social intercourse. The most we can say of it is, 
 that it is better than nothing. Men and women are crowded 
 together like cattle in a pen. They look at each other, 
 they jostle each other, exchange a few common bleatings, 
 and eat together ; and so the performance terminates. One 
 may be crushed evening after evening against men or wo 
 men, and learn very little about them. You may decide 
 that a lady is good-tempered, when any amount of tram 
 pling on the skirt of her new silk dress brings no cloud to 
 her brow. But is it good temper, or only wanton careless 
 ness, which cares nothing for waste ? You can see that a 
 man is not a gentleman who squares his back to ladies at 
 the supper-table, and devours boned turkey and pate defoie 
 f/ras, while they vainly reach over and around him for 
 something, and that another is a gentleman so far as to pre 
 fer the care of his weaker neighbors to the immediate in 
 dulgence of his own appetites ; but further than this you 
 learn little. Sometimes, it is true, in some secluded corner, 
 two people of fine nervous system, undisturbed by the gen 
 eral confusion, may have a sociable half-hour, and really 
 part feeling that they like each other better, and know 
 more of each other than before. Yet these general gather- 
 
HOW SHALL WE ENTERTAIN OUR COMPANY 355 
 
 ings have, after all, their value. They are not so good as 
 something better would be, but they cannot be wholly dis 
 pensed with. It is far better that Mrs. Bogus should give 
 an annual party, when she takes down all her bedsteads 
 and throws open her whole house, than that she should 
 never see her friends and neighbors inside her doors at all. 
 She may feel that she has neither the taste nor the talent 
 for constant small reunions. Such things, she may feel, 
 require a social tact which she has not. She would be ut 
 terly at a loss how to conduct them. Each one would cost 
 her as much anxiety and thought as her annual gathering, 
 and prove a failure after all ; whereas the annual demonstra 
 tion can be put wholly into the hands of the caterer, who 
 comes in force, with flowers, silver, china, servants, and, 
 taking the house into his own hands, gives her entertain 
 ment for her, leaving to her no responsibility but the pay 
 ment of the bills ; and if Mr. Bogus does not quarrel with 
 them, we know no reason why any one else should ; and I 
 think Mrs. Bogus merits well of the republic, for doing 
 what she can do towards the hospitalities of the season. 
 1 7 m sure I never cursed her in my heart, even when her 
 strong coffee has held mine eyes open till morning, and 
 her superlative lobster salads have given me the very dark 
 est views of human life that ever dyspepsia and east wind 
 could engender. Mrs. Bogus is the Eve who offers the 
 apple ; but after all, I am the foolish Adam who take and 
 eat what I know is going to hurt me, and I am too gallant 
 to visit my sins on the head of my too obliging tempter. 
 In country places in particular, where little is going on and 
 life is apt to stagnate, a good, large, generous party, which 
 brings the whole neighborhood into one house to have a jolly 
 time, to eat, drink, and be merry, is really quite a work of 
 love and mercy. People see one another in their best 
 clothes, and that is something ; the elders exchange all man 
 ner of simple pleasantries and civilities, and talk over their 
 
356 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 domestic affairs, while the young people flirt, in that whole 
 some manner which is one of the safest of youthful follies. 
 A country party, in fact, may be set down as a work of be 
 nevolence, and the money expended thereon fairly charged 
 to the account of the great cause of peace and good will on 
 earth." 
 
 " But don t you think, 7 said my wife, " that, if the 
 charge of providing the entertainment were less laborious, 
 these gatherings could be more frequent ? You see, if 
 a woman feels that she must have five kinds of cake, and 
 six kinds of preserves, and even ice-cream and jellies in a 
 region where no confectioner comes in to abbreviate her 
 labors, she will sit with closed doors, and do nothing to 
 wards the general exchange of life, because she cannot do 
 as much as Mrs. Smith or Mrs. Parsons. If the idea of 
 meeting together had some other focal point than eating, 
 I think there would be more social feeling. It might be a 
 musical reunion, where the various young people of a circle 
 agreed to furnish each a song or an instrumental perform 
 ance. It might be an impromptu charade party, bringing 
 out something of that taste in arrangement of costume, and 
 capacity for dramatic effect, of which there is more latent 
 in society than we think. It might be the reading of arti 
 cles in prose and poetry furnished to a common paper or 
 portfolio, which would awaken an abundance of interest 
 and speculation on the authorship, or it might be dramatic 
 readings and recitations. Any or all of these pastimes might 
 make an evening so entertaining that a simple cup of tea 
 and a plate of cake or biscuit would be all the refreshment 
 needed." 
 
 " We may with advantage steal a leaf now and then from 
 some foreign book," said I. " In France and Italy, fam 
 ilies have their peculiar days set apart for the reception of 
 friends at their own houses. The whole house is put upon 
 a footing of hospitality and invitation, and the whole mind 
 
HOW SHALL WE ENTERTAIN OUR COMPANY 357 
 
 is given to receiving the various friends. In the evening 
 the salon is filled. The guests, coming from week to week, 
 for years, become in time friends ; the resort has the charm 
 of a home circle ; there are certain faces that you are al 
 ways sure to meet there. A lady once said to me of a cer 
 tain gentleman and lady whom she missed from her circle, 
 They have been at our house every Wednesday evening 
 for twenty years. It seems to me that this frequency of 
 meeting is the great secret of agreeable society. One sees, 
 in our American life, abundance of people who are every 
 thing that is charming and cultivated, but one never sees 
 enough of them. One meets them at some quiet reunion, 
 passes a delightful hour, thinks how charming they are, 
 and wishes one could see more of them. But the pleasant 
 meeting is like the encounter of two ships in mid-ocean : 
 away we sail, each on his respective course, to see each 
 other no more till the pleasant remembrance has died away. 
 Yet were there some quiet, homelike resort where we 
 might turn in to renew from time to time the pleasant in 
 tercourse, to continue the last conversation, and to compare 
 anew our readings and our experiences, the pleasant hour 
 of liking would ripen into a warm friendship. 
 
 " But in order that this may be made possible and prac 
 ticable, the utmost simplicity of entertainment must pre 
 vail. In a French salon all is to the last degree informal. 
 The louilloire, the French teakettle, is often tended by 
 one of the gentlemen, who aids his fair neighbors in the 
 mysteries of tea-making. One nymph is always to be found 
 at the table dispensing tea and talk ; and a basket of simple 
 biscuit and cakes, offered by another, is all the further repast. 
 The teacups and cake-basket are a real addition to the scene, 
 because they cause a little lively social bustle, a little chat 
 ter and motion, always of advantage in breaking up stiff 
 ness, and giving occasion for those graceful, airy nothings 
 that answer so good a purpose in facilitating acquaintance. 
 
358 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 " Nothing can be more charming than the description 
 which Edmond About gives, in his novel of Tolla, of the 
 reception evenings of an old noble Roman family, the 
 spirit of repose and quietude through all the apartments ; 
 the ease of coming and going ; the perfect homelike spirit 
 in which the guests settle themselves to any employment 
 of the hour that best suits them : some to lively chat, 
 some to dreamy, silent lounging, some to a game, others in 
 a distant apartment to music, and others still to a prome 
 nade along the terraces. 
 
 " One is often in a state of mind and nerves which indis 
 poses for the effort of active conversation j one wishes to 
 rest, to observe, to be amused without an effort ; and a 
 mansion which opens wide its hospitable arms, and offers 
 itself to you as a sort of home, where you may rest, and do 
 just as the humor suits you, is a perfect godsend at such 
 times. You are at home there, your ways are understood, 
 you can do as you please, come early or late, be brilliant 
 or dull, you are always welcome. If you can do nothing 
 for the social whole to-night, it matters not. There are 
 many more nights to come in the future, and you are enter 
 tained on trust, without a challenge. 
 
 " I have one friend, a man of genius, subject to the 
 ebbs and flows of animal spirits which attend that organ 
 ization. Of general society he has a nervous horror. A 
 regular dinner or evening party is to him a terror, an im 
 possibility ; but there is a quiet parlor where stands a 
 much-worn old sofa, and it is his delight to enter without 
 knocking, and be found lying with half-shut eyes on this 
 friendly couch, while the family life goes on around him 
 without a question. Nobody is to mind him, to tease him 
 with inquiries or salutations. If he will, he breaks into 
 the stream of conversation, and sometimes, rousing up from 
 one of these dreamy trances, finds himself, ere he or they 
 know how, in the mood for free and friendly talk. People 
 
HOW SHALL WE ENTERTAIN OUR COMPANY 359 
 
 often wonder, ( How do you catch So-and-so ? He is so 
 shy ! I have invited and invited, and he never comes. 
 We never invite, and he comes. We take no note of his 
 coming or his going ; we do not startle his entrance with 
 acclamation, nor clog his departure with expostulation ; it 
 is fully understood that with us he shall do just as he 
 chooses ; and so he chooses to do much that we like. 
 
 " The sum of this whole doctrine of society is, that we 
 are to try the value of all modes and forms of social enter 
 tainment by their effect in producing real acquaintance and 
 real friendship and good will. The first and rudest form 
 of seeking this is by a great promiscuous party, which sim 
 ply effects this, that people at least see each other on 
 the outside, and eat together. Next come all those various 
 forms of reunion in which the entertainment consists of some 
 thing higher than staring and eating, some exercise of 
 the faculties of the guests in music, acting, recitation, read 
 ing, etc. ; and these are a great advance, because they show 
 people what is in them, and thus lay a foundation for a 
 more intelligent appreciation and acquaintance. These are 
 the best substitute for the expense, show, and trouble of 
 large parties. They are in their nature more refining and 
 intellectual. It is astonishing, when people really put to 
 gether, in some one club or association, all the different tal 
 ents for pleasing possessed by different persons, how clever 
 a circle may be gathered, in the least promising neighbor 
 hood. A club of ladies in one of our cities has had quite 
 a brilliant success. It is held every fortnight at the houses 
 of the members, according to alphabetical sequence. The 
 lady who receives has charge of arranging what the enter 
 tainment shall be, whether charade, tableau, reading, 
 recitation, or music ; and the interest is much increased by 
 the individual taste shown in the choice of the diversion 
 and the variety which thence follows. 
 
 " In the summertime, in the country, open-air reunions 
 
360 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 are charming forms of social entertainment. Croquet par 
 ties, which bring young people together by daylight for 
 a healthy exercise, and end with a moderate share of the 
 evening, are a very desirable amusement. What are called 
 lawn teas are finding great favor in England and some 
 parts of our country. They are simply an early tea enjoyed 
 in a sort of picnic style in the grounds about the house. 
 Such an entertainment enables one to receive a great many 
 at a time, without crowding, and, being in its very idea 
 rustic and informal, can be arranged with very little ex 
 pense or trouble. With the addition of lanterns in the trees 
 and a little music, this entertainment may be carried on far 
 into the evening with a very pretty effect. 
 
 " As to dancing, I have this much to say of it. Either 
 our houses must be all built over and made larger, or female 
 crinolines must be made smaller, or dancing must continue 
 as it now is, the most absurd and ungraceful of all attempts 
 at amusement. The effort to execute round dances in the 
 limits of modern houses, in the prevailing style of dress, can 
 only lead to developments more startling than agreeable. 
 Dancing in the open air, on the shaven green of lawns, is a 
 pretty and graceful exercise, and there only can full sweep 
 be allowed for the present feminine toilet. 
 
 " The English breakfast is an institution growing in favor 
 here, and rightfully, too ; for a party of fresh, good-natured, 
 well-dressed people, assembled at breakfast on a summer 
 morning, is as nearly perfect a form of reunion as can be 
 devised. All are in full strength from their night s rest ; 
 the hour is fresh and lovely, and they are in condition to 
 give each other the very cream of their thoughts, the first 
 keen sparkle of the uncorked nervous system. The only 
 drawback is that, in our busy American life, the most de 
 sirable gentlemen often cannot spare their morning hours. 
 Breakfast parties presuppose a condition of leisure ; but 
 
HOW SHALL WE ENTERTAIN OUR COMPANY 361 
 
 when they can be compassed, they are perhaps the most 
 perfectly enjoyable of entertainments." 
 
 " Well," said Marianne, " I begin to waver about my 
 party. I don t know, after all, but the desire of paying off 
 social debts prompted the idea ; perhaps we might try some 
 of the agreeable things suggested. But, dear me ! there ? s 
 the baby. We ll finish the talk some other time." 
 
VIII 
 
 HOW SHALL WE BE AMUSED 
 
 " ONE, two, three, four, this makes the fifth accident 
 on the Fourth of July, in the two papers I have just read," 
 said Jenny. 
 
 "A very moderate allowance," said Theophilus Thoro, 
 " if you consider the Fourth as a great national saturnalia, 
 in which every boy in the land has the privilege of doing 
 whatever is right in his own eyes." 
 
 " The poor boys ! " said Mrs. Crowfield. All the 
 troubles of the world are laid at their door." 
 
 " Well," said Jenny, " they did burn the city of Portland, 
 it appears. The fire arose from firecrackers, thrown by 
 boys among the shavings of a carpenter s shop, so says 
 the paper." 
 
 " And," said Kudolph, " we surgeons expect a harvest of 
 business from the Fourth, as surely as from a battle. Cer 
 tain to be woundings, fractures, possibly amputations, follow 
 ing the proceedings of our glorious festival." 
 
 " Why cannot we Americans learn to amuse ourselves 
 peaceably like other nations ? " said Bob Stephens. " In 
 France and Italy, the greatest national festivals pass off 
 without fatal accident, or danger to any one. The fact is, 
 in our country we have not learned Iww to be amused. 
 Amusement has been made of so small account in our phi 
 losophy of life, that we are raw and unpracticed in being 
 amused. Our diversions, compared with those of the 
 politer nations of Europe, are coarse and savage, and con 
 sist mainly in making disagreeable noises and disturbing the 
 
HOW SHALL WE BE AMUSED 3G3 
 
 peace of the community by rude uproar. The only idea 
 an American boy associates with the Fourth of July is that 
 of gunpowder in some form, and a wild liberty to fire off 
 pistols in all miscellaneous directions, and to throw fire 
 crackers under the heels of horses, and into crowds of women 
 and children, for the fun of seeing the stir and commotion 
 thus produced. Now take a young Parisian boy and give 
 him a fete, and he conducts himself with greater gentleness 
 and good breeding, because he is part of a community in 
 which the art of amusement has been refined and perfected, 
 so that he has a thousand resources beyond the very obvious 
 one of making a great banging and disturbance. 
 
 " Yes," continued Bob Stephens, the fact is, that our 
 grim old Puritan fathers set their feet down resolutely on 
 all forms of amusement ; they would have stopped the 
 lambs from wagging their tails, and shot the birds for sing 
 ing, if they could have had their way ; and in consequence 
 of it, what a barren, cold, flowerless life is our New Eng 
 land existence ! Life is all, as Mantalini said, one ( demd 
 horrid grind. Nothing here but working and going to 
 church, said the German emigrants, and they were about 
 right. A French traveler, in the year 1837, says that 
 attending the Thursday -even ing lectures and church prayer- 
 meetings was the only recreation of the young people of 
 Boston ; and we can remember the time when this really was 
 no exaggeration. Think of that, with all the seriousness 
 of our Boston east winds to give it force, and fancy the pro 
 vision for amusement in our society ! The consequence is, 
 that boys who have the longing for amusement strongest 
 within them, and plenty of combativeness to back it, are 
 the standing terror of good society, and our Fourth of July 
 is a day of fear to all invalids and persons of delicate ner 
 vous organization, and of real, appreciable danger of life and 
 limb to every one." 
 
 " Well, Eobert," said my wife, " though I agree with 
 
364 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 you as to the actual state of society in this respect, I must 
 enter my protest against your slur on the memory of our 
 Pilgrim fathers." 
 
 " Yes," said Theophilus Thoro, " the New Englanders 
 are the only people, I believe, who take delight in vilifying 
 their ancestry. Every young hopeful in our day makes a 
 target of his grandfather s gravestone, and fires away, with 
 great self-applause. People in general seem to like to show 
 that they are well-born, and come of good stock ; but the 
 young New Englanders, many of them, appear to take 
 pleasure in insisting that they came of a race of narrow- 
 minded, persecuting bigots. 
 
 " It is true, that our Puritan fathers saw not everything. 
 They made a state where there were no amusements, but 
 where people could go to bed and leave their house doors 
 wide open all night, without a shadow of fear or danger, as 
 was for years the custom in all our country villages. The 
 fact is, that the simple early New England life, before we be 
 gan to import foreigners, realized a state of society in whose 
 possibility Europe would scarcely believe. If our fathers 
 had few amusements, they needed few. Life was too really 
 and solidly comfortable and happy to need much amusement. 
 
 "Look over the countries where people are most sedu 
 lously amused by their rulers and governors. Are they not 
 the countries where the people are most oppressed, most un 
 happy in their circumstances, and therefore in greatest need 
 of amusement ? It is the slave who dances and sings, and 
 why ? Because he owns nothing, and can own nothing, 
 and may as well dance and forget the fact. But give the 
 slave a farm of his own, a wife of his own, and children of 
 his own, with a schoolhouse and a vote, and ten to one he 
 dances no more. He needs no amusement, because he is 
 happy. 
 
 " The legislators of Europe wished nothing more than to 
 bring up a people who would be content with amusements, 
 
HOW SHALL WE BE AMUSED 365 
 
 t 
 and not ask after their rights or think too closely how they 
 
 were governed. Gild the dome of the Invalides, was 
 Napoleon s scornful prescription, when he heard the Pari 
 sian population were discontented. They gilded it, and 
 the people forgot to talk about anything else. They were 
 a childish race, educated from the cradle on spectacle and 
 show, and by the sight of their eyes could they be gov 
 erned. The people of Boston, in 1776, could not have 
 been managed in this way, chiefly because they were brought 
 up in the strict schools of the fathers." 
 
 " But don t you think," said Jenny, " that something 
 might be added and amended in the state of society our 
 fathers established here in New England ? Without be 
 coming frivolous, there might be more attention paid to 
 rational amusement." 
 
 " Certainly," said my wife, "the State and the Church 
 both might take a lesson from the providence of foreign 
 governments, and make liberty, to say the least, as attrac 
 tive as despotism. It is a very unwise mother that does 
 not provide her children with playthings." 
 
 " And yet," said Bob, " the only thing that the Church 
 has yet done is to forbid and to frown. We have abun 
 dance of tracts against dancing, whist-playing, ninepins, 
 billiards, operas, theatres, in short, anything that young 
 people would be apt to like. The General Assembly of 
 the Presbyterian Church refused to testify against slavery, 
 because of political diffidence, but made up for it by order 
 ing a more stringent crusade against dancing. The theatre 
 and opera grow up and exist among us like plants on the 
 windy side of a hill, blown all awry by a constant blast of 
 conscientious rebuke. There is really no amusement young 
 people are fond of, which they do not pursue, in a sort of 
 defiance of the frown of the peculiarly religious world. 
 With all the telling of what the young shall not do, there 
 has been very little telling what they shall do. 
 
36G THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 % 
 
 " The whole department of amusements certainly one 
 of the most important in education has been by the 
 Church made a sort of outlaws ground, to be taken posses 
 sion of and held by all sorts of spiritual ragamuffins ; and 
 then the faults and shortcomings resulting from this arrange 
 ment have been held up and insisted on as reasons why no 
 Christian should ever venture into it. 
 
 " If the Church would set herself to amuse her young 
 folks, instead of discussing doctrines and metaphysical hair 
 splitting, she would prove herself a true mother, and not 
 a hard-visaged stepdame. Let her keep this department, 
 so powerful and so difficult to manage, in what are morally 
 the strongest hands, instead of giving it up to the weakest. 
 
 " I think, if the different churches of a city, for example, 
 would rent a building where there should be a billiard-table, 
 one or two ninepin-alleys, a reading-room, a garden and 
 grounds for ball playing or innocent lounging, that they 
 would do more to keep their young people from the ways of 
 sin than a Sunday-school could. Nay, more : I would go 
 further. I would have a portion of the building fitted up 
 with scenery and a stage, for the getting up of tableaux or 
 dramatic performances, and thus give scope for the exercise 
 of that histrionic talent of which there is so much lying 
 unemployed in society. 
 
 "Young people do not like amusements any better for 
 the wickedness connected with them. The spectacle of a 
 sweet little child singing hymns, and repeating prayers, of 
 a pious old Uncle Tom dying for his religion, has filled 
 theatres night after night, and proved that there really is 
 no need of indecent or improper plays to draw full houses. 
 
 " The things that draw young people to places of amuse 
 ment are not at first gross things. Take the most notorious 
 public place in Paris, the Jardin Mabille, for instance, 
 and the things which give it its first charm are all innocent 
 and artistic. Exquisite beds of lilies, roses, gillyflowers, 
 
HOW SHALL WE BE AMUSED 367 
 
 lighted with jets of gas so artfully as to make every flower 
 translucent as a gem ; fountains where the gaslight streams 
 out from behind misty wreaths of falling water and calla- 
 blossoms ; sofas of velvet turf, canopied with fragrant 
 honeysuckle ; dim bowers overarched with lilacs and roses ; 
 a dancing-ground under trees whose branches bend with a 
 fruitage of many-colored lamps ; enchanting music and 
 graceful motion ; in all these there is not only no sin, but 
 they are really beautiful and desirable ; and if they were 
 only used on the side and in the service of virtue and reli 
 gion, if they were contrived and kept up by the guardians 
 and instructors of youth, instead of by those whose interest 
 it is to demoralize and destroy, young people would have 
 no temptation to stray into the haunts of vice. 
 
 " In Prussia, under the reign of Frederick William II., 
 when one good, hard-handed man governed the whole coun 
 try like a strict schoolmaster, the public amusements for 
 the people were made such as to present a model for all 
 states. The theatres were strictly supervised, and actors 
 obliged to conform to the rules of decorum and morality. 
 The plays and performances were under the immediate 
 supervision of men of grave morals, who allowed nothing 
 corrupting to appear ; a?nd the effect of this administration 
 and restraint is to be seen in Berlin even to this day. The 
 public gardens are full of charming little resorts, where, 
 every afternoon, for a very moderate sum, one can have 
 either a concert of good music, or a very fair dramatic or 
 operatic performance. Here whole families may be seen 
 enjoying together a wholesome and refreshing entertainment, 
 the mother and aunts with their knitting, the baby, the 
 children of all ages, and the father, their faces radiant 
 with that mild German light of contentment and good will 
 which one feels to be characteristic of the nation. When I 
 saw these things, and thought of our own outcast, unprovided 
 boys and young men, haunting the streets and alleys of 
 
3G8 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 cities, in places far from the companionship of mothers and 
 sisters, I felt as if it would be better for a nation to be 
 brought up by a good strict schoolmaster king than to try 
 to be a republic." 
 
 " Yes," said I, " but the difficulty is to get the good 
 schoolmaster king. For one good shepherd, there are twenty 
 who use the sheep only for their flesh and their wool. 
 Republics can do all that kings can, witness our late army 
 and sanitary commission. Once fix the idea thoroughly in 
 the public mind that there ought to be as regular and care 
 ful provision for public amusement as there is for going 
 to church and Sunday-school, and it will be done. Central 
 Park in New York is a beginning in the right direction, and 
 Brooklyn is following the example of her sister city. There 
 is, moreover, an indication of the proper spirit in the in 
 creased efforts that are made to beautify Sunday-school 
 rooms, and make them interesting, and to have Sunday- 
 school fetes and picnics, the most harmless and commend 
 able way of celebrating the Fourth of July. Why should 
 saloons and bar-rooms be made attractive by fine paintings, 
 choice music, flowers, and fountains, and Sunday-school 
 rooms be four bare walls ? There are churches whose broad 
 aisles represent ten and twenty millions of dollars, and 
 whose sons and daughters are daily drawn to circuses, 
 operas, theatres, because they have tastes and feelings, in 
 themselves perfectly laudable and innocent, for the gratifi 
 cation of which no provision is made in any other place. 5 
 
 " I know one church," said Rudolph, " whose Sunday- 
 school room is as beautifully adorned as any haunt of sin. 
 There is a fountain in the centre, which plays into a basin 
 surrounded with shells and flowers ; it has a small organ to 
 lead the children s voices, and the walls are hung with oil 
 paintings and engravings from the best masters. The festi 
 vals of the Sabbath school, which are from time to time 
 held in this place, educate the taste of the children, as well 
 
HOW SHALL WE BE AMUSED 3G9 
 
 as amuse them ; and, above all, they have through life the 
 advantage of associating with their early religious education 
 all those ideas of taste, elegance, and artistic culture which 
 too often come through polluted channels. 
 
 " When the amusement of the young shall become the 
 care of the experienced and the wise, and the floods of 
 wealth that are now rolling over and over, in silent invest 
 ments, shall be put into the form of innocent and refined 
 pleasures for the children and youth of the state, our na 
 tional festivals may become days to be desired, and not 
 dreaded. 
 
 " On the Fourth of July, our city fathers do in a cer 
 tain dim wise perceive that the public owes some attempt 
 at amusement to its children, and they vote large sums, 
 principally expended in bell-ringing, cannon, and fireworks. 
 The sidewalks are witness to the number who fall victims 
 to the temptations held out by grog-shops and saloons ; and 
 the papers, for weeks after, are crowded with accounts of 
 accidents. Now, a yearly sum expended to keep up, and 
 keep pure, places of amusement which hold out no tempta 
 tion to vice, but which excel all vicious places in real beauty 
 and attractiveness, would greatly lessen the sum needed to 
 be expended on any one particular day, and would refine 
 and prepare our people to keep holidays and festivals ap 
 propriately." 
 
 " For my part," said Mrs. Crowfield, " I am grieved at 
 the opprobrium which falls on the race of boys. Why 
 should the most critical era in the life of those who are to 
 be men, and to govern society, be passed in a sort of out 
 lawry, a rude warfare with all existing institutions ? 
 The years between ten and twenty are full of the nervous 
 excitability which marks the growth and maturing of the 
 manly nature. The boy feels wild impulses, which ought 
 to be vented in legitimate and healthful exercise. He 
 wants to run, shout, wrestle, ride, row, skate ; and all these 
 
370 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 together are often not sufficient to relieve the need he feels 
 of throwing off the excitability that burns within. 
 
 " For the wants of this period what safe provision is 
 made by the church, or by the state, or any of the boy s 
 lawful educators ? In all the Prussian schools amusements 
 are as much a part of the regular school system as grammar 
 or geography. The teacher is with the boys on the play 
 ground, and plays as heartily as any of them. The boy 
 has his physical wants anticipated. He is not left to fight 
 his way, blindly stumbling against society, but goes forward 
 in a safe path, which his elders and betters have marked 
 out for him. 
 
 " In our country, the boy s career is often a series of 
 skirmishes with society. He wants to skate, and contrives in 
 geniously to dam the course of a brook and flood a meadow 
 which makes a splendid skating-ground. Great is the joy 
 for a season, and great the skating. But the water floods 
 the neighboring cellars. The boys are cursed through all 
 the moods and tenses, boys are such a plague ! The 
 dam is torn down with emphasis and execration. The 
 boys, however, lie in wait some cold night, between twelve 
 and one, and build it up again ; and thus goes on the bat 
 tle. The boys care not whose cellar they flood, because 
 nobody cares for their amusement. They understand them 
 selves to be outlaws, and take an outlaw s advantage. 
 
 " Again, the boys have their sleds ; and sliding down 
 hill is splendid fun. But they trip up some grave citizen, 
 who sprains his shoulder. What is the result ? Not the 
 provision of a safe, good place, where boys may slide down 
 hill without danger to any one, but an edict forbidding all 
 sliding, under penalty of fine. 
 
 " Boys want to swim : it is best they should swim ; and 
 if city fathers, foreseeing and caring for this want, should 
 think it worth while to mark off some good place, and have 
 it under such police surveillance as to enforce decency of 
 
HOW SHALL WE BE AMUSED 371 
 
 language and demeanor, they would prevent a great deal 
 that now is disagreeable in the unguided efforts of boys to 
 enjoy this luxury. 
 
 " It would be cheaper in the end, even if one had to 
 build sliding-piles, as they do in Russia, or to build skating- 
 rinks, as they do in Montreal, it would be cheaper for 
 every city, town, and village to provide legitimate amuse 
 ment for boys, under proper superintendence, than to leave 
 them, as they are now left, to fight their way against so 
 ciety. 
 
 "In the boys academies of our country, what provision 
 is made for amusement ? There are stringent rules, and 
 any number of them, to prevent boys making any noise 
 that may disturb the neighbors ; and generally the teacher 
 thinks that, if he keeps the boys still, and sees that they 
 get their lessons, his duty is done. But a hundred boys 
 ought not to be kept still. There ought to be noise and 
 motion among them, in order that they may healthily sur 
 vive the great changes which nature is working within 
 them. If they become silent, averse to movement, fond of 
 indoor lounging and warm rooms, they are going in far 
 worse ways than any amount of outward lawlessness could 
 bring them to. 
 
 " Smoking and yellow-covered novels are worse than 
 any amount of hullabaloo ; and the quietest boy is often a 
 poor, ignorant victim, whose life is being drained out of him 
 before it is well begun. If mothers could only see the 
 series of books that are sold behind counters to boarding- 
 school boys, whom nobody warns and nobody cares for, 
 if they could see the poison, going from pillow to pillow, in 
 books pretending to make clear the great, sacred mysteries 
 of our nature, but trailing them over with the filth of utter 
 corruption ! These horrible works are the inward and secret 
 channel of hell, into which a boy is thrust by the pressure 
 of strict outward rules, forbidding that physical and out-of- 
 
372 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 door exercise and motion to which he ought rather to be 
 encouraged, and even driven. 
 
 "It is melancholy to see that, while parents, teachers, 
 and churches make no provision for boys in the way of 
 amusement, the world, the flesh, and the devil are inces 
 santly busy and active in giving it to them. There are 
 ninepin-alleys, with cigars and a bar. There are billiard- 
 saloons, with a bar, and, alas ! with the occasional company 
 of girls who are still beautiful, but who have lost the inno 
 cence of womanhood, while yet retaining many of its charms. 
 There are theatres, with a bar, and with the society of lost 
 women. The boy comes to one and all of these places, 
 seeking only what is natural and proper he should have, 
 what should be given him under the eye and by the care of 
 the Church, the school. He comes for exercise and amuse 
 ment, he gets these, and a ticket to destruction besides, 
 and whose fault is it ? " 
 
 " These are the aspects of public life," said I, " which 
 make me feel that we never shall have a perfect state till 
 women vote and bear rule equally with men. State housekeep 
 ing has been, hitherto, like what any housekeeping would 
 be, conducted by the voice and knowledge of man alone. 
 
 " If women had an equal voice in the management of our 
 public money, I have faith to believe that thousands which 
 are now wasted in mere political charlatanism would go to 
 provide for the rearing of the children of the state, male and 
 female. My wife has spoken for the boys ; I speak for the 
 girls also. What is provided for their physical development 
 and amusement ? Hot, gas-lighted theatric and operatic 
 performances, beginning at eight, and ending at midnight ; 
 hot, crowded parties and balls ; dancing with dresses tightly 
 laced over the laboring lungs, these are almost the whole 
 story. I bless the advent of croquet and skating. And 
 yet the latter exercise, pursued as it generally is, is a most 
 terrible exposure. There is no kindly parental provision 
 
HOW SHALL WE BE AMUSED 373 
 
 for the poor, thoughtless, delicate young creature, not 
 even the shelter of a dressing-room with a fire, at which she 
 may warm her numb fingers and put on her skates when she 
 arrives on the ground, and to which she may retreat in inter 
 vals of fatigue ; so she catches cold, and perhaps sows the 
 seed which with air-tight stoves and other appliances of hot 
 house culture may ripen into consumption. 
 
 "What provision is there for the amusement of all the 
 shop girls, seamstresses, factory girls, that crowd our cities ? 
 What for the thousands of young clerks and operatives ? 
 Not long since, in a respectable old town in New England, 
 the body of a beautiful girl was drawn from the river in 
 which she had drowned herself, a young girl only fifteen, 
 who came to the city, far from home and parents, and fell a 
 victim to the temptation which brought her to shame and des 
 peration. Many thus fall every year who are never counted. 
 They fall into the ranks of those whom the world abandons 
 as irreclaimable. 
 
 " Let those who have homes and every appliance to make 
 life pass agreeably, and who yet yawn over an unoccupied 
 evening, fancy a lively young girl all day cooped up at sewing 
 in a close, ill-ventilated room. Evening comes, and she has 
 three times the desire for amusement and three times the 
 need of it that her fashionable sister has. And where can 
 she go ? To the theatre, perhaps, with some young man as 
 thoughtless as herself, and more depraved ;* then to the bar 
 for a glass of wine, and another; and then, with a head 
 swimming and turning, who shall say where else she may 
 be led ? Past midnight and no one to look after her, and 
 one night ruins her utterly and for life, and she as yet only 
 a child ! 
 
 " John Newton had a very wise saying : Here is a man 
 trying to fill a bushel with chaff. Now if I fill it with 
 wheat first, it is better than to fight him. This apothegm 
 contains in it the whole of what I would say on the subject 
 of amusements." 
 
IX 
 
 DRESS, OR WHO MAKES THE FASHIONS 
 
 THE door of my study being open, I heard in the dis 
 tant parlor a sort of flutter of silken wings, and chatter 
 of bird-like voices, which told me that a covey of Jenny s 
 pretty young street birds had just alighted there. I could 
 not forbear a peep at the rosy faces that glanced out under 
 pheasants tails, doves wings, and nodding humming-birds, 
 and made one or two errands in that direction only that I 
 might gratify my eyes with a look at them. 
 
 Your nice young girl, of good family and good breeding, 
 is always a pretty object, and, for my part, I regularly lose 
 my heart (in a sort of figurative way) to every fresh, charm 
 ing creature that trips across my path. All their mysteri 
 ous rattletraps and whirligigs, their curls and networks 
 and crimples and rim pies and crisping-pins, their little 
 absurdities, if you will, have to me a sort of charm, like 
 the tricks and stammerings of a curly-headed child. I should 
 have made a very poor censor if I had been put in Cato s 
 place : the witches would have thrown all my wisdom into 
 some private chip-basket of their own, and walked off with 
 it in triumph. Never a girl bows to me that I do not see 
 in her eye a twinkle of confidence that she could, if she 
 chose, make an old fool of me. I surrender at discretion on 
 first sight. 
 
 Jenny s friends are nice girls, the flowers of good, 
 staid, sensible families, not heathen blossoms nursed in 
 the hot-bed heat of wild, high-flying, fashionable society. 
 They have been duly and truly taught and brought up, by 
 
DRESS, OR WHO MAKES THE FASHIONS 375 
 
 good mothers and painstaking aunties, to understand in their 
 infancy that handsome is that handsome does ; that little 
 girls must not be vain of their pretty red shoes and nice 
 curls, and must remember that it is better to be good than 
 to be handsome j with all other wholesome truisms of the 
 kind. They have been to school, and had their minds 
 improved in all modern ways, have calculated eclipses, 
 and read Virgil, Schiller, and La Fontaine, and understand 
 all about the geological strata, and the different systems of 
 metaphysics, so that a person reading the list of their 
 acquirements might be a little appalled at the prospect of 
 entering into conversation with them. For all these reasons 
 I listened quite indulgently to the animated conversation 
 that was going on about Well ! 
 
 What do girls generally talk about, when a knot of them 
 get together ? Not, I believe, about the sources of the 
 Nile, or the precession of the equinoxes, or the nature of 
 the human understanding, or Dante, or Shakespeare, or Mil 
 ton, although they have learned all about them in school ; 
 but upon a theme much nearer and dearer, the one all- 
 pervading feminine topic ever since Eve started the first 
 toilet of fig-leaves ; and as I caught now and then a phrase 
 of their chatter, I jotted it down in pure amusement, giving 
 to each charming speaker the name of the bird under whose 
 colors she was sailing. 
 
 " For my part," said little Humming-Bird, " I m quite 
 worn out with sewing ; the fashions are all so different 
 from what they were last year, that everything has to be 
 made over." 
 
 " Is n t it dreadful ! " said Pheasant. " There s my new 
 mauve silk dress ! it was a very expensive silk, and I 
 have n t worn it more than three or four times, and it really 
 looks quite dowdy ; and I can t get Patterson to do it over 
 for me for this party. Well, really, I shall have to give up 
 company because I have nothing to wear." 
 
376 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 " Who does set the fashions, I wonder," said Humming- 
 Bird ; " they seem nowadays to whirl faster and faster, till 
 really they don t leave one time for anything." 
 
 " Yes," said Dove, " I have n t a moment for reading, or 
 drawing, or keeping up my music. The fact is, nowadays, 
 to keep one s self properly dressed is all one can do. If I 
 were grande dame now, and had only to send an order to 
 my milliner and dressmaker, I might be beautifully dressed 
 all the time without giving much thought to it myself ; and 
 that is what I should like. But this constant planning 
 about one s toilet, changing your buttons and your fringes 
 and your bonnet-trimmings and your hats every other day, 
 and then being behindhand ! It is really too fatiguing." 
 
 " Well," said Jenny, " I never pretend to keep up. I 
 never expect to be in the front rank of fashion, but no girl 
 wants to be behind every one ; nobody wants to have peo 
 ple say, ( Do see what an old-times, rubbishy looking crea 
 ture that is. And now, with my small means and my con 
 science (for I have a conscience in this matter, and don t 
 wish to spend any more time and money than is needed to 
 keep one s self fresh and tasteful), I find my dress quite a 
 fatiguing care." 
 
 " Well, now, girls," said Humming-Bird, " do you really 
 know, I have sometimes thought I should like to be a nun, 
 just to get rid of all this labor. If I once gave up dress 
 altogether, and knew I was to have nothing but one plain 
 robe tied round my waist with a cord, it does seem to me 
 as if it would be a perfect repose, only one is a Protes 
 tant, you know." 
 
 Now, as Humming-Bird was the most notoriously dressy 
 individual in the little circle, this suggestion was received 
 with quite a laugh. But Dove took it up. 
 
 " Well, really," she said, " when dear Mr. S preaches 
 
 those saintly sermons to us about our baptismal vows, and 
 the nobleness of an unworldly life, and calls on us to live 
 
DRESS, OR WHO MAKES THE FASHIONS 377 
 
 for something purer and higher than we are living for, I 
 confess that sometimes all my life seems to me a mere sham, 
 that I am going to church, and saying solemn words, and 
 being wrought up by solemn music, and uttering most solemn 
 vows and prayers, all to no purpose ; and then I come away 
 and look at my life, all resolving itself into a fritter about 
 dress, and sewing-silk, cord, braid, and buttons, the next 
 fashion of bonnets, how to make my old dresses answer 
 instead of new, how to keep the air of the world, while 
 in my heart I am cherishing something higher and better. 
 If there ? s anything I detest it is hypocrisy ; and sometimes 
 the life I lead looks like it. But how to get out of it ? 
 what to do ? 
 
 " I m sure," said Humming-Bird, " that taking care of 
 my clothes and going into company is, frankly, all I do. 
 If I go to parties, as other girls do, and make calls, and 
 keep dressed, you know papa is not rich, and one must 
 do these things economically, it really does take all the 
 time I have. When I was confirmed the Bishop talked to 
 us so sweetly, and I really meant sincerely to be a good 
 girl, to be as good as I knew how ; but now, when they 
 talk about fighting the good fight and running the Christian 
 race, I feel very mean and little, for I am quite sure this 
 is n t doing it. But what is, and who is ? " 
 
 " Aunt Betsey Titcomb is doing it, I suppose," said 
 Pheasant. 
 
 " Aunt Betsey ! " said Humming-Bird, " well, she is. 
 She spends all her money in doing good. She goes round 
 visiting the poor all the time. She is a perfect saint ; 
 but oh girls, how she looks ! Well, now, I confess, when 
 I think I must look like Aunt Betsey, my courage gives 
 out. Is it necessary to go without hoops, and look like a 
 dipped candle, in order to be unworldly ? Must one wear 
 such a fright of a bonnet ? " 
 
 " No," said Jenny, " I think not. I think Miss Betsey 
 
378 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 Titcomb, good as she is, injures the cause of goodness by 
 making it outwardly repulsive. I really think, if she would 
 take some pains with her dress, and spend upon her own 
 wardrobe a little of the money she gives away, that she 
 might have influence in leading others to higher aims ; now 
 all her influence is against it. Her outre and repulsive ex 
 terior arrays our natural and innocent feelings against good 
 ness ; for surely it is natural and innocent to wish to look 
 well, and I am really afraid a great many of us are more 
 afraid of being thought ridiculous than of being wicked." 
 
 " And after all," said Pheasant, " you know Mr. St. 
 Clair says, Dress is one of the fine arts, and if it is, why 
 of course we ought to cultivate it. Certainly, well-dressed 
 men and women are more agreeable objects than rude and 
 unkempt ones. There must be somebody whose mission it 
 is to preside over the agreeable arts of life ; and I suppose 
 it falls to us girls. That s the way I comfort myself, at 
 all events. Then I must confess that I do like dress ; I m 
 not cultivated enough to be a painter or a poet, and I have 
 all my artistic nature, such as it is, in dress. I love har 
 monies of color, exact shades and matches j I love to see a 
 uniform idea carried all through a woman s toilet, her 
 dress, her bonnet, her gloves, her shoes, her pocket-hand 
 kerchief and cuffs, her very parasol, all in correspondence." 
 
 " But, my dear," said Jenny, " anything of this kind 
 must take a fortune ! " 
 
 " And if I had a fortune, I m pretty sure I should spend 
 a good deal of it in this way," said Pheasant. " I can ima 
 gine such completeness of toilet as I have never seen. How 
 I would like the means to show what I could do ! My life, 
 now, is perpetual disquiet. I always feel shabby. My 
 things must all be bought at haphazard, as they can be got 
 out of my poor little allowance, and things are getting 
 so horridly dear ! Only think of it, girls ! gloves at two 
 and a quarter ! and boots at seven, eight, and ten dollars ! 
 
DRESS, OR WHO MAKES THE FASHIONS 379 
 
 and then, as you say, the fashions changing so ! Why, I 
 bought a sack last fall and gave forty dollars for it, and this 
 winter I m wearing it, to be sure, but it has no style at 
 all, looks quite antiquated ! " 
 
 " Now I say," said Jenny, " that you are really morbid 
 on the subject of dress ; you are fastidious and particular 
 and exacting in your ideas in a way that really ought to be 
 put down. There is not a girl of our set that dresses as 
 nicely as you do, except Emma Seyton, and her father, you 
 know, has no end of income. 7 
 
 " Nonsense, Jenny, 7 said Pheasant. " I think I really 
 look like a beggar ; but then, I bear it as well as I can, 
 because, you see, I know papa does all for us he can, and 
 I won t be extravagant. But I do think, as Humming-Bird 
 says, that it would be a great relief to give it up altogether 
 and retire from the world ; or, as Cousin John says, climb 
 a tree and pull it up after you, and so be in peace." 
 
 "Well," said Jenny, "all this seems to have come on 
 since the war. It seems to me that not only has everything 
 doubled in price, but all the habits of the world seem to 
 require that you shall have double the quantity of every 
 thing. Two or three years ago a good balmoral skirt was 
 a fixed fact ; it was a convenient thing for sloppy, unpleas 
 ant weather. But now, dear me ! there is no end to them. 
 They cost fifteen and twenty dollars ; and girls that I know 
 have one or two every season, besides all sorts of quilled 
 and embroidered and ruffled and tucked and flounced ones. 
 Then, in dressing one s hair, what a perfect overflow there 
 is of all manner of waterfalls, and braids, and rats, and mice, 
 and curls, and combs ; when three or four years ago we 
 combed our own hair innocently behind our ears, and put 
 flowers in it, and thought we looked nicely at our evening 
 parties ! I don t believe we look any better now, when we 
 are dressed, than we did then, so what s the use ? " 
 
 " Well, did you ever see such a tyranny as this of fash- 
 
380 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 ion ? " said Humming-Bird. " We know it s silly, but we 
 all bow down before it ; we are afraid of our lives before 
 it ; and who makes all this and sets it going ? The Paris 
 milliners, the Empress, or who ? " 
 
 "The question where fashions come from is like the 
 question where pins go to," said Pheasant. " Think of the 
 thousands and millions of pins that are being used every 
 year, and not one of them worn out. Where do they all 
 go to ? One would expect to find a pin mine somewhere." 
 
 " Victor Hugo says they go into the sewers in Paris," 
 said Jenny. 
 
 " And the fashions come from a source about as pure," 
 said I, from the next room. 
 
 " Bless me, Jenny, do tell us if your father has been 
 listening to us all this time ! " was the next exclamation ; 
 and forthwith there was a whir and rustle of the silken 
 wings, as the whole troop fluttered into my study. 
 
 " Now, Mr. Crowfield, you are too bad ! " said Humming- 
 Bird, as she perched upon a corner of my study-table, and 
 put her little feet upon an old " Froissart " which filled 
 the armchair. 
 
 " To be listening to our nonsense ! " said Pheasant. 
 
 " Lying in wait for us ! " said Dove. 
 
 " Well, now, you have brought us all down on you," 
 said Humming-Bird, " and you won t find it so easy to be 
 rid of us. You will have to answer all our questions." 
 
 " My dears, I am at your service, as far as mortal man 
 may be," said I. 
 
 " Well, then," said Humming-Bird, " tell us all about 
 everything, how things come to be as they are. Who 
 makes the fashions ? " 
 
 " I believe it is universally admitted that, in the matter 
 of feminine toilet, France rules the world," said I. 
 
 " But who rules France ? " said Pheasant. " Who de 
 cides what the fashions shall be there ? " 
 
DRESS, OR WHO MAKES THE FASHIONS 381 
 
 "It is the great misfortune of the civilized world, at the 
 present hour/ said I, " that the state of morals in France 
 is apparently at the very lowest ebb, and consequently the 
 leadership of fashion is entirely in the hands of a class of 
 women who could not be admitted into good society, in any 
 country. Women who can never have the name of wife, 
 who know none of the ties of family, these are the dicta 
 tors whose dress and equipage and appointments give the 
 law, first to France, and through France to the civilized 
 world. Such was the confession of Monsieur Dupin, made 
 in a late speech before the French Senate, and acknow 
 ledged, with murmurs of assent on all sides, to be the truth. 
 This is the reason why the fashions have such an utter 
 disregard of all those laws of prudence and economy which 
 regulate the expenditures of families. They are made by 
 women whose sole and only hold on life is personal attrac 
 tiveness, and with whom to keep this up, at any cost, is a 
 desperate necessity. No moral quality, no association of 
 purity, truth, modesty, self-denial, or family love, comes in 
 to hallow the atmosphere about them, and create a sphere of 
 loveliness which brightens as mere physical beauty fades. 
 The ravages of time and dissipation must be made up by an 
 unceasing study of the arts of the toilet. Artists of all 
 sorts, moving in their train, rack all the stores of ancient 
 and modern art for the picturesque, the dazzling, the gro 
 tesque ; and so, lest these Circes of society should carry all 
 before them, and enchant every husband, brother, and lover, 
 the staid and lawful Penelopes leave the hearth and home 
 to follow in their triumphal march and imitate their arts. 
 Thus it goes in France ; and in England, virtuous and do 
 mestic princesses and peeresses must take obediently what 
 has been decreed by their rulers in the demi-monde of 
 France ; and we in America have leaders of fashion, who 
 make it their pride and glory to turn New York into Paris, 
 and to keep even step with everything that is going on 
 
382 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 there. So the whole world of womankind is marching 
 under the command of these leaders. The love of dress 
 and glitter and fashion is getting to be a morbid, unhealthy 
 epidemic, which really eats away the nobleness and purity 
 of women. 
 
 " In France, as Monsieur Dupin, Edmond About, and 
 Michelet tell us, the extravagant demands of love for dress 
 lead women to contract debts unknown to their husbands, 
 and sign obligations which are paid by the sacrifice of 
 honor, and thus the purity of the family is continually 
 undermined. In England there is a voice of complaint, 
 sounding from the leading periodicals, that the extravagant 
 demands of female fashion are bringing distress into fami 
 lies, and making marriages impossible ; and something of 
 the same sort seems to have begun here. We are across 
 the Atlantic, to be sure ; but we feel the swirl and drift 
 of the great whirlpool ; only, fortunately, we are far enough 
 off to be able to see whither things are tending, and to stop 
 ourselves if we will. 
 
 "We have just come through a great struggle, in which 
 our women have borne an heroic part, have shown them 
 selves capable of any kind of endurance and self-sacrifice ; 
 and now we are in that reconstructive state which makes it 
 of the greatest consequence to ourselves and the world that 
 we understand our own institutions and position, and learn 
 that, instead of following the corrupt and worn-out ways of 
 the Old World, we are called on to set the example of a 
 new state of society, noble, simple, pure, and religious ; 
 and women can do more towards this even than men, for 
 women are the real architects of society. 
 
 " Viewed in this light, even the small, frittering cares of 
 women s life the attention to buttons, trimmings, thread, 
 and sewing-silk may be an expression of their patriotism 
 and their religion. A noble-hearted woman puts a noble 
 meaning into even the commonplace details of life. The 
 
DRESS, OR WHO MAKES THE FASHIONS 383 
 
 women of America can, if they choose, hold back their 
 country from following in the wake of old, corrupt, worn- 
 out, effeminate European society, and make America the 
 leader of the world in all that is good." 
 
 " I in sure," said Humming-Bird, " we all would like to 
 be noble and heroic. During the war, I did so long to be 
 a man ! I felt so poor and insignificant because I was no 
 thing but a girl ! " 
 
 " Ah, well," said Pheasant, " but then one wants to do 
 something worth doing, if one is going to do anything. 
 One would like to be grand and heroic, if one could ; but 
 if not, why try at all ? One wants to be very something, 
 very great, very heroic ; or if not that, then at least very 
 stylish and very fashionable. It is this everlasting medi 
 ocrity that bores me." 
 
 " Then, I suppose, you agree with the man we read of, 
 who buried his one talent in the earth, as hardly worth 
 caring for." 
 
 " To say the truth, I always had something of a sym 
 pathy for that man," said Pheasant. " I can t enjoy good 
 ness and heroism in homoeopathic doses. I want some 
 thing appreciable. What I can do, being a woman, is a 
 very different thing from what I should try to do if I were 
 a man, and had a man s chances : it is so much less so 
 poor that it is scarcely worth trying for." 
 
 "You remember," said I, "the apothegm of one of the 
 old divines, that if two angels were sent down from heaven, 
 the one to govern a kingdom, and the other to sweep a 
 street, they would not feel any disposition to change 
 works." 
 
 " Well, that just shows that they are angels, and not 
 mortals," said Pheasant ; " but we poor human beings see 
 things differently." 
 
 " Yet, my child, what could Grant or Sherman have 
 done, if it had not been for the thousands of brave privates 
 
384 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 who were content to do each their imperceptible little, 
 if it had not been for the poor, unnoticed, faithful, never- 
 failing common soldiers, who did the work and bore the 
 suffering ? No one man saved our country, or could save 
 it ; nor could the men have saved it without the women. 
 Every mother that said to her son, Go ; every wife that 
 strengthened the hands of her husband ; every girl who 
 sent courageous letters to her betrothed ; every woman who 
 worked for a fair ; every grandam whose trembling hands 
 knit stockings and scraped lint ; every little maiden who 
 hemmed shirts and made comfort -bags for soldiers, each 
 and all have been the joint doers of a great heroic work, the 
 doing of which has been the regeneration of our era. A 
 whole generation has learned the luxury of thinking heroic 
 thoughts and being conversant with heroic deeds, and I 
 have faith to believe that all this is not to go out in a mere 
 crush of fashionable luxury and folly and frivolous empti 
 ness, but that our girls are going to merit the high praise 
 given us by De Tocqueville, when he placed first among the 
 causes of our prosperity the noble character of American 
 women. Because foolish female persons in New York are 
 striving to outdo the demi-monde of Paris in extravagance, 
 it must not follow that every sensible and patriotic ma 
 tron, and every nice, modest young girl, must forthwith and 
 without inquiry rush as far after them as they possibly can. 
 Because Mrs. Shoddy opens a ball in a two-thousand-dollar 
 lace dress, every girl in the land need not look with shame 
 on her modest white muslin. Somewhere between the 
 fast women of Paris and the daughters of Christian Ameri 
 can families there should be established a cordon sanitaire, 
 to keep out the contagion of manners, customs, and habits 
 with which a noble-minded, religious democratic people 
 ought to have nothing to do." 
 
 " Well now, Mr. Crowfield," said the Dove, " since you 
 speak us so fair, and expect so much of us, we must of 
 
DRESS, OR WHO MAKES THE FASHIONS 385 
 
 course try not to fall below your compliments ; but, after 
 all, tell us what is the right standard about dress. Now 
 we have daily lectures about this at home. Aunt Maria 
 says that she never saw such times as these, when mothers 
 and daughters, church-members and worldly people, all 
 seem to be going one way, and sit down together and talk, 
 as they will, on dress and fashion, how to have this made 
 and that altered. We used to be taught, she said, that 
 church-members had higher things to think of, that their 
 thoughts ought to be fixed on something better, and that they 
 ought to restrain the vanity and worldliness of children and 
 young people ; but now, she says, even before a girl is born, 
 dress is the one thing needful, the great thing to be 
 thought of ; and so, in every step of the way upward, her 
 little shoes, and her little bonnets, and her little dresses, 
 and her corals and her ribbons, are constantly being dis 
 cussed in her presence, as the one all-important object of 
 life. Aunt Maria thinks mamma is dreadful, because she has 
 maternal yearnings over our toilet successes and fortunes ; 
 and we secretly think Aunt Maria is rather soured by old 
 age, and has forgotten how a girl feels." 
 
 " The fact is," said I, " that the love of dress and out 
 side show has been always such an exacting and absorbing 
 tendency, that it seems to have furnished work for religion 
 ists and economists, in all ages, to keep it within bounds. 
 Various religious bodies, at the outset, adopted severe rules 
 in protest against it. The Quakers and the Methodists pre 
 scribed certain fixed modes of costume as a barrier against 
 its frivolities and follies. In the .Romish Church an en 
 trance on any religious order prescribed entire and total 
 renunciation of all thought and care for the beautiful in 
 person or apparel, as the first step towards saintship. The 
 costume of the religieuse seemed to be purposely intended 
 to imitate the shroudings and swathings of a corpse and 
 the lugubrious color of a pall, so as forever to remind the 
 
386 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 wearer that she was dead to the world of ornament and 
 physical beauty. All great Christian preachers and reform 
 ers have leveled their artillery against the toilet, from the 
 time of St. Jerome downward ; and Tom Moore has put into 
 beautiful and graceful verse St. Jerome s admonitions to the 
 fair churchgoers of his time. 
 
 WHO IS THE MAID? 
 ST. JEROME S LOVE. 
 
 Who is the maid my spirit seeks, 
 
 Through cold reproof and slander s blight ? 
 Has she Love s roses on her cheeks ? 
 
 Is hers an eye of this world s light ? 
 No: wan and sunk with midnight prayer 
 
 Are the pale looks of her I love ; 
 Or if, at times, a light be there, 
 
 Its beam is kindled from above. 
 
 I chose not her, my heart s elect, 
 
 From those who seek their Maker s shrine 
 In gems and garlands proudly decked, 
 
 As if themselves were things divine. 
 No: Heaven but faintly warms the breast 
 
 That beats beneath a broidered veil; 
 And she who comes in glittering vest 
 
 To mourn her frailty, still is frail. 
 
 Not so the faded form I prize 
 
 And love, because its bloom is gone; 
 The glory in those sainted eyes 
 
 Is all the grace her brow puts on. 
 And ne er was Beauty s dawn so bright, 
 
 So touching, as that form s decay, 
 Which, like the altar s trembling light, 
 
 In holy lustre wastes away. 
 
 " But the defect of all these modes of warfare on the ele 
 gances and refinements of the toilet was that they were too 
 indiscriminate. They were in reality founded on a false 
 principle. They took for granted that there was something 
 radically corrupt and wicked in the body and in the physi 
 cal system. According to this mode of viewing things, the 
 
DRESS, OR WHO MAKES THE FASHIONS 387 
 
 body was a loathsome and pestilent prison, in which the 
 soul was locked up and enslaved, and the eyes, the ears, 
 the taste, the smell, were all so many corrupt traitors in 
 conspiracy to poison her. Physical beauty of every sort 
 was a snare, a Circean enchantment, to be valiantly con 
 tended with and straitly eschewed. Hence they preached, 
 not moderation, but total abstinence from all pursuit of 
 physical grace and beauty. 
 
 " Now, a resistance founded on an over-statement is con 
 stantly tending to reaction. People always have a ten 
 dency to begin thinking for themselves ; and when they so 
 think, they perceive that a good and wise God would not 
 have framed our bodies with such exquisite care only to 
 corrupt our souls, that physical beauty, being created in 
 such profuse abundance around us, and we being possessed 
 with such a longing for it, must have its uses, its legitimate 
 sphere of exercise. Even the poor, shrouded nun, as she 
 walks the convent garden, cannot help asking herself why, if 
 the crimson velvet of the rose was made by God, all colors 
 except black and white are sinful for her; and the modest 
 Quaker, after hanging all her house and dressing all her 
 children in drab, cannot but marvel at the sudden outstreak- 
 ing of blue and yellow and crimson in the tulip-beds under 
 her window, and reflect how very differently the great All- 
 Father arrays the world s housekeeping. The consequence 
 of all this has been, that the reforms based upon these se 
 vere and exclusive views have gradually gone backward. 
 The Quaker dress is imperceptibly and gracefully melting 
 away into a refined simplicity of modern costume, which in 
 many cases seems to be the perfection of taste. The ob 
 vious reflection, that one color of the rainbow is quite as 
 much of God as another, has led the children of gentle 
 dove-colored mothers to appear in shades of rose-color, blue, 
 and lilac ; and wise elders have said, it is not so much the 
 color or the shape that we object to, as giving too much 
 
388 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 time and too much money, if the heart be right with God 
 and man, the bonnet ribbon may be of any shade you 
 please." 
 
 " But don t you think," said Pheasant, " that a certain 
 fixed dress, marking the unworldly character of a religious 
 order, is desirable ? Now, I have said before that I am 
 very fond of dress. I have a passion for beauty and com 
 pleteness in it ; and as long as I am in the world and obliged 
 to dress as the world does, it constantly haunts me, and 
 tempts me to give more time, more thought, more money, to 
 these things than I really think they are worth. But I can 
 conceive of giving up this thing altogether as being much 
 easier than regulating it to the precise point. I never read 
 of a nun s taking the veil without a certain thrill of sym 
 pathy. To cut off one s hair, to take off and cast from her, 
 one by one, all one s trinkets and jewels, to lie down and 
 have the pall thrown over one, and feel one s self once for 
 all dead to the world, I cannot help feeling as if this were 
 real, thorough, noble renunciation, and as if one might rise 
 up from it with a grand, calm consciousness of having risen 
 to a higher and purer atmosphere, and got above all the 
 littlenesses and distractions that beset us here. So I have 
 heard charming young Quaker girls, who in more thought 
 less days indulged in what for them was a slight shading of 
 worldly conformity, say that it was to them a blessed rest 
 when they put on the strict, plain dress, and felt that they 
 really had taken up the cross and turned their backs on 
 the world. I can conceive of doing this, much more easily 
 than I can of striking the exact line between worldly con 
 formity and noble aspiration, in the life I live now. 7 
 
 " My dear child," said I, " we all overlook one great 
 leading principle of our nature, and that is, that we are 
 made to find a higher pleasure in self-sacrifice than in any 
 form of self - indulgence. There is something grand and 
 pathetic in the idea of an entire self-surrender, to which 
 
DRESS, OR WHO MAKES THE FASHIONS 389 
 
 every human soul leaps up, as we do to the sound of mar 
 tial music. 
 
 " How many boys of Boston and New York, who had 
 lived effeminate and idle lives, felt this new power uprising 
 in them in our war ! How they embraced the dirt and 
 discomfort and fatigue and watchings and toils of camp-life 
 with an eagerness of zest which they had never felt in the 
 pursuit of mere pleasure, and wrote home burning letters 
 that they never were so happy in their lives ! It was not 
 that dirt and fatigue and discomfort and watchings and 
 weariness were in themselves agreeable, but it was a joy to 
 feel themselves able to bear all and surrender all for some 
 thing higher than self. Many a poor Battery bully of New 
 York, many a street rowdy, felt uplifted by the discovery that 
 he too had hid away under the dirt and dust of his former 
 life this divine and precious jewel. He leaped for joy to 
 find that he too could be a hero. Think of the hundreds of 
 thousands of plain ordinary workingmen, and of seemingly 
 ordinary boys, who, but for such a crisis, might have passed 
 through life never knowing this to be in them, and who 
 courageously endured hunger and thirst and cold, and sepa 
 ration from dearest friends, for days and weeks and months, 
 when they might, at any day, have bought a respite by 
 deserting their country s flag ! Starving boys, sick at heart, 
 dizzy in head, pining for home and mother, still found 
 warmth and comfort in the one thought that they could 
 suffer, die, for their country ; and the graves at Salisbury 
 and Andersonville show in how many souls this noble power 
 of self -sacrifice to the higher good was lodged, how many 
 there were, even in the humblest walks of life, who pre 
 ferred death by torture to life in dishonor. 
 
 " It is this heroic element in man and woman that makes 
 self-sacrifice an ennobling and purifying ordeal in any reli 
 gious profession. The man really is taken into a higher 
 region of his own nature, and finds a pleasure in the exer- 
 
390 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 cise of higher faculties which he did not suppose himself to 
 possess. Whatever sacrifice is supposed to be duty, whether 
 the supposition be really correct or not, has in it an enno 
 bling and purifying power ; and thus the eras of conversion 
 from one form of the Christian religion to another are often 
 marked with a real and permanent exaltation of the whole 
 character. But it does not follow that certain religious 
 beliefs and ordinances are in themselves just, because they 
 thus touch the great heroic master-chord of the human soul. 
 To wear sackcloth and sleep on a plank may have been of 
 use to many souls, as symbolizing the awakening of this 
 higher nature ; but, still, the religion of the Xew Testament 
 is plainly one which calls to no such outward and evident 
 sacrifices. 
 
 " It w r as John the Baptist, and not the Messiah, who 
 dwelt in the wilderness and w r ore garments of camel s hair ; 
 and Jesus was commented on, not for his asceticism, but for 
 his cheerful, social acceptance of the average innocent wants 
 and enjoyments of humanity. ( The Son of man came eat 
 ing and drinking. The great, and never ceasing, and utter 
 self-sacrifice of his life was not signified by any peculiarity 
 of costume, or language, or manner ; it showed itself only 
 as it unconsciously welled up in all his words and actions, 
 in his estimates of life, in all that marked him out as a be 
 ing of a higher and holier sphere." 
 
 " Then you do not believe in influencing this subject of 
 dress by religious persons adopting any particular laws of 
 costume ? " said Pheasant. 
 
 "I do not see it to be possible," said I, " considering how 
 society is made up. There are such differences of taste and 
 character, people move in such different spheres, are 
 influenced by such different circumstances, that all we 
 can do is to lay down certain great principles, and leave 
 it to every one to apply them according to individual 
 needs." 
 
DRESS, OR WHO MAKES THE FASHIONS 391 
 
 " But what are these principles ? There is the grand 
 inquiry." 
 
 " Well," said I, " let us feel our way. In the first 
 place, then, we are all agreed in one starting-point, that 
 beauty is not to be considered as a bad thing, that the 
 love of ornament in our outward and physical life is not a 
 sinful or a dangerous feeling, and only leads to evil, as all 
 other innocent things do, by being used in wrong ways. 
 So far we are all agreed, are we not ? " 
 
 " Certainly," said all the voices. 
 
 " It is, therefore, neither wicked nor silly nor weak- 
 minded to like beautiful dress, and all that goes to make 
 it up. Jewelry, diamonds, pearls, emeralds, rubies, and all 
 sorts of pretty things that are made of them, are as lawful 
 and innocent objects of admiration and desire, as flowers or 
 birds or butterflies, or the tints of evening skies. Gems, 
 in fact, are a species of mineral flower ; they are the blos 
 soms of the dark, hard mine ; and what they want in per 
 fume they make up in durability. The best Christian in 
 the world may, without the least inconsistency, admire 
 them, and say, as a charming, benevolent old Quaker lady 
 once said to me, I do so love to look at beautiful jewelry ! 
 The love of beautiful dress, in itself, therefore, so far from 
 being in a bad sense worldly, may be the same indication 
 of a refined and poetical nature that is given by the love 
 of flowers and of natural objects. 
 
 " In the third place, there is nothing in itself wrong, or 
 unworthy a rational being, in a certain degree of attention 
 to the fashion of society in our costume. It is not wrong to 
 be annoyed at unnecessary departures from the commonly 
 received practices of good society in the matter of the ar 
 rangement of our toilet ; and it would indicate rather an 
 unamiable want of sympathy with our fellow beings, if we 
 were not willing, for the most part, to follow what they indi 
 cate to be agreeable in the disposition of our outward affairs." 
 
392 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 " Well, I must say, Mr. Crowfield, you are allowing us 
 all a very generous margin," said Humming-Bird. 
 
 " But now," said I, " I am coming to the restrictions. 
 When is love of dress excessive and wrong ? To this I 
 answer by stating my faith in one of old Plato s ideas, in 
 which he speaks of beauty and its uses. He says there 
 were two impersonations of beauty worshiped under the 
 name of Venus in the ancient times, the one celestial, 
 born of the highest gods, the other earthly. To the earthly 
 Venus the sacrifices were such as were more trivial ; to the 
 celestial, such as were more holy. The worship of the 
 earthly Venus, he says, sends us oftentimes on unworthy 
 and trivial errands, but the worship of the celestial to high 
 and honorable friendships, to noble aspirations and heroic 
 actions. 
 
 "Now it seems to me that, if we bear in mind this truth 
 in regard to beauty, we shall have a test with which to try 
 ourselves in the matter of physical adornment. We are 
 always excessive when we sacrifice the higher beauty to 
 attain the lower one. A woman who will sacrifice domestic 
 affection, conscience, self-respect, honor, to love of dress, we 
 all agree, loves dress too much. She loses the true and 
 higher beauty of womanhood for the lower beauty of gems 
 and flowers and colors. A girl who sacrifices to dress all 
 her time, all her strength, all her money, to the neglect of 
 the cultivation of her mind and heart, and to the neglect 
 of the claims of others on her helpfulness, is sacrificing the 
 higher to the lower beauty ; her fault is not the love of 
 beauty, but loving the wrong and inferior kind. 
 
 " It is remarkable that the directions of Holy Writ, in 
 regard to the female dress, should distinctly take note of 
 this difference between the higher and the lower beauty 
 which we find in the works of Plato. The Apostle gives 
 no rule, no specific costume, which should mark the Chris 
 tian woman from the Pagan ; but says, whose adorning, 
 
DRESS, OR WHO MAKES THE FASHIONS 393 
 
 let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, 
 and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel ; but let 
 it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not 
 corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, 
 which is in the sight of God of great price. The gold and 
 gems and apparel are not forbidden ; but we are told not 
 to depend on them for beauty, to the neglect of those im 
 perishable, immortal graces that belong to the soul. The 
 makers of fashion among whom Christian women lived 
 when the Apostle wrote were the same class of brilliant and 
 worthless Aspasias who make the fashions of modern Paris ; 
 and all womankind was sunk into slavish adoration of mere 
 physical adornment when the gospel sent forth among them 
 this call to the culture of a higher and immortal beauty. 
 
 " In fine, girls," said I, " you may try yourselves by 
 this standard. You love dress too much when you care 
 more for your outward adornings than for your inward dis 
 positions, when it afflicts you more to have torn your 
 dress than to have lost your temper, when you are more 
 troubled by an ill-fitting gown than by a neglected duty, 
 when you are less concerned at having made an unjust com 
 ment, or spread a scandalous report, than at having worn 
 a passe bonnet, when you are less troubled at the thought 
 of being found at the last great feast without the wedding 
 garment, than at being found at the party to-night in the 
 fashion of last year. No Christian woman, as I view it, 
 ought to give such attention to her dress as to allow it to 
 take up all of three very important things, viz : 
 
 All her time. 
 
 All her strength. 
 
 All her money. 
 
 Whoever does this lives not the Christian, but the Pagan 
 life, worships not at the Christian s altar of our Lord 
 Jesus, but at the shrine of the lower Venus of Corinth and 
 Rome." 
 
394 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 "Oh now, Mr. Crowfield, you frighten me," said Hum 
 ming-Bird. " 1 7 m so afraid, do you know, that I am doing 
 exactly that." 
 
 " And so am I," said Pheasant ; " and yet, certainly, it is 
 not what I mean or intend to do." 
 
 " But how to help it," said Dove. 
 
 " My dears," said I, " where there is a will there is a 
 way. Only resolve that you will put the true beauty first, 
 that, even if you do have to seem unfashionable, you 
 will follow the highest beauty of womanhood, and the 
 battle is half gained. Only resolve that your time, your 
 strength, your money, such as you have, shall not all 
 nor more than half be given to mere outward adornment, 
 and you will go right. It requires only an army of girls 
 animated with this noble purpose to declare independence in 
 America, and emancipate us from the decrees and tyrannies 
 of French actresses and ballet-dancers. En avant, girls ! 
 You yet can, if you will, save the republic." 
 
WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF BEAUTY IN DRESS 
 
 THE conversation on dress which I had held with Jenny 
 and her little covey of Birds of Paradise appeared to have 
 worked in the minds of the fair council, for it was not long 
 before they invaded my study again in a body. They were 
 going out to a party, but called for Jenny, and of course 
 gave me and Mrs. Crowfield the privilege of seeing them 
 equipped for conquest. 
 
 Latterly, I must confess, the mysteries of the toilet rites 
 have impressed me with a kind of superstitious awe. 
 Only a year ago my daughter Jenny had smooth dark hair, 
 which she wreathed in various soft, flowing lines about 
 her face, and confined in a classical knot on the back of 
 her head. Jenny had rather a talent for coiffure, and the 
 arrangement of her hair was one of my little artistic delights. 
 She always had something there, a leaf, a spray, a bud or 
 blossom, that looked fresh, and had a sort of poetical grace 
 of its own. 
 
 But in a gradual way all this has been changing. 
 Jenny s hair first became slightly wavy, then curly, finally 
 frizzly, presenting a tumbled and twisted appearance, which 
 gave me great inward concern ; but when I spoke upon the 
 subject I was always laughingly silenced with the definitive 
 settling remark : " Oh, it s the fashion, papa ! Everybody 
 wears it so." 
 
 I particularly objected to the change on my own small 
 account, because the smooth, breakfast-table coiffure, which 
 I had always so much enjoyed, was now often exchanged 
 
396 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 for a peculiarly bristling appearance ; the hair being va 
 riously twisted, tortured, woven, and wound, without the 
 least view to immediate beauty or grace. But all this, I 
 was informed, was the necessary means towards crimping for 
 some evening display of a more elaborate nature than usual. 
 
 Mrs. Crowfield and myself are not party-goers by profes 
 sion, but Jenny insists on our going out at least once or 
 twice in a season, just, as she says, to keep up with the 
 progress of society ; and at these times I have been struck 
 with frequent surprise by the general untidiness which ap 
 peared to have come over the heads of all my female friends. 
 I know, of course, that I am only a poor, ignorant, bewil 
 dered man creature ; but to my uninitiated eyes they looked 
 as if they had all, after a very restless and perturbed sleep, 
 come out of bed without smoothing their tumbled and dis 
 ordered locks. Then, every young lady, without exception, 
 seemed to have one kind of hair, and that the kind which 
 was rather suggestive of the term " woolly." Every sort of 
 wild abandon of frowzy locks seemed to be in vogue ; in 
 some cases the hair appearing to my vision nothing but a 
 confused snarl, in which glittered tinklers, spangles, and 
 bits of tinsel, and from which waved long pennants and 
 streamers of different colored ribbons. 
 
 I w r as in fact very greatly embarrassed by my first meet 
 ing with some very charming girls, whom I thought I knew 
 as familiarly as my own daughter Jenny, and whose soft, 
 pretty hair had often formed the object of my admiration. 
 Now, however, they revealed themselves to me in coiffures 
 which forcibly reminded me of the electrical experiments 
 which used to entertain us in college, when the subject 
 stood on the insulated stool, and each particular hair of his 
 head bristled and rose, and set up, as it were, on its own 
 account. This high-flying condition of the tresses, and the 
 singularity of the ornaments which appeared to be thrown 
 at haphazard into them, suggested so oddly the idea of a 
 
WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF BEAUTY IN DRESS 397 
 
 bewitched person, that I could scarcely converse with any 
 presence of mind, or realize that these really were the nice, 
 well-informed, sensible little girls of my own neighborhood, 
 the good daughters, good sisters, Sunday-school teachers, 
 and other familiar members of our best educated circles ; 
 and I came away from the party in a sort of blue maze, and 
 hardly in a state to conduct myself with credit in the exami 
 nation through which I knew Jenny would put me as to 
 the appearance of her different friends. 
 
 I know not how it is, but the glamour of fashion in the 
 eyes of girlhood is so complete that the oddest, wildest, 
 most uncouth devices find grace and favor in the eyes of 
 even well-bred girls, when once that invisible, ineffable 
 aura has breathed over them which declares them to be 
 fashionable. They may defy them for a time, they may 
 pronounce them horrid ; but it is with a secretly melting 
 heart, and Math a mental reservation to look as nearly like 
 the abhorred spectacle as they possibly can on the first 
 favorable opportunity. 
 
 On the occasion of the visit referred to, Jenny ushered 
 her three friends in triumph into my study ; and, in truth, 
 the little room seemed to be perfectly transformed by their 
 brightness. My honest, nice, lovable little Yankee fireside 
 girls were, to be sure, got up in a style that would have 
 done credit to Madame Pompadour, or any of the most 
 questionable characters of the time of Louis XIV. or XV. 
 They were frizzled and powdered, and built up in elaborate 
 devices ; they wore on their hair flowers, gems, streamers, 
 tinklers, humming-birds, butterflies, South American beetles, 
 beads, bugles, and all imaginable rattletraps, which jingled 
 and clinked with every motion ; and yet, as they were 
 three or four fresh, handsome, intelligent, bright-eyed girls, 
 there was no denying the fact that they did look extremely 
 pretty ; and as they sailed hither and thither before me, 
 and gazed down upon me in the saucy might of their rosy 
 
398 THE CHIMNEY-CORNIER 
 
 girlhood, there was a gay defiance in Jenny s demand, 
 "Now, papa, how do you like us ? " 
 
 " Very charming," answered I, surrendering at discretion. 
 
 " I told you, girls, that you could convert him to the 
 fashions, if he should once see you in party trim." 
 
 " I beg pardon, my dear ; I am not converted to the 
 fashion, but to you, and that is a point on which I did n t 
 need conversion ; but the present fashions, even so fairly 
 represented as I see them, I humbly confess I dislike." 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Crowfield ! " 
 
 " Yes, my dears, I do. But then, I protest, I m not 
 fairly treated. I think, for a young American girl, who 
 looks as most of my fair friends do look, to come down 
 with her bright eyes and all her little panoply of graces 
 upon an old fellow like me, and expect him to like a 
 fashion merely because she looks well in it, is all sheer 
 nonsense. Why, girls, if you wore rings in your noses, 
 and bangles on your arms up to your elbows, if you tied 
 your hair in a war-knot on the top of your heads like the 
 Sioux Indians, you would still look pretty. The question 
 is n t, as I view it, whether you look pretty, for that you 
 do, and that you will, do what you please and dress how 
 you will. The question is whether you might not look 
 prettier, whether another style of dress, and another mode 
 of getting up, would not be far more becoming. I am one 
 who thinks that it would." 
 
 "Now, Mr. Crowfield, you positively are too bad," said 
 Humming-Bird, whose delicate head was encircled by a sort 
 of crepy cloud of bright hair, sparkling with gold-dust and 
 spangles, in the midst of which, just over her forehead, a 
 gorgeous blue butterfly was perched, while a confused mix 
 ture of hairs, gold-powder, spangles, stars, and tinkling 
 ornaments fell in a sort of cataract down her pretty neck. 
 " You see, we girls think everything of you ; and now we 
 don t like it that you don t like our fashions." 
 
WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF BEAUTY IN DRESS 399 
 
 "Why, my little princess, so long as I like you better 
 than your fashions, and merely think they are not worthy 
 of you, what s the harm ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, to be sure. You sweeten the dose to us babies 
 with that sugarplum. But really, Mr. Crowfield, why don t 
 you like the fashions ? " 
 
 " Because, to my view, they are in great part in false taste, 
 and injure the beauty of the girls," said I. "They are 
 inappropriate to their characters, and make them look like 
 a kind and class of women whom they do not, and I trust 
 never will, resemble internally, and whose mark therefore 
 they ought not to bear externally. But there you are, be 
 guiling me into a sermon which you will only hate me in 
 your hearts for preaching. Go along, children ! You cer 
 tainly look as well as anybody can in that style of getting 
 up ; so go to your party, and to-morrow night, when you are 
 tired and sleepy, if you 11 come with your crochet, and sit 
 in my study, I will read you Christopher Crowfield s disser 
 tation on dress." 
 
 " That will be amusing, to say the least," said Humming- 
 Bird ; " and, be sure, we will all be here. And mind, you 
 have to show good reasons for disliking the present fashion." 
 
 So the next evening there was a worsted party in my 
 study, sitting in the midst of which I read as follows : 
 
 WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF BEAUTY IN DRESS 
 
 " The first one is appropriateness. Colors and forms and 
 modes, in themselves graceful or beautiful, can become un 
 graceful and ridiculous simply through inappropriateness. 
 The most lovely bonnet that the most approved modiste can 
 invent, if worn on the head of a coarse-faced Irishwoman 
 bearing a market-basket on her arm, excites no emotion but 
 that of the ludicrous. The most elegant and brilliant even 
 ing dress, if worn in the daytime in a railroad car, strikes 
 every one with a sense of absurdity ; whereas both these 
 
400 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 objects in appropriate associations would excite only the idea 
 of beauty. So a mode of dress obviously intended for driv 
 ing strikes us as outre in a parlor ; and a parlor dress would 
 no less shock our eyes on horseback. In short, the course 
 of this principle through all varieties of form can easily be 
 perceived. Besides appropriateness to time, place, and cir 
 cumstances, there is appropriateness to age, position, and 
 character. This is the foundation of all our ideas of profes 
 sional propriety in costume. One would not like to see a 
 clergyman in his external air and appointments resembling 
 a gentleman of the turf ; one would not wish a refined and 
 modest scholar to wear the outward air of a fast fellow, or 
 an aged and venerable statesman to appear with all the 
 peculiarities of a young dandy. The flowers, feathers, and 
 furbelows which a light-hearted young girl of seventeen 
 embellishes by the airy grace with which she wears them, 
 are simply ridiculous when transferred to the toilet of her 
 serious, well-meaning mamma, who bears them about with 
 an anxious face, merely because a loquacious milliner has 
 assured her, with many protestations, that it is the fashion, 
 and the only thing remaining for her to do. 
 
 " There are, again, modes of dress in themselves very 
 beautiful and very striking, which are peculiarly adapted to 
 theatrical representation and to pictures, but the adoption 
 of which as a part of unprofessional toilet produces a sense 
 of incongruity. A mode of dress may be in perfect taste on 
 the stage, that would be absurd in an evening party, absurd 
 in the street, absurd, in short, everywhere else. 
 
 " Now you come to my first objection to our present Ameri 
 can toilet, its being to a very great extent inappropriate 
 to our climate, to our habits of life and thought, and to the 
 whole structure of ideas on which our life is built. What 
 we want, apparently, is some court of inquiry and adaptation 
 that shall pass judgment on the fashions of other countries, 
 and modify them to make them a graceful expression of our 
 
WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF BEAUTY IN DRESS 401 
 
 own national character, and modes of thinking and living. 
 A certain class of women in Paris at this present hour makes 
 the fashions that rule the feminine world. They are women 
 who live only for the senses, with as utter and obvious dis 
 regard of any moral or intellectual purpose to be answered 
 in living as a paroquet or a macaw. They have no family 
 ties ; love, in its pure domestic sense, is an impossibility in 
 their lot ; religion in any sense is another impossibility ; and 
 their whole intensity of existence, therefore, is concentrated 
 on the question of sensuous enjoyment, and that personal 
 adornment which is necessary to secure it. When the great 
 ruling country in the world of taste and fashion has fallen 
 into such a state that the virtual leaders of fashion are women 
 of this character, it is not to be supposed that the fashions 
 emanating from them will be of a kind well adapted to 
 express the ideas, the thoughts, the state of society, of a great 
 Christian democracy such as ours ought to be. 
 
 " What is called, for example, the Pompadour style of 
 dress, so much in vogue of late, we can see to be perfectly 
 adapted to the kind of existence led by dissipated women 
 whose life is one revel of excitement ; and who, never pro 
 posing to themselves any intellectual employment or any 
 domestic duty, can afford to spend three or four hours every 
 day under the hands of a waiting-maid, in alternately tan 
 gling and untangling their hair. Powder, paint, gold-dust 
 and silver-dust, pomatums, cosmetics, are all perfectly ap 
 propriate where the ideal of life is to keep up a false show of 
 beauty after the true bloom is wasted by dissipation. The 
 woman who never goes to bed till morning, who never even 
 dresses herself, who never takes a needle in her hand, who 
 never goes to church, and never entertains one serious idea 
 of duty of any kind, when got up in Pompadour style, has, 
 to say the truth, the good taste and merit of appropriate 
 ness. Her dress expresses just what she is, all false, all 
 artificial, all meretricious and unnatural; no part or portion 
 
402 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 of her from which it might be inferred what her Creator 
 originally designed her to be. 
 
 " But when a nice little American girl, who has been 
 brought up to cultivate her mind, to refine her taste, to care 
 for her health, to be a helpful daughter and a good sister, to 
 visit the poor and teach in Sunday schools ; when a good, 
 sweet, modest little puss of this kind combs all her pretty 
 hair backward till it is one mass of frowsy confusion ; when 
 she powders, and paints under her eyes ; when she adopts, 
 with eager enthusiasm, every outre, unnatural fashion that 
 comes from the most dissipated foreign circles, she is in 
 bad taste, because she does not represent either her charac 
 ter, her education, or her good points. She looks like a 
 second-rate actress, when she is, in fact, a most thoroughly 
 respectable, estimable, lovable little girl, and on the way, as 
 we poor fellows fondly hope, to bless some one of us with 
 her tenderness and care in some nice home in the future. 
 
 " It is not the fashion in America for young girls to have 
 waiting-maids, in foreign countries it is the fashion. All 
 this meretricious toilet so elaborate, so complicated, and so 
 contrary to nature must be accomplished, and it is accom 
 plished, by the busy little fingers of each girl for herself ; 
 and so it seems to be very evident that a style of hair-dress 
 ing which it will require hours to disentangle, which must 
 injure and in time ruin the natural beauty of the hair, ought 
 to be one thing which a well-regulated court of inquiry would 
 reject in our American fashions. 
 
 " Again, the genius of American life is for simplicity and 
 absence of ostentation. We have no parade of office : our pub 
 lic men wear no robes, no stars, garters, collars, etc. ; and it 
 would, therefore, be in good taste in our women to cultivate 
 simple styles of dress. ISTow I object to the present fashions, 
 as adopted from France, that they are flashy and theatrical. 
 Having their origin with a community whose senses are 
 blunted, drugged, and deadened with dissipation and ostenta- 
 
WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF BEAUTY IN DRESS 403 
 
 tion, they reject the simpler forms of beauty, and seek for 
 startling effects, for odd and unexpected results. The con 
 templation of one of our fashionable churches, at the hour 
 when its fair occupants pour forth, gives one a great deal of 
 surprise. The toilets there displayed might have been in 
 good keeping among showy Parisian women in an opera 
 house, but even their original inventors would have been 
 shocked at the idea of carrying them into a church. The 
 rawness of our American mind as to the subject of propriety 
 in dress is nowhere more shown than in the fact that no ap 
 parent distinction is made between church and opera house 
 in the adaptation of attire. Very estimable and we trust 
 very religious young women sometimes enter the house of 
 God in a costume which makes their utterance of the words 
 of the litany and the acts of prostrate devotion in the service 
 seem almost burlesque. When a brisk little creature comes 
 into a pew with hair frizzed till it stands on end in a most 
 startling manner, rattling strings of beads and bits of tinsel, 
 mounting over all some pert little hat with a red or green 
 feather standing saucily upright in front, she may look ex 
 ceedingly pretty and piquant ; and, if she came there for 
 a game of croquet or a tableau party, would be all in very 
 good taste ; but as she comes to confess that she is a miser 
 able sinner, that she has done the things she ought not to 
 have done, and left undone the things she ought to have 
 done, as she takes upon her lips most solemn and tremen 
 dous words, whose meaning runs far beyond life into a 
 sublime eternity, there is a discrepancy which would be 
 ludicrous if it were not melancholy. 
 
 " One is apt to think, at first view, that St. Jerome was 
 right in saying, 
 
 " She who comes in glittering vest 
 To mourn her frailty, still is frail. 
 
 But St. Jerome was in the wrong, after all ; for a flashy, 
 unsuitable attire in church is not always a mark of an un- 
 
404 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 devout or entirely worldly mind ; it is simply a mark of a 
 raw, uncultivated taste. In Italy, the ecclesiastical law pre 
 scribing a uniform black dress for the churches gives a sort 
 of education to European ideas of propriety in toilet, which 
 prevents churches from being made theatres for the same 
 kind of display which is held to be in good taste at places 
 of public amusement. It is but justice to the inventors of 
 Parisian fashions to say that, had they ever had the smallest 
 idea of going to church and Sunday school, as our good girls 
 do, they would immediately have devised toilets appropri 
 ate to such exigencies. If it were any part of their plan of 
 life to appear statedly in public to confess themselves ( mis 
 erable sinners, we should doubtless have sent over here 
 the design of some graceful penitential habit, which would 
 give our places of worship a much more appropriate air than 
 they now have. As it is, it would form a subject for such 
 a court of inquiry and adaptation as we have supposed, to 
 draw a line between the costume of the theatre and the 
 church. 
 
 " In the same manner, there is a want of appropriateness 
 in the costume of our American women, who display in the 
 street promenade a style of dress and adornment originally 
 intended for showy carriage drives in such great exhibition 
 grounds as the Bois de Boulogne. The makers of Parisian 
 fashions are not generally walkers. They do not, with all 
 their extravagance, have the bad taste to trail yards of silk 
 and velvet over the mud and dirt of a pavement, or prome 
 nade the street in a costume so pronounced and striking as 
 to draw the involuntary glance of every eye ; and the showy 
 toilets displayed on the pave by American young women 
 have more than once exposed them to misconstruction in 
 the eyes of foreign observers. 
 
 " Next to appropriateness, the second requisite to beauty 
 in dress I take to be unity of effect. In speaking of the 
 arrangement of rooms in the ( House and Home Papers/ 
 
WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF BEAUTY IN DRESS 405 
 
 I criticised some apartments wherein were many showy 
 articles of furniture, and much expense had been incurred, 
 because, with all this, there was no unity of result. The 
 carpet was costly, and in itself handsome ; the paper was 
 also in itself handsome and costly ; the tables and chairs 
 also in themselves very elegant ; and yet, owing to a want 
 of any unity of idea, any grand harmonizing tint of color, 
 or method of arrangement, the rooms had a jumbled, con 
 fused air, and nothing about them seemed particularly 
 pretty or effective. I instanced rooms where thousands of 
 dollars had been spent, which, because of this defect, never 
 excited admiration ; and others in which the furniture was 
 of the cheapest description, but which always gave imme 
 diate and universal pleasure. The same rule holds good in 
 dress. As in every apartment, so in every toilet, there 
 should be one ground-tone or dominant color, which should 
 rule all the others, and there should be a general style of 
 idea to which everything should be subjected. 
 
 " We may illustrate the effect of this principle in a very 
 familiar case. It is generally conceded that the majority 
 of women look better in mourning than they do in their 
 ordinary apparel ; a comparatively plain person looks almost 
 handsome in simple black. ISTow why is this ? Simply 
 because mourning requires a severe uniformity of color and 
 idea, and forbids the display of that variety of colors and 
 objects which go to make up the ordinary female costume, 
 and which very few women have such skill in using as to 
 produce really beautiful effects. 
 
 " Very similar results have been attained by the Quaker 
 costume, which, in spite of the quaint severity of the forms 
 to which it adhered, has always had a remarkable degree of 
 becomingness, because of its restriction to a few simple colors 
 and to the absence of distracting ornament. 
 
 "But the same effect which is produced in mourning or 
 the Quaker costume may be preserved in a style of dress 
 
406 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 admitting color and ornamentation. A dress may have the 
 richest fullness of color, and still the tints may be so chas 
 tened and subdued as to produce the impression of a severe 
 simplicity. Suppose, for example, a golden-haired blonde 
 chooses for the ground-tone of her toilet a deep shade of 
 purple, such as affords a good background for the hair and 
 complexion. The larger draperies of the costume being of 
 this color, the bonnet may be of a lighter shade of the same, 
 ornamented with lilac hyacinths, shading insensibly towards 
 rose-color. The effect of such a costume is simple, even 
 though there be much ornament, because it is ornament 
 artistically disposed towards a general result. 
 
 " A dark shade of green being chosen as the ground-tone 
 of a dress, the whole costume may, in like manner, be 
 worked up through lighter and brighter shades of green, in 
 which rose-colored flowers may appear with the same im 
 pression of simple appropriateness that is made by the pink 
 blossom over the green leaves of a rose. There have been 
 times in France when the study of color produced artistic 
 effects in costume worthy of attention, and resulted in styles 
 of dress of real beauty. But the present corrupted state of 
 morals there has introduced a corrupt taste in dress ; and it 
 is worthy of thought that the decline of moral purity in 
 society is often marked by the deterioration of the sense of 
 artistic beauty. Corrupt and dissipated social epochs pro 
 duce corrupt styles of architecture and corrupt styles of 
 drawing and painting, as might easily be illustrated by the 
 history of art. When the leaders of society have blunted 
 their finer perceptions by dissipation and immorality, they 
 are incapable of feeling the beauties which come from deli 
 cate concords and truly artistic combinations. They verge 
 towards barbarism, and require things that are strange, odd, 
 dazzling, and peculiar to captivate their jaded senses. Such 
 we take to be the condition of Parisian society now. The 
 tone of it is given by women who are essentially impudent 
 
WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF BEAUTY IN DRESS 407 
 
 and vulgar, who override and overrule, by the mere brute 
 force of opulence and luxury, women of finer natures and 
 moral tone. The court of France is a court of adventurers, 
 of parvenus ; and the palaces, the toilets, the equipage, the 
 entertainments, of the mistresses outshine those of the law 
 ful wives. Hence comes a style of dress which is in itself 
 vulgar, ostentatious, pretentious, without simplicity, without 
 unity, seeking to dazzle by strange combinations and daring 
 contrasts. 
 
 "Now, when the fashions emanating from such a state 
 of society come to our country, where it has been too much 
 the habit to put on and wear, without dispute and without 
 inquiry, any or every thing that France sends, the results 
 produced are often things to make one wonder. A respec 
 table man, sitting quietly in church or other public assembly, 
 may be pardoned sometimes for indulging a silent sense of 
 the ridiculous in the contemplation of the forest of bonnets 
 which surround him, as he humbly asks himself the ques 
 tion, Were these meant to cover the head, to defend it, or 
 to ornament it ? and, if they are intended for any of these 
 purposes, how ? 
 
 " I confess, to me nothing is so surprising as the sort of 
 things which well-bred women serenely wear on their heads 
 with the idea that they are ornaments. On my right hand 
 sits a good-looking girl with a thing on her head which 
 seems to consist mostly of bunches of grass, straws, with a 
 confusion of lace, in which sits a draggled bird, looking as 
 if the cat had had him before the lady. In front of her 
 sits another, who has a glittering confusion of beads swing 
 ing hither and thither from a jaunty little structure of black 
 and red velvet. An anxious-looking matron appears under 
 the high eaves of a bonnet with a gigantic crimson rose 
 crushed down into a mass of tangled hair. She is orna 
 mented! she has no doubt about it. 
 
 " The fact is, that a style of dress which allows the use 
 
408 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 of everything in heaven above or earth beneath requires 
 more taste and skill in disposition than falls to the lot of 
 most of the female sex to make it even tolerable. In con 
 sequence, the flowers, fruits, grass, hay, straw, oats, butter 
 flies, beads, birds, tinsel, streamers, jinglers, lace, bugles, 
 crape, which seem to be appointed to form a covering for 
 the female head, very often appear in combinations so sin 
 gular, and the results, taken in connection with all the rest 
 of the costume, are such, that we really think the people 
 who usually assemble in a Quaker meeting-house are, with 
 their entire absence of ornament, more becomingly attired 
 than the majority of our public audiences. For if one con 
 siders his own impression after having seen an assemblage 
 of women dressed in Quaker costume, he will find it to be, 
 not of a confusion of twinkling finery, but of many fair, 
 sweet faces, of charming, nice-looking women, and not of 
 articles of dress. Now this shows that the severe dress, 
 after all, has better answered the true purpose of dress, in 
 setting forth the woman, than our modern costume, where 
 the woman is but one item in a flying mass of colors and 
 forms, all of which distract attention from the faces they are 
 supposed to adorn. The dress of the Philadelphia!! ladies 
 has always been celebrated for its elegance of effect, from the 
 fact, probably, that the early Quaker parentage of the city 
 formed the eye and the taste of its women for uniform and 
 simple styles of color, and for purity and chastity of lines. 
 The most perfect toilets that have ever been achieved in 
 America have probably been those of the class familiarly 
 called the gay Quakers, children of Quaker families, who, 
 while abandoning the strict rules of the sect, yet retain their 
 modest and severe reticence, relying on richness of material, 
 and soft, harmonious coloring, rather than striking and daz 
 zling ornament. 
 
 " The next source of beauty in dress is the impression of 
 truthfulness and reality. It is a well-known principle of 
 
WHAT ARE THE SOUECES OF BEAUTY IN DRESS 409 
 
 the fine arts, in all their branches, that all shams and 
 mere pretenses are to be rejected, a truth which Ruskin 
 has shown with the full lustre of his many-colored prose- 
 poetry. As stucco pretending to be marble, and graining 
 pretending to be wood, are in false taste in building, so 
 false jewelry and cheap fineries of every kind are in bad 
 taste 5 so also is powder instead of natural complexion, 
 false hair instead of real, and flesh-painting of every de 
 scription. I have even the hardihood to think and assert, 
 in the presence of a generation whereof not one woman in 
 twenty wears her own hair, that the simple, short-cropped 
 locks of Rosa Bonheur are in a more beautiful style of hair- 
 dressing than the most elaborate edifice of curls, rats, and 
 waterfalls that is erected on any fair head nowadays." 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Crowfield ! you hit us all now/ cried several 
 voices. 
 
 " I know it, girls, I know it. I admit that you are 
 all looking very pretty ; but I do maintain that you are 
 none of you doing yourselves justice, and that Nature, if 
 you would only follow her, would do better for you than 
 all these elaborations. A short crop of your own hair, that 
 you could brush out in ten minutes every morning, would 
 have a more real, healthy beauty than the elaborate struc 
 tures which cost you hours of time, and give you the head 
 ache besides. I speak of the short crop, to put the case 
 at the very lowest figure, for many of you have lovely 
 hair of different lengths, and susceptible of a variety of 
 arrangements, if you did not suppose yourself obliged to 
 build after a foreign pattern, instead of following out the 
 intentions of the great Artist who made you. 
 
 " Is it necessary absolutely that every woman and girl 
 should look exactly like every other one ? There are wo 
 men whom Nature makes with wavy or curly hair : let 
 them follow her. There are those whom she makes with 
 soft and smooth locks, and with whom crinkling and crep- 
 
410 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 ing is only a sham. They look very pretty with it, to be 
 sure ; but, after all, is there but one style of beauty ? 
 and might they not look prettier in cultivating the style 
 which Nature seemed to have intended for them ? 
 
 " As to the floods of false jewelry, glass beads, and tinsel 
 finery which seem to be sweeping over the toilet of our 
 women, I must protest that they are vulgarizing the taste, 
 and having a seriously bad effect on the delicacy of artistic 
 perception. It is almost impossible to manage such mate 
 rial and give any kind of idea of neatness or purity ; for the 
 least wear takes away their newness. And, of all disreputa 
 ble things, tumbled, rumpled, and tousled finery is the most 
 disreputable. A simple white muslin, that can come fresh 
 from the laundry every week, is, in point of real taste, 
 worth any amount of spangled tissues. A plain straw bon 
 net, with only a ribbon across it, is in reality in better taste 
 than rubbishy birds or butterflies, or tinsel ornaments. 
 
 " Finally, girls, don t dress at haphazard; for dress, so 
 far from being a matter of small consequence, is in reality 
 one of the fine arts, so far from trivial, that each country 
 ought to have a style of its own, and each individual such a 
 liberty of modification of the general fashion as suits and 
 befits her person, her age, her position in life, and the kind 
 of character she wishes to maintain. 
 
 t( The only motive in toilet which seems to have obtained 
 much as yet among young girls is the very vague impulse 
 to look stylish, a desire which must answer for more 
 vulgar dressing than one would wish to see. If girls would 
 rise above this, and desire to express by their dress the at 
 tributes of true ladyhood, nicety of eye, fastidious neatness, 
 purity of taste, truthfulness, and sincerity of nature, they 
 might form, each one for herself, a style having its own in 
 dividual beauty, incapable of ever becoming common and 
 vulgar. 
 
 " A truly trained taste and eye would enable a lady to 
 
WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF BEAUTY IN DRESS 411 
 
 select from the permitted forms of fashion such as might be 
 modified to her purposes, always remembering that simpli 
 city is safe, that to attempt little and succeed is better than 
 to attempt a great deal and fail. 
 
 " And now, girls, I will finish by reciting to you the 
 lines old Ben Jonson addressed to the pretty girls of his 
 time, which form an appropriate ending to my remarks : 
 
 " Still to be dressed 
 As you were going to a feast ; 
 Still to be powdered, still perfumed; 
 Lady, it is to be presumed, 
 Though art s hid causes are not found, 
 All is not sweet, all is not sound. 
 
 " Give me a look, give me a face, 
 That makes simplicity a grace, 
 Robes loosely flowing, hair as free: 
 Such sweet neglect more taketh me 
 Than all the adulteries of art, 
 That strike my eyes, but not my heart. " 
 
XI 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL 
 
 " I AM going to build a cathedral one of these days," said 
 I to my wife, as I sat looking at the slant line of light made 
 by the afternoon sun on our picture of the Cathedral of 
 Milan. 
 
 " That picture is one of the most poetic things you have 
 among your house ornaments," said Rudolph. " Its ori 
 ginal is the world s chief beauty, a tribute to religion 
 such as Art never gave before and never can again, as 
 much before the Pantheon as the Alps, with their virgin 
 snows and glittering pinnacles, are above all temples made 
 with hands. Say what you will, those Middle Ages that 
 you call Dark had a glory of faith that never will be seen 
 in our days of cotton-mills and Manchester prints. Where 
 will you marshal such an army of saints as stands in yonder 
 white-marble forest, visibly transfigured and glorified in that 
 celestial Italian air ? Saintship belonged to the mediaeval 
 Church ; the heroism of religion has died with it." 
 
 " That s just like one of your assertions, Rudolph," said 
 I. "You might as well say that Nature has never made 
 any flowers since Linnaeus shut up his herbarium. We 
 have no statues and pictures of modern saints ; but saints 
 themselves, thank God, have never been wanting. As it 
 was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be 
 
 " But what about your cathedral ? " said my wife. 
 
 " Oh yes ! my cathedral, yes. When my stocks in 
 cloudland rise, I 11 build a cathedral larger than Milan s ; and 
 the men, but more particularly the women, thereon, shall 
 
THE CATHEDRAL 413 
 
 be those who have done even more than Saint Paul tells 
 of in the saints of old, who l subdued kingdoms, wrought 
 righteousness, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the 
 edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed 
 valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. 
 I am not now thinking of Florence Nightingale, nor of the 
 host of women who have been walking worthily in her foot 
 steps, but of nameless saints of more retired and private 
 state, domestic saints, who have tended children not their 
 own through whooping-cough and measles, and borne the 
 unruly whims of fretful invalids, stocking-darning, shirt- 
 making saints, saints who wore no visible garment of 
 haircloth, bound themselves with no belts of spikes and 
 nails, yet in their inmost souls were marked and seared with 
 the red cross of a lifelong self-sacrifice, saints for whom 
 the mystical terms self-annihilation and self-crucifixion had 
 a real and tangible meaning, all the stronger because their 
 daily death was marked by no outward sign. No mys 
 tical rites consecrated them ; no organ-music burst forth in 
 solemn rapture to welcome them ; no habit of their order 
 proclaimed to themselves and the world that they were the 
 elect of Christ, the brides of another life : but small, eating 
 cares, daily prosaic duties, the petty friction of all the little 
 ness and all the inglorious annoyances of every day, were 
 as dust that hid the beauty and grandeur of their calling 
 even from themselves ; they walked unknown even to their 
 households, unknown even to their own souls ; but when 
 the Lord comes to build his New Jerusalem, we shall find 
 many a white stone with a new name thereon, and the rec 
 ord of deeds and words which only He that seeth in secret 
 knows. Many a humble soul will be amazed to find that 
 the seed it sowed in such weakness, in the dust of daily 
 life, has blossomed into immortal flowers under the eye of 
 the Lord. 
 
 " When I build my cathedral, that woman," I said, point- 
 
414 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 ing to a small painting by the fire, " shall be among the 
 first of my saints. You see her there, in an every-day dress- 
 cap with a mortal thread-lace border, and with a very or 
 dinary worked collar, fastened by a visible and terrestrial 
 breastpin. There is no nimbus around her head, no sign 
 of the cross upon her breast ; her hands are clasped on no 
 crucifix or rosary. Her clear, keen, hazel eye looks as if it 
 could sparkle with mirthfulness, as in fact it could ; there 
 are in it both the subtile flash of wit and the subdued light 
 of humor ; and though the whole face smiles, it has yet a 
 certain decisive firmness that speaks the soul immutable in 
 good. That woman shall be the first saint in my cathedral, 
 and her name shall be recorded as Saint Esther. What 
 makes saintliness in my view, as distinguished from ordi 
 nary goodness, is a certain quality of magnanimity and great 
 ness of soul that brings life within the circle of the heroic. 
 To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and 
 heroic in the insipid details of every-day life, is a virtue so 
 rare as to be worthy of canonization, and this virtue was 
 hers. New England Puritanism must be credited with the 
 making of many such women. Severe as was her discipline, 
 and harsh as seems now her rule, we have yet to see whether 
 women will be born of modern systems of tolerance and in 
 dulgence equal to those grand ones of the olden times whose 
 places now know them no more. The inconceivable aus 
 terity and solemnity with which Puritanism invested this 
 mortal life, the awful grandeur of the themes which it made 
 household words, the sublimity of the issues which it hung 
 upon the commonest acts of our earthly existence, created 
 characters of more than Roman strength and greatness ; and 
 the good men and women of Puritan training excelled the 
 saints of the Middle Ages, as a soul fully developed intel 
 lectually, educated to closest thought, and exercised in rea 
 soning, is superior to a soul great merely through impulse 
 and sentiment. 
 
THE CATHEDRAL 415 
 
 " My earliest recollections of Aunt Esther, for so our 
 saint was known, were of a bright-faced, cheerful, witty, 
 quick-moving little middle-aged person, who came into our 
 house like a good fairy whenever there was a call of sick 
 ness or trouble. If an accident happened in the great 
 roystering family of eight or ten children (and when was 
 not something happening to some of us ?), and we were 
 shut up in a sick-room, then duly as daylight came the 
 quick step and cheerful face of Aunt Esther, not solemn 
 and lugubrious like so many sick-room nurses, but with a 
 never failing flow of wit and story that could beguile even 
 the most doleful into laughing at their own afflictions. I 
 remember how a fit of the quinsy most tedious of all 
 sicknesses to an active child was gilded and glorified into 
 quite a fete by my having Aunt Esther all to myself for 
 two whole days, with nothing to do but amuse me. She 
 charmed me into smiling at the very pangs which had made 
 me weep before, and of which she described her own ex 
 periences in a manner to make me think that, after all, 
 the quinsy was something with an amusing side to it. Her 
 knowledge of all sorts of medicines, gargles, and alleviatives, 
 her perfect familiarity with every canon and law of good 
 nursing and tending, was something that could only have 
 come from long experience in those good old New England 
 days when there were no nurses recognized as a class in the 
 land, but when watching and the care of the sick were 
 among those offices of Christian life which the families of a 
 neighborhood reciprocally rendered each other. Even from 
 early youth she had obeyed a special vocation as sister 
 of charity in many a sick-room, and, with the usual keen 
 intelligence of New England, had widened her powers of 
 doing good by the reading of medical and physiological 
 works. Her legends of nursing in those days of long typhus 
 fever and other formidable and protracted forms of disease 
 were to our ears quite wonderful, and we regarded her as a 
 
41 G THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 sort of patron saint of the sick-room. She seemed always so 
 cheerful, so bright, and so devoted, that it never occurred to 
 us youngsters to doubt that she enjoyed, above all things, 
 being with us, waiting on us all day, watching over us by 
 night, telling us stories, and answering, in her lively and 
 always amusing and instructive way, that incessant fire of 
 questions with which a child persecutes a grown person. 
 
 " Sometimes, as a reward of goodness, we were allowed 
 to visit her in her own room, a neat little parlor in the 
 neighborhood, whose windows looked down a hillside on 
 one hand, under the boughs of an apple - orchard, where 
 daisies and clover and bobolinks always abounded in summer 
 time ; and on the other faced the street, with a green yard 
 flanked by one or two shady elms between them and the 
 street. No nun s cell was ever neater, no bee s cell ever 
 more compactly and carefully arranged ; and to us, familiar 
 with the confusion of a great family of little ones, there 
 was always something inviting about its stillness, its perfect 
 order, and the air of thoughtful repose that breathed over 
 it. She lived there in perfect independence, doing, as it 
 was her delight to do, every office of life for herself. She 
 was her own cook, her own parlor and chamber maid, her 
 own laundress ; and very faultless the cooking, washing, 
 ironing, and care of her premises were. A slice of Aunt 
 Esther s gingerbread, one of Aunt Esther s cookies, had, we 
 all believed, certain magical properties such as belonged to 
 no other mortal mixture. Even a handful of walnuts that 
 were brought from the depths of her mysterious closet had 
 virtues in our eyes such as no other walnuts could approach. 
 The little shelf of books that hung suspended by cords 
 against her wall was sacred in our regard ; the volumes 
 were like no other books ; and we supposed that she derived 
 from them those stores of knowledge on all subjects which 
 she unconsciously dispensed among us, for she was 
 always telling us something of metals, or minerals, or gems, 
 
THE CATHEDRAL 417 
 
 or plants, or animals, which awakened our curiosity, stimu 
 lated our inquiries, and, above all, led us to wonder where 
 she had learned it all. Even the slight restrictions which 
 her neat habits imposed on our breezy and turbulent natures 
 I seemed all quite graceful and becoming. It was right, in our 
 eyes, to cleanse our shoes on scraper and mat with extra dili 
 gence, and then to place a couple of chips under the heels 
 of our boots when we essayed to dry our feet at her spotless 
 hearth. We marveled to see our own faces reflected in a 
 thousand smiles and winks from her bright brass andirons, 
 such andirons we thought were seen on earth in no other 
 place, and a pair of radiant brass candlesticks, that illus 
 trated the mantelpiece, were viewed with no less respect. 
 
 " Aunt Esther s cat was a model for all cats, so sleek, 
 so intelligent, so decorous and well-trained, always occupying 
 exactly her own cushion by the fire, and never transgressing 
 in one iota the proprieties belonging to a cat of good breed 
 ing. She shared our affections with her mistress, and we 
 were allowed as a great favor and privilege, now and then, 
 to hold the favorite on our knees, and stroke her satin coat 
 to a smoother gloss. 
 
 " But it was not for cats alone that she had attractions. 
 She was in sympathy and fellowship with everything that 
 moved and lived ; knew every bird and beast with a friendly 
 acquaintanceship. The squirrels that inhabited the trees in 
 the front yard were won in time by her blandishments to 
 come and perch on her window-sills, and thence, by trains 
 of nuts adroitly laid, to disport themselves on the shining 
 cherry tea-table that stood between the windows ; and we 
 youngsters used to sit entranced with delight as they gam 
 boled and waved their feathery tails in frolicsome security, 
 eating rations of gingerbread and bits of seedcake with as 
 good a relish as any child among us. 
 
 " The habits, the rights, the wrongs, the wants, and the 
 sufferings of the animal creation formed the subject of many 
 
418 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 an interesting conversation with her ; and we boys, with the 
 natural male instinct of hunting, trapping, and pursuing, 
 were often made to pause in our career, remembering her 
 pleas for the dumb things which could not speak for them 
 selves. 
 
 " Her little hermitage was the favorite resort of numerous 
 friends. Many of the young girls who attended the village 
 academy made her acquaintance, and nothing delighted her 
 more than that they should come there and read to her the 
 books they were studying, when her superior and wide in 
 formation enabled her to light up and explain much that 
 was not clear to the immature students. 
 
 " In her shady retirement, too, she was a sort of Egeria 
 to certain men of genius, who came to read to her their 
 writings, to consult her in their arguments, and to discuss 
 with her the literature and politics of the day, through 
 all which her mind moved with an equal step, yet with a 
 sprightliness and vivacity peculiarly feminine. 
 
 " Her memory was remarkably retentive, not only of the 
 contents of books, but of all that great outlying fund of 
 anecdote and story which the quaint and earnest New Eng 
 land life always supplied. There were pictures of peculiar 
 characters, legends of true events stranger than romance, all 
 stored in the cabinets of her mind ; and these came from her 
 lips with the greater force because the precision of her mem 
 ory enabled her to authenticate them with name, date, and 
 circumstances of vivid reality. From that shadowy line of 
 incidents which marks the twilight boundary between the 
 spiritual world and the present life she drew legends of 
 peculiar clearness, but invested with the mysterious charm 
 which always dwells in that uncertain region ; and the shrewd 
 flash of her eye, and the keen, bright smile with which she 
 answered the wondering question, What do you suppose it 
 was ? or, What could it have been ? showed how evenly 
 rationalism in her mind kept pace with romance. 
 
THE CATHEDKAL 419 
 
 " The retired room in which she thus read, studied, 
 thought, and surveyed from afar the whole world of science 
 and literature, and in which she received friends and enter 
 tained children, was perhaps the dearest and freshest spot 
 to her in the world. There came a time, however, when 
 the neat little independent establishment was given up, and 
 she went to associate herself with two of her nieces in keep 
 ing house for a boarding-school of young girls. Here her 
 lively manners and her gracious interest in the young made 
 her a universal favorite, though the cares she assumed broke 
 in upon those habits of solitude and study which formed 
 her delight. From the day that she surrendered this inde 
 pendency of hers, she had never, for more than a score of 
 years, a home of her own, but filled the trying position of 
 an accessory in the home of others. Leaving the boarding- 
 school, she became the helper of an invalid wife and mo 
 ther in the early nursing and rearing of a family of young 
 children, an office which leaves no privacy and no leisure. 
 Her bed was always shared with some little one ; her terri 
 tories were exposed to the constant inroads of little patter 
 ing feet ; and all the various sicknesses and ailments of 
 delicate childhood made absorbing drafts upon her time. 
 
 " After a while she left New England with the brother 
 to whose family she devoted herself. The failing health of 
 the wife and mother left more and more the charge of all 
 things in her hands ; servants were poor, and all the appli 
 ances of living had the rawness and inconvenience which in 
 those days attended Western life. It became her fate to 
 supply all other people s defects and deficiencies. Wherever 
 a hand failed, there must her hand be. Whenever a foot 
 faltered, she must step into the ranks. She was the one 
 who thought for and cared for and toiled for all, yet made 
 never a claim that any one should care for her. 
 
 " It was not till late in my life that I became acquainted 
 with the deep interior sacrifice, the constant self-abnegation, 
 
420 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 which all her life involved. She was born with a strong, 
 vehement, impulsive nature, a nature both proud and 
 sensitive, a nature whose tastes were passions, whose lik 
 ings and whose aversions were of the most intense and posi 
 tive character. Devoted as she always seemed to the mere 
 practical and material, she had naturally a deep romance 
 and enthusiasm of temperament which exceeded all that can 
 be written in novels. It was chiefly owing to this that a 
 home and a central affection of her own were never hers. In 
 her early days of attractiveness, none who would have sought 
 her could meet the high requirements of her ideality ; she 
 never saw her hero, and so never married. Family cares, 
 the tending of young children, she often confessed, were 
 peculiarly irksome to her. She had the head of a student, 
 a passionate love for the world of books. A Protestant con 
 vent, where she might devote herself without interruption 
 to study, was her ideal of happiness. She had, too, the 
 keenest appreciation of poetry, of music, of painting, and of 
 natural scenery. Her enjoyment in any of these things was 
 intensely vivid whenever, by chance, a stray sunbeam of the 
 kind darted across the dusty path of her life ; yet in all 
 these her life Avas a constant repression. The eagerness with 
 which she would listen to any account from those more for 
 tunate ones who had known these things, showed how ar 
 dent a passion was constantly held in check. A short time 
 before her death, talking with a friend who had visited 
 Switzerland, she said, with great feeling : All my life my 
 desire to visit the beautiful places of this earth has been so 
 intense, that I cannot but hope that after my death I shall 
 be permitted to go and look at them. 
 
 " The completeness of her self-discipline may be gathered 
 from the fact that no child could ever be brought to believe 
 she had not a natural fondness for children, or that she 
 found the care of them burdensome. It was easy to see that 
 she had naturally all those particular habits, those minute 
 
THE CATHEDRAL 421 
 
 pertinacities in respect to her daily movements arid the ar 
 rangement of all her belongings, which would make the med 
 dling, intrusive demands of infancy and childhood peculiarly 
 hard for her to meet. Yet never was there a pair of tod 
 dling feet that did not make free with Aunt Esther s room, 
 never a curly head that did not look up, in confiding assur 
 ance of a welcome smile, to her bright eyes. The inconsid 
 erate and never ceasing requirements of children and invalids 
 never drew from her other than a cheerful response ; and 
 to my mind there is more saintship in this than in the pri 
 vate wearing of any number of haircloth shirts or belts lined 
 with spikes. 
 
 " In a large family of careless, noisy children there will 
 be constant losing of thimbles and needles and scissors ; but 
 Aunt Esther was always ready, without reproach, to help 
 the careless and the luckless. Her things, so well kept and 
 so treasured, she was willing to lend, with many a caution 
 and injunction, it is true, but also with a relish of right 
 good will. And, to do us justice, we generally felt the 
 sacredness of the trust, and were more careful of her things 
 than of our own. If a shade of sewing-silk were wanting, 
 or a choice button, or a bit of braid or tape, Aunt Esther 
 cheerfully volunteered something from her well-kept stores, 
 not regarding the trouble she made herself in seeking the 
 key, unlocking the drawer, and searching out in bag or par 
 cel just the treasure demanded. Never was more perfect 
 precision, or more perfect readiness to accommodate others. 
 
 <c Her little income, scarcely reaching a hundred dollars 
 yearly, was disposed of with a generosity worthy a fortune. 
 One tenth was sacredly devoted to charity, and a still 
 further sum laid by every year for presents to friends. No 
 Christmas or New Year ever came round that Aunt Esther, 
 out of this very tiny fund, did not find something for chil 
 dren and servants. Her gifts were trifling in value, but 
 well timed, a ball of thread-wax, a paper of pins, a pin- 
 
422 , THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 cushion, something generally so well chosen as to show 
 that she had been running over our needs, and noting what 
 to give. She was no less gracious as receiver than as giver. 
 The little articles that we made for her, or the small presents 
 that we could buy out of our childish resources, she always 
 declared were exactly what she needed ; and she delighted us 
 by the care she took of them and the value she set upon them. 
 
 " Her income was a source of the greatest pleasure to her, 
 as maintaining an independence without which she could 
 not have been happy. Though she constantly gave to 
 every family in which she lived services which no money 
 could repay, it would have been the greatest trial to her 
 not to be able to provide for herself. Her dress, always 
 that of a true gentlewoman, refined, quiet, and neat, 
 was bought from this restricted sum, and her small traveling 
 expenses were paid out of it. She abhorred anything false 
 or flashy : her caps were trimmed with real thread lace, and 
 her silk dresses were of the best quality, perfectly well made 
 and kept ; and, after all, a little sum always remained over 
 in her hands for unforeseen exigencies. 
 
 " This love of independence was one of the strongest 
 features of her life, and Ave often playfully told her that 
 her only form of selfishness was the monopoly of saintship, 
 that she who gave so much was not willing to allow 
 others to give to her; that she who made herself servant of 
 all was not willing to allow others to serve her. 
 
 " Among the trials of her life must be reckoned much ill 
 health, borne, however, with such heroic patience that it was 
 not easy to say when the hand of pain was laid upon her. She 
 inherited, too, a tendency to depression of spirits, which at 
 times increased to a morbid and distressing gloom. Few 
 knew or suspected these sufferings, so completely had she 
 learned to suppress every outward manifestation that might 
 interfere with the happiness of others. In her hours of 
 depression she resolutely forbore to sadden the lives of 
 
THE CATHEDRAL 423 
 
 those around her with her own melancholy, and often her 
 darkest moods were so lighted up and adorned with an out 
 side show of wit and humor, that those who had known her 
 intimately were astonished to hear that she had ever been 
 subject to depression. 
 
 " Her truthfulness of nature amounted almost to super 
 stition. Prom her promise once given she felt no change 
 of purpose could absolve her ; and therefore rarely would 
 she give it absolutely, for she could not alter the thing that 
 had gone forth from her lips. Our belief in the certainty of 
 her fulfilling her word was like our belief in the immutabil 
 ity of the laws of nature. Whoever asked her got of her 
 the absolute truth on every subject, and, when she had no 
 good thing to say, her silence was often truly awful. When 
 anything mean or ungenerous was brought to her knowledge, 
 she would close her lips resolutely ; but the flash in her 
 eyes showed what she would speak were speech permitted. 
 In her last days she spoke to a friend of what she had 
 suffered from the strength of her personal antipathies. I 
 thank God, she said, ( that I believe at last I have over 
 come all that too, and that there has not been, for some 
 years, any human being toward whom I have felt a move 
 ment of dislike. 
 
 " The last year of her life was a constant discipline of 
 unceasing pain, borne with that fortitude which could make 
 her an entertaining and interesting companion even while 
 the sweat of mortal agony was starting from her brow. 
 Her own room she kept as a last asylum, to which she 
 would silently retreat when the torture became too intense 
 for the repression of society, and there alone, with closed 
 doors, she wrestled with her agony. The stubborn inde 
 pendence of her nature took refuge in this final fastness, and 
 she prayed only that she might go down to death with the 
 full ability to steady herself all the way, needing the help 
 of 110 other hand. 
 
424 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 " The ultimate struggle of earthly feeling came when this 
 proud self-reliance was forced to give way, and she was 
 obliged to leave herself helpless in the hands of others. 
 God requires that I should give up my last form of self-will, 
 she said ; now I have resigned this, perhaps He will let 
 me go home. 
 
 "In a good old age, Death, the friend, came and opened 
 the door of this mortal state, and a great soul, that had 
 served a long appenticeship to little things, went forth into 
 the joy of its Lord ; a life of self-sacrifice and self-abnega 
 tion passed into a life of endless rest." 
 
 " But," said Rudolph, " I rebel at this life of self-abne 
 gation and self-sacrifice. I do not think it the duty of noble 
 women, who have beautiful natures and enlarged and culti 
 vated tastes, to make themselves the slaves of the sick-room 
 and nursery." 
 
 " Such was not the teaching of our New England faith," 
 said I. " Absolute unselfishness, the death of self, 
 such were its teachings, and such as Esther s the characters 
 it made. Do the duty nearest thee was the only mes 
 sage it gave to women with a mission ; and from duty 
 to duty, from one self-denial to another, they rose to a 
 majesty of moral strength impossible to any form of mere 
 self-indulgence. It is of souls thus sculptured and chis 
 eled by self-denial and self-discipline that the living tem 
 ple of the perfect hereafter is to be built. The pain of the 
 discipline is short, but the glory of the fruition is eternal." 
 
XII 
 
 THE NEW YEAR 
 
 [1865.] 
 
 HERE comes the First of January, Eighteen Hundred 
 and Sixty-Five, and we are all settled comfortably into our 
 winter places, with our winter surroundings and belongings ; 
 all cracks and openings are calked and listed, the double 
 windows are in, the furnace dragon in the cellar is ruddy 
 and in good liking, sending up his warming respirations 
 through every pipe and register in the house ; and yet, 
 though an artificial summer reigns everywhere, like bees 
 we have our swarming place, in my library. There is my 
 chimney-corner, and my table permanently established on 
 one side of the hearth j and each of the female genus has, so 
 to speak, pitched her own winter tent within sight of the 
 blaze of my camp-fire. I discerned to-day that Jenny had 
 surreptitiously appropriated one of the drawers of my study- 
 table to knitting-needles and worsted ; and wicker work- 
 baskets and stands of various heights and sizes seem to be 
 planted here and there for permanence among the bookcases. 
 The canary-bird has a sunny window, and the plants spread 
 out their leaves and unfold their blossoms as if there were 
 no ice and snow in the street, and Rover makes a hearth 
 rug of himself in winking satisfaction in front of my fire, 
 except when Jenny is taken with a fit of discipline, when 
 he beats a retreat, and secretes himself under my table. 
 
 Peaceable, ah, how peaceable, home and quiet and 
 warmth in winter ! And how, when we, hear the wind 
 
426 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 whistle, we think of you, our brave brothers, our saviors 
 and defenders, who for our sake have no home but the 
 muddy camp, the hard pillow of the barrack, the weary 
 march, the uncertain fare, you, the rank and file, the 
 thousand unnoticed ones, who have left warm fires, dear 
 wives, loving little children, without even the hope of glory 
 or fame, without even the hope of doing anything re 
 markable or perceptible for the cause you love, resigned 
 only to fill the ditch or bridge the chasm over which your 
 country shall walk to peace and joy ! Good men and 
 true, brave unknown hearts, we salute you, and feel that 
 we, in our soft peace and security, are not worthy of you ! 
 When we think of you, our simple comforts seem lux 
 uries all too good for us, who give so little when you give 
 all! 
 
 But there are others to whom from our bright homes, 
 our cheerful firesides, we would fain say a word, if we 
 dared. 
 
 Think of a mother receiving a letter with such a passage 
 as this in it ! It is extracted from one we have just seen, 
 written by a private in the army of Sheridan, describing 
 the death of a private. " He fell instantly, gave a peculiar 
 smile and look, and then closed his eyes. We laid him 
 down gently at the foot of a large tree. I crossed his 
 hands over his breast, closed his eyelids down, but the 
 smile was still on his face. I wrapt him in his tent, spread 
 my pocket-handkerchief over his face, wrote his name on a 
 piece of paper, and pinned it on his breast, and there we 
 left him : we could not find pick or shovel to dig a grave." 
 There it is ! a history that is multiplying itself by hun 
 dreds daily, the substance of what has come to so many 
 homes, and must come to so many more before the great 
 price of our ransom is paid ! 
 
 What can we say to you, in those many, many homes 
 where the light has gone out forever ? you, fathers, 
 
THE NEW YEAR 427 
 
 mothers, wives, sisters, haunted by a name that has ceased 
 to be spoken on earth, you, for whom there is no more 
 news from the camp, no more reading of lists, no more 
 tracing of maps, no more letters, but only a blank, dead 
 silence ! The battlecry goes on, but for you it is passed 
 by ! the victory comes, but, oh, never more to bring him 
 back to you ! your offering to this great cause has been 
 made, and been taken ; you have thrown into it all your 
 living, even all that you had, and from henceforth your 
 house is left unto you desolate ! ye watchers of the 
 cross, ye waiters by the sepulchre, what can be said to you ? 
 We could almost extinguish our own home-fires, that seem 
 too bright when we think of your darkness ; the laugh 
 dies on our lip, the lamp burns dim through our tears, and 
 we seem scarcely worthy to speak words of comfort, lest we 
 seem as those who mock a grief they cannot know. 
 
 But is there no consolation ? Is it nothing to have had 
 such a treasure to give, and to have given it freely for the 
 noblest cause for which ever battle was set, for the sal 
 vation of your country, for the freedom of all mankind ? 
 Had he died a fruitless death, in the track of common life, 
 blasted by fever, smitten or rent by crushing accident, then 
 might his most precious life seem to be as water spilled 
 upon the ground ; but now it has been given for a cause 
 and a purpose worthy even the anguish of your loss and 
 sacrifice. He has been counted worthy to be numbered 
 with those who stood with precious incense between the liv 
 ing and the dead, that the plague which was consuming us 
 might be stayed. The blood of these young martyrs shall 
 be the seed of the future church of liberty, and from every 
 drop shall spring up flowers of healing. widow ! 
 mother ! blessed among bereaved women ! there remains to 
 you a treasure that belongs not to those who have lost in 
 any other wise, the power to say, " He died for his coun 
 try." In all the good that comes of this anguish you shall 
 
428 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 have a right and share by virtue of this sacrifice. The joy 
 of freedmen bursting from chains, the glory of a nation 
 new-born, the assurance of a triumphant future for your 
 country and the world, all these become yours by the 
 purchase-money of that precious blood. 
 
 Besides this, there are other treasures that come through 
 sorrow, and sorrow alone. There are celestial plants of 
 root so long and so deep that the land must be torn and 
 furrowed, ploughed up from the very foundation, before 
 they can strike and flourish ; and when we see how God s 
 plough is driving backward and forward and across this 
 nation, rending, tearing up tender shoots, and burying soft 
 wild-flowers, we ask ourselves, What is He going to plant? 
 
 Not the first year, nor the second, after the ground has 
 been broken up, does the purpose of the husbandman ap 
 pear. At first we see only what is uprooted and ploughed 
 in, the daisy drabbled, and the violet crushed, and the 
 first trees planted amid the unsightly furrows stand dumb 
 and disconsolate, irresolute in leaf, and without flower or 
 fruit. Their work is under the ground. In darkness and 
 silence they are putting forth long fibres, searching hither 
 and thither under the black soil for the strength that years 
 hence shall burst into bloom and bearing. 
 
 What is true of nations is true of individuals. It may 
 seem now winter and desolation with you. Your hearts 
 have been ploughed and harrowed and are now frozen up. 
 There is not a flower left, not a blade of grass, not a bird 
 to sing, and it is hard to believe that any brighter flow 
 ers, any greener herbage, shall spring up than those which 
 have been torn away ; and yet there will. Nature herself 
 teaches you to-day. Outdoors nothing but bare branches 
 and shrouding snow ; and yet you know that there is not 
 a tree that is not patiently holding out at the end of its 
 boughs next year s buds, frozen indeed, but unkilled. The 
 rhododendron and the lilac have their blossoms all ready, 
 
THE NEW YEAR 429 
 
 wrapped in cere-cloth, waiting in patient faith. Under the 
 frozen ground the crocus and the hyacinth and the tulip 
 hide in their hearts the perfect forms of future flowers. 
 And it is even so with you : your leaf buds of the future 
 are frozen, but not killed ; the soil of your heart has many 
 flowers under it cold and still now, but they will yet come 
 up and bloom. 
 
 The dear old book of comfort tells of no present healing 
 for sorrow. No chastening for the present seemeth joy 
 ous, but grievous, but afterwards it yieldeth peaceable fruits 
 of righteousness. We, as individuals, as a nation, need to 
 have faith in that AFTERWARDS. It is sure to come, 
 sure as spring and summer to follow winter. 
 
 There is a certain amount of suffering which must follow 
 the rending of the great cords of life, suffering which is nat 
 ural and inevitable ; it cannot be argued down ; it cannot 
 be stilled ; it can no more be soothed by any effort of faith 
 and reason than the pain of a fractured limb, or the agony 
 of fire on the living flesh. All that we can do is to brace 
 ourselves to bear it, calling on God, as the martyrs did in 
 the fire, and resigning ourselves to let it burn on. We 
 must be willing to suffer, since God so wills. There are 
 just so many waves to go over us, just so many arrows of 
 stinging thought to be shot into our soul, just so many 
 faintings and sinkings and revivings only to suffer again, 
 belonging to and inherent in our portion of sorrow ; and 
 there is a work of healing that God has placed in the hands 
 of Time alone. 
 
 Time heals all things at last ; yet it depends much on 
 us in our suffering, whether time shall send us forth healed, 
 indeed, but maimed and crippled and callous, or whether, 
 looking to the great Physician of sorrows, and co-working 
 with him, we come forth stronger and fairer even for our 
 wounds. 
 
 We call ourselves a Christian people, and the peculiarity 
 
430 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 of Christianity is that it is a worship and doctrine of sor 
 row. The five wounds of Jesus, the instruments of the 
 passion, the cross, the sepulchre, these are its emblems 
 and watchwords. In thousands of churches, amid gold 
 and gems and altars fragrant with perfume, are seen the 
 crown of thorns, the nails, the spear, the cup of vinegar 
 mingled with gall, the sponge that could not slake that 
 burning death-thirst ; and in a voice choked with anguish 
 the Church in many lands and divers tongues prays from 
 age to age, " By thine agony and bloody sweat, by thy 
 cross and passion, by thy precious death and burial ! " 
 mighty words of comfort, whose meaning reveals itself only 
 to souls fainting in the cold death-sweat of mortal anguish ! 
 They tell all Christians that by uttermost distress alone 
 was the Captain of their salvation made perfect as a Sa 
 viour. 
 
 Sorrow brings us into the true unity of the Church, 
 that unity which underlies all external creeds, and unites 
 all hearts that have suffered deeply enough to know that 
 when sorrow is at its utmost there is but one kind of sor 
 row, and but one remedy. What matter, in extremis, 
 whether we be called Romanist, or Protestant, or Greek, or 
 Calvinist ? 
 
 We suffer, and Christ suffered ; we die, and Christ died ; 
 he conquered suffering and death, he rose and lives and 
 reigns, and we shall conquer, rise, live, and reign. The 
 hours on the cross were long, the thirst was bitter, the dark 
 ness and horror real, but they ended. After the wail, 
 " My God, why hast thou forsaken me ? " came the calm, 
 " It is finished ; " pledge to us all that our " It is finished " 
 shall come also. 
 
 Christ arose, fresh, joyous, no more to die ; and it is 
 written that, when the disciples were gathered together in 
 fear and sorrow, he stood in the midst of them, and showed 
 unto them his hands and his side ; and then were they glad. 
 
THE NEW YEAR 431 
 
 Already had the healed wounds of Jesus become pledges of 
 consolation to innumerable thousands ; and those who, like 
 Christ, have suffered the weary struggles, the dim horrors 
 of the cross, who have lain, like him, cold and chilled in 
 the hopeless sepulchre, if his spirit wakes them to life, 
 shall come forth with healing power for others who have 
 suffered and are suffering. 
 
 Count the good and beautiful ministrations that have 
 been wrought in this world of need and labor, and how 
 many of them have been wrought by hands wounded and 
 scarred, by hearts that had scarcely ceased to bleed ! 
 
 How many priests of consolation is God now ordaining 
 by the fiery imposition of sorrow ! how many Sisters of the 
 Bleeding Heart, Daughters of Mercy, Sisters of Charity, are 
 receiving their first vocation in tears and blood ! 
 
 The report of every battle strikes into some home ; and 
 heads fall low, and hearts are shattered, and only God sees 
 the joy that is set before them, and that shall come out of 
 their sorrow. He sees our morning at the same moment 
 that He sees our night, sees us comforted, healed, risen 
 to a higher life, at the same moment that He sees us crushed 
 and broken in the dust ; and so, though tenderer than we, 
 He bears our great sorrows for the joy that is set before us. 
 
 After the Napoleonic wars had desolated Europe, the 
 country was, like all countries after war, full of shattered 
 households, of widows and orphans and homeless wanderers. 
 A nobleman of Silesia, the Baron von Kottwitz, who had 
 lost his wife and all his family in the reverses and sorrows 
 of the times, found himself alone in the world, which looked 
 more dreary and miserable through the multiplying lenses 
 of his own tears. But he was one of those whose heart 
 had been quickened in its death anguish by the resurrec 
 tion voice of Christ ; and he came forth to life and comfort. 
 He bravely resolved to do all that one man could to lessen 
 the great sum of misery. He sold his estates in Silesia, 
 
432 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 bought in Berlin a large building that had been used as 
 barracks for the soldiers, and, fitting it up in plain, commo 
 dious apartments, formed there a great family-establishment, 
 into which he received the wrecks and fragments of families 
 that had been broken up by the war, orphan children, 
 widowed and helpless women, decrepit old people, disabled 
 soldiers. These he made his family, and constituted him 
 self their father and chief. He abode with them, arid cared 
 for them as a parent. He had schools for the children ; the 
 more advanced he put to trades and employments ; he set 
 up a hospital for the sick ; and for all he had the priestly 
 ministrations of his own Christ-like heart. The celebrated 
 Professor Tholuck, one of the most learned men of modern 
 Germany, was an early protege of the old Baron s, who, dis 
 cerning his talents, put him in the way of a liberal educa 
 tion. In his earlier years, like many others of the young 
 who play with life, ignorant of its needs, Tholuck piqued 
 himself on a lordly skepticism with regard to the commonly 
 received Christianity, and even wrote an essay to prove the 
 superiority of the Mohammedan to the Christian religion. 
 In speaking of his conversion, he says, " What moved 
 me was no argument, nor any spoken reproof, but simply 
 that divine image of the old Baron walking before my soul. 
 That life was an argument always present to me, and which 
 I never could answer ; and so I became a Christian." In 
 the life of this man we see the victory over sorrow. How 
 many with means like his, when desolated by like bereave 
 ments, have lain coldly and idly gazing on the miseries of 
 life, and weaving around themselves icy tissues of doubt 
 and despair, doubting the being of a God, doubting the 
 reality of a Providence, doubting the divine love, embittered 
 and rebellious against the power which they could not re 
 sist, yet to which they would not submit ! In such a chill 
 heart-freeze lies the danger of sorrow. And it is a mortal 
 danger. It is a torpor that must be resisted, as the man in 
 
THE NEW YEAR 433 
 
 the whirling snows must bestir himself, or he will perish. 
 The apathy of melancholy must be broken by an effort of 
 religion and duty. The stagnant blood must be made to flow 
 by active work, and the cold hand warmed by clasping the 
 hands outstretched towards it in sympathy or supplication. 
 One orphan child taken in, to be fed, clothed, and nurtured, 
 may save a heart from freezing to death : and God knows 
 this war is making but too many orphans ! 
 
 It is easy to subscribe to an orphan asylum, and go on 
 in one s despair and loneliness. Such ministries may do good 
 to the children who are thereby saved from the street, but 
 they impart little warmth and comfort to the giver. One 
 destitute child housed, taught, cared for, and tended person 
 ally, will bring more solace to a suffering heart than a dozen 
 maintained in an asylum. Not that the child will probably 
 prove an angel, or even an uncommonly interesting mortal. 
 It is a prosaic work, this bringing-up of children, and there 
 can be little rose-water in it. The child may not appreciate 
 what is done for him, may not be particularly grateful, may 
 have disagreeable faults, and continue to have them after 
 much pains on your part to eradicate them, and yet it is 
 a fact, that to redeem one human being from destitution 
 and ruin, even in some homely every-day course of minis 
 trations, is one of the best possible tonics and alteratives to 
 a sick and wounded spirit. 
 
 But this is not the only avenue to beneficence which the 
 war opens. We need but name the service of hospitals, the 
 care and education of the f reedmen, for these are chari 
 ties that have long been before the eyes of the community, 
 and have employed thousands of busy hands : thousands of 
 sick and dying beds to tend, a race to be educated, civilized, 
 and Christianized, surely were work enough for one age ; and 
 yet this is not all. War shatters everything, and it is hard 
 to say what in society will not need rebuilding and binding 
 up and strengthening anew. Not the least of the evils of 
 
434 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 war are the vices which a great army engenders wherever it 
 moves, vices peculiar to military life, as others are pecu 
 liar to peace. The poor soldier perils for us not merely his 
 body, but his soul. He leads a life of harassing and exhaust 
 ing toil and privation, of violent strain on the nervous ener 
 gies, alternating with sudden collapse, creating a craving for 
 stimulants, and endangering the formation of fatal habits. 
 What furies and harpies are those that follow the army, 
 and that seek out the soldier in his tent, far from home, mo 
 ther, wife and sister, tired, disheartened, and tempt him to 
 forget his troubles in a momentary exhilaration, that burns 
 only to chill and to destroy ! Evil angels are always active 
 and indefatigable, and there must be good angels enlisted to 
 face them ; and here is employment for the slack hand of grief. 
 Ah, we have known mothers bereft of sons in this war, who 
 have seemed at once to open wide their hearts, and to be 
 come mothers to every brave soldier in the field. They 
 have lived only to work, and in place of one lost, their 
 sons have been counted by thousands. 
 
 And not least of all the fields for exertion and Christian 
 charity opened by this war is that presented by womanhood. 
 The war is abstracting from the community its protecting 
 and sheltering elements, and leaving the helpless and depen 
 dent in vast disproportion. For years to come, the average 
 of lone women will be largely increased; and the demand, 
 always great, for some means by which they may provide 
 for themselves, in the rude jostle of the world, will become 
 more urgent and imperative. 
 
 Will any one sit pining away in inert grief, when two 
 streets off are the midnight dance-houses, where girls of 
 twelve, thirteen, and fourteen are being lured into the way 
 of swift destruction ? How many of these are daughters 
 of soldiers who have given their hearts blood for us and 
 our liberties ! 
 
 Two noble women of the Society of Friends have lately 
 
THE NEW YEAR 435 
 
 been taking the gauge of suffering and misery in our land, 
 visiting the hospitals at every accessible point, pausing in 
 our great cities, and going in their purity to those midnight 
 orgies where mere children are being trained for a life of vice 
 and infamy. They have talked with these poor bewildered 
 souls, entangled in toils as terrible and inexorable as those 
 of the slave-market, and many of whom are frightened and 
 distressed at the life they are beginning to lead, and ear 
 nestly looking for the means of escape. In the judgment 
 of these holy women, at least one third of those with whom 
 they have talked are children so recently entrapped, and so 
 capable of reformation, that there would be the greatest 
 hope in efforts for their salvation. While such things are 
 to be done in our land, is there any reason why any one 
 should die of grief ? One soul redeemed will do more to lift 
 the burden of sorrow than all the blandishments and diver 
 sions of art, all the alleviations of luxury, all the sympathy 
 of friends. 
 
 In the Roman Catholic Church there is an order of wo 
 men called the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, who have 
 renounced the world to devote themselves, their talents and 
 property, entirely to the work of seeking out and saving 
 the fallen of their own sex ; and the wonders worked by 
 their self-denying love on the hearts and lives of even the 
 most depraved are credible only to those who know that 
 the Good Shepherd himself ever lives and works with such 
 spirits engaged in such a work. A similar order of women 
 exists in New York, under the direction of the Episcopal 
 Church, in connection with St. Luke s Hospital ; and an 
 other in England, who tend the " House of Mercy " of 
 Clewer. 
 
 Such benevolent associations offer objects of interest to 
 that class which most needs something to fill the void made 
 by bereavement. The wounds of grief are less apt to find 
 a cure in that rank of life where the sufferer has wealth and 
 
436 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 leisure. The poor widow, whose husband was her all, must 
 break the paralysis of grief. The hard necessities of life are 
 her physicians ; they send her out to unwelcome, yet friendly 
 toil, which, hard as it seems, has yet its healing power. 
 But the sufferer surrounded by the appliances of wealth and 
 luxury may long indulge the baleful apathy, and remain in 
 the damp shadows of the valley of death till strength and 
 health are irrecoverably lost. How Christ-like is the thought 
 of a woman, graceful, elegant, cultivated, refined, whose voice 
 has been trained to melody, whose fingers can make sweet 
 harmony with every touch, whose pencil and whose needle 
 can awake the beautiful creations of art, devoting all these 
 powers to the work of charming back to the sheepfold those 
 wandering and bewildered lambs whom the Good Shepherd 
 still calls his own ! Jenny Lind once, when she sang at a 
 concert for destitute children, exclaimed in her enthusiasm, 
 " Is it not beautiful that I can sing so ? " And so may not 
 every woman feel, when her graces and accomplishments 
 draw the wanderer, and charm away evil demons, and soothe 
 the sore and sickened spirit, and make the Christian fold 
 more attractive than the dizzy gardens of false pleasure ? 
 
 In such associations, and others of kindred nature, how 
 many of the stricken and bereaved women of our country 
 might find at once a home and an object in life ! Motherless 
 hearts might be made glad in a better and higher mother 
 hood ; and the stock of earthly life that seemed cut off at 
 the root, and dead past recovery, may be grafted upon with 
 a shoot from the tree of life which is in the Paradise of God. 
 
 So the beginning of this eventful 1865, which finds us 
 still treading the wine-press of our great conflict, should 
 bring with it a serene and solemn hope, a joy such as those 
 had with whom in the midst of the fiery furnace there 
 walked one like unto the Son of God. 
 
 The great affliction that has come upon our country is so 
 evidently the purifying chastening of a Father, rather than 
 
THE NEW YEAR 437 
 
 the avenging anger of a Destroyer, that all hearts may submit 
 themselves in a solemn and holy calm still to bear the burn 
 ing that shall make us clean from dross and bring us forth 
 to a higher national life. Never, in the whole course of our 
 history, have such teachings of the pure abstract Bight been 
 so commended and force^ upon us by Providence. Never 
 have public men been so constrained to humble themselves 
 before God, and to acknowledge that there is a Judge that 
 ruleth in the earth. Verily his inquisition for blood has 
 been strict and awful ; and for every stricken household of 
 the poor and lowly hundreds of households of the oppressor 
 have been scattered. The land where the family of the slave 
 was first annihilated, and the negro, with all the loves and 
 hopes of a man, was proclaimed to be a beast to be bred and 
 sold in market with the horse and the swine, that land, 
 with its fair name, Virginia, has been made a desolation so 
 signal, so wonderful, that the blindest passer-by cannot but 
 ask for what sin so awful a doom has been meted out. The 
 prophetic visions of Nat Turner, who saw the leaves drop 
 blood and the land darkened, have been fulfilled. The work 
 of justice which he predicted is being executed to the utter 
 most. 
 
 But when this strange work of judgment and justice is 
 consummated, when our country, through a thousand battles 
 and ten thousands of precious deaths, shall have come forth 
 from this long agony, redeemed and regenerated, then God 
 himself shall return and dwell with us, and the Lord God 
 shall wipe away all tears from all faces, and the rebuke of 
 his people shall he utterly take away. 
 
XIII 
 
 THE NOBLE ARMY OF MARTYRS 
 
 WHEX the first number of the Chimney-Corner appeared, 
 the snow lay white on the ground, the buds on the trees 
 were closed and frozen, and beneath the hard frost-bound 
 soil lay buried the last year s flower-roots, waiting for a 
 resurrection. 
 
 So in our hearts it was winter, a winter of patient suf 
 fering and expectancy, a winter of suppressed sobs, of 
 inward bleedings, a cold, choked, compressed anguish of 
 endurance, for how long and how much God only could tell 
 us. 
 
 The first paper of the Chimney-Corner, as was most meet 
 and fitting, was given to those homes made sacred and ven 
 erable by the cross of martyrdom, by the chrism of a 
 great sorrow. That Chimney-Corner made bright by home 
 firelight seemed a fitting place for a solemn act of reverent 
 sympathy for the homes by whose darkness our homes had 
 been preserved bright, by whose emptiness our homes had 
 been kept full, by whose losses our homes had been enriched ; 
 and so we ventured with trembling to utter these words of 
 sympathy and cheer to those whom God had chosen to this 
 great sacrifice of sorrow. 
 
 The winter months passed with silent footsteps, spring 
 returned, and the sun, with ever waxing power, unsealed 
 the snowy sepulchre of buds and leaves, birds reappeared, 
 brooks were unchained, flowers filled every desolate dell 
 with blossoms and perfume. And with returning spring, in 
 like manner, the chill frost of our fears and of our dangers 
 
THE NOBLE ARMY OF MARTYRS 439 
 
 melted before the breath of the Lord. The great war, which 
 lay like a mountain of ice upon our hearts, suddenly dis 
 solved and was gone. The fears of the past were as a dream 
 when one awaketh, and now we scarce realize our deliver 
 ance. A thousand hopes are springing up everywhere, like 
 spring flowers in the forest. All is hopefulness, all is be 
 wildering joy. 
 
 But this our joy has been ordained to be changed into a 
 wail of sorrow. The kind hard hand, that held the helm 
 so steadily in the desperate tossings of the storm, has been 
 stricken down just as we entered port, the fatherly heart 
 that bore all our sorrows can take no earthly part in our 
 joys. His were the cares, the watchings, the toils, the 
 agonies, of a nation in mortal struggle ; and God, looking 
 down, was so well pleased with his humble faithfulness, 
 his patient continuance in well-doing, that earthly rewards 
 and honors seemed all too poor for him, so he reached 
 down and took him to immortal glories. "Well done, 
 good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy 
 Lord ! " 
 
 Henceforth the place of Abraham Lincoln is first among 
 that noble army of martyrs who have given their blood to 
 the cause of human freedom. The eyes are yet too dim 
 with tears that would seek calmly to trace out his place in 
 history. He has been a marvel and a phenomenon among 
 statesmen, a new kind of ruler in the earth. There has 
 been something even unearthly about his extreme unselfish 
 ness, his utter want of personal ambition, personal self- val 
 uation, personal feeling. 
 
 The most unsparing criticism, denunciation, and ridicule 
 never moved him to a single bitter expression, never seemed 
 to awaken in him a single bitter thought. The most exult 
 ant hour of party victory brought no exultation to him ; he 
 accepted power not as an honor, but as a responsibility ; and 
 when, after a severe struggle, that power came a second time 
 
440 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 into his hands, there was something preternatural in the 
 calmness of his acceptance of it. The first impulse seemed 
 to be a disclaimer of all triumph over the party that had 
 strained their utmost to push him from his seat, and then 
 a sober girding up of his loins to go on with the work to 
 which he was appointed. His last inaugural was character 
 ized by a tone so peculiarly solemn and free from earthly 
 passion, that it seems to us now, who look back on it in the 
 light of what has followed, as if his soul had already parted 
 from earthly things, and felt the powers of the world to 
 come. It was not the formal state paper of the chief of 
 a party in an hour of victory, so much as the solemn solil 
 oquy of a great soul reviewing its course under a vast re 
 sponsibility, and appealing from all earthly judgments to 
 the tribunal of Infinite Justice. It was the solemn clear 
 ing of his soul for the great sacrament of Death, and the 
 words that he quoted in it with such thrilling power were 
 those of the adoring spirits that veil their faces before the 
 throne, " Just and true are thy ways, thou King of 
 saints ! " 
 
 Among the rich treasures which this bitter struggle has 
 brought to our country, not the least is the moral wealth 
 which has come to us in the memory of our martyrs. 
 Thousands of men, women, and children too, in this great 
 conflict, have " endured tortures, not accepting deliverance," 
 counting not their lives dear unto them in the holy cause ; 
 and they have done this as understandingly and thoughtfully 
 as the first Christians who sealed their witness with their 
 blood. 
 
 Let us in our hour of deliverance and victory record the 
 solemn vow, that our right hand shall forget her cunning 
 before we forget them and their sufferings, that our tongue 
 shall cleave to the roof of our mouth if we remember them 
 not above our chief joy. 
 
 Least suffering among that noble band were those who 
 
THE NOBLE ARMY OF MARTYRS 441 
 
 laid down their lives on the battlefield, to whom was given 
 a brief and speedy passage to the victor s meed. The mourn 
 ers who mourn for such as these must give place to another 
 and more august band, who have sounded lower deeps of 
 anguish, and drained bitterer drops out of our great cup of 
 trembling. 
 
 The narrative of the lingering tortures, indignities, and 
 sufferings of our soldiers in Rebel prisons has been something 
 so harrowing that we have not dared to dwell upon it. We 
 have been helplessly dumb before it, and have turned away our 
 eyes from what we could not relieve, and therefore could not 
 endure to look upon. But now, when the nation is called 
 to strike the great and solemn balance of justice, and to de 
 cide measures of final retribution, it behooves us all that we 
 should at least watch with our brethren for one hour, and 
 take into our account what they have been made to suffer 
 for us. 
 
 Sterne said he could realize the miseries of captivity only 
 by setting before him the image of a miserable captive with 
 hollow cheek and wasted eye, notching upon a stick, day 
 after day, the weary record of the flight of time. So we 
 can form a more vivid picture of the sufferings of our mar 
 tyrs from one simple story than from any general descrip 
 tion ; and therefore we will speak right on, and tell one 
 story which might stand as a specimen of what has been 
 done and suffered by thousands. 
 
 In the town of Andover, Massachusetts, a boy of sixteen, 
 named Walter Raymond, enlisted among our volunteers. 
 He was under the prescribed age, but his eager zeal led him 
 to follow the footsteps of an elder brother who had already 
 enlisted ; and the father of the boy, though these two were 
 all the sons he had, instead of availing himself of his legal 
 right to withdraw him, indorsed the act in the following 
 letter addressed to his captain : 
 
442 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 ANDOVER, MASS., August 15, 18G2. 
 
 CAPTAIN HUNT, My eldest son has enlisted in your 
 company. I send you his younger brother. He is, and 
 always has been, in perfect health, of more than the ordinary 
 power of endurance, honest, truthful, and courageous. I 
 doubt not you will find him on trial all you can ask, except 
 his age, and that I am sorry to say is only sixteen ; yet if 
 our country needs his service, take him. 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 SAMUEL RAYMOND. 
 
 The boy went forth to real service, and to successive bat 
 tles at Kingston, at Whitehall, and at Goldsborough ; and 
 in all this did his duty bravely and faithfully. He met the 
 temptations and dangers of a soldier s life with the pure- 
 hearted firmness of a Christian child, neither afraid nor 
 ashamed to remember his baptismal vows, his Sunday-school 
 teachings, and his mother s wishes. 
 
 He had passed his promise to his mother against drinking 
 and smoking, and held it with a simple, childlike steadiness. 
 When in the midst of malarious swamps, physicians and 
 officers advised the use of tobacco. The boy writes to his 
 mother : "A great many have begun to smoke, but I shall 
 not do it without your permission, though I think it does a 
 great deal of good." 
 
 In his leisure hours, he was found in his tent reading ; 
 and before battle he prepared his soul with the beautiful 
 psalms and collects for the day, as appointed by his church, 
 and writes with simplicity to his friends : 
 
 " I prayed God that he would watch over me, and if I 
 fell, receive my soul in heaven ; and I also prayed that I 
 might not forget the cause I was fighting for, and turn my 
 back in fear." 
 
 After nine months service, he returned with a soldier s 
 experience, though with a frame weakened by sickness in a 
 
THE NOBLE ARMY OF MARTYRS 443 
 
 malarious region. But no sooner did health and strength 
 return than he again enlisted, in the Massachusetts cavalry 
 service, and passed many months of constant activity and 
 adventure, being in some severe skirmishes and battles with 
 that portion of Sheridan s troops who approached nearest to 
 Richmond, getting within a mile and a half of the city. At 
 the close of this raid, so hard had been the service, that 
 only thirty horses were left out of seventy-four in his com 
 pany, and Walter and two others were the sole survivors 
 among eight who occupied the same tent. 
 
 On the sixteenth of August, Walter was taken prisoner 
 in a skirmish ; and from the time that this news reached 
 his parents, until the 18th of the following March, they 
 could ascertain nothing of his fate. A general exchange of 
 prisoners having been then effected, they learned that he 
 had died on Christmas Day in Salisbury Prison, of hardship 
 and privation. 
 
 What these hardships were is, alas ! easy to be known 
 from those too well-authenticated accounts published by our 
 government of the treatment experienced by our soldiers in 
 the Rebel prisons. 
 
 Robbed of clothing, of money, of the soldier s best friend, 
 his sheltering blanket, herded in shivering nakedness on 
 the bare ground, deprived of every implement by which 
 men of energy and spirit had soon bettered their lot, for 
 bidden to cut in adjacent forests branches for shelter, or fuel 
 to cook their coarse food, fed on a pint of corn-and-cob- 
 meal per day, with some slight addition of molasses or ran 
 cid meat, denied all mental resources, all letters from 
 home, all writing to friends, these men were cut off from 
 the land of the living while yet they lived, they were 
 made to dwell in darkness as those that have been long 
 dead. 
 
 By such slow, lingering tortures, such weary, wasting 
 anguish and sickness of body and soul, it was the infer- 
 
444 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 nal policy of the Rebel government either to wring from 
 them an abjuration of their country, or by slow and steady 
 draining away of the vital forces to render them forever un 
 fit to serve in her armies. 
 
 Walter s constitution bore four months of this usage, 
 when death came to his release. A fellow sufferer, who 
 was with him in his last hours, brought the account to his 
 parents. 
 
 Through all his terrible privations, even the lingering 
 pains of slow starvation, Walter preserved his steady sim 
 plicity, his faith in God, and unswerving fidelity to the 
 cause for which he was suffering. 
 
 When the Rebels had kept the prisoners fasting for days, 
 and then brought in delicacies to tempt their appetite, hop 
 ing thereby to induce them to desert their flag, he only 
 answered, " I would rather be carried out in that dead- 
 cart ! " 
 
 When told by some that he must steal from his fellow 
 sufferers, as many did, in order to relieve the pangs of hun 
 ger, he answered, " No, I was not brought up to that ! " 
 And so when his weakened system would no longer receive 
 the cobmeal which was his principal allowance, he set his 
 face calmly towards death. He grew gradually weaker and 
 weaker and fainter and fainter, and at last disease of the 
 lungs set in, and it became apparent that the end was at 
 hand. 
 
 On Christmas Day, while thousands among us were bow 
 ing in our garlanded churches or surrounding festive tables, 
 this young martyr lay on the cold, damp ground, watched 
 over by his destitute friends, who sought to soothe his last 
 hours with such scanty comforts as their utter poverty af 
 forded, raising his head on the block of wood which was 
 his only pillow, and moistening his brow and lips with 
 water, while his life ebbed slowly away, until about two 
 o clock, when he suddenly roused himself, stretched out his 
 
THE NOBLE ARMY OF MARTYRS 445 
 
 hand, and, drawing to him his dearest friend among those 
 around him, said, in a strong, clear voice : 
 
 " I am going to die. Go tell my father I am ready to 
 die, for I die for God and my country," - and, looking up 
 with a triumphant smile, he passed to the reward of the 
 faithful. 
 
 And now, men and brethren, if this story were a single 
 one, it were worthy to be had in remembrance ; but Walter 
 Raymond is not the only noble-hearted boy or man that 
 has been slowly tortured and starved and done to death, by 
 the fiendish policy of Jefferson Davis and Robert Edmund 
 Lee. No, wherever this simple history shall be read, 
 there will arise hundreds of men and women who will tes 
 tify, " Just so died my son ! " " So died my brother ! " 
 " So died my husband ! " " So died my father ! " The 
 numbers who have died in these lingering tortures are to 
 be counted, not by hundreds, or even by thousands, but by 
 tens of thousands. 
 
 And is there to be no retribution for a cruelty so vast, 
 so aggravated, so cowardly and base ? And if there is re 
 tribution, on whose head should it fall ? Shall we seize 
 and hang the poor, ignorant, stupid, imbruted semi-barbari 
 ans who were set as jailers to keep these hells of torment 
 and inflict these insults and cruelties ? or shall we punish 
 the educated, intelligent chiefs who were the head and brain 
 of the iniquity ? 
 
 If General Lee had been determined not to have prison 
 ers starved or abused, does any one doubt that he could 
 have prevented these things ? Nobody doubts it. His 
 raiment is red with the blood of his helpless captives. Does 
 any one doubt that Jefferson Davis, living in ease and lux 
 ury in Richmond, knew that men were dying by inches in 
 filth and squalor and privation in the Libby Prison, within 
 bowshot of his own door ? Nobody doubts it. It was his 
 will, his deliberate policy, thus to destroy those who fell 
 
446 THE CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 into his hands. The chief of a so-called Confederacy, who 
 could calmly consider among his official documents incen 
 diary plots for the secret destruction of ships, hotels, and 
 cities full of peaceable people, is a chief well worthy to pre 
 side over such cruelties ; but his only just title is President 
 of Assassins, and the whole civilized world should make 
 common cause against such a miscreant. 
 
 There has been, on both sides of the water, much weak, 
 ill-advised talk of mercy and magnanimity to be extended 
 to these men, whose crimes have produced a misery so vast 
 and incalculable. The wretches who have tortured the 
 weak and the helpless, who have secretly plotted to sup 
 plement, by dastardly schemes of murder and arson, that 
 strength which failed them in fair fight, have been commis 
 erated as brave generals and unfortunate patriots, and efforts 
 are made to place them within the comities of war. 
 
 It is no feeling of personal vengeance, but a sense of the 
 eternal fitness of things, that makes us rejoice, when crim 
 inals who have so outraged every sentiment of humanity 
 are arrested and arraigned and awarded due retribution at 
 the bar of their country s justice. There are crimes against 
 God and human nature which it is treason alike to God and 
 man not to punish ; and such have been the crimes of the 
 traitors who were banded together in Richmond. 
 
 If there be those whose hearts lean to pity, we can show 
 them where all the pity of their hearts may be better be 
 stowed than in deploring the woes of assassins. Let them 
 think of the thousands of fathers, mothers, wives, sisters, 
 whose lives will be forever haunted with memories of the 
 slow tortures in which their best and bravest were done to 
 death. 
 
 The sufferings of those brave men are ended. Xearly a 
 hundred thousand are sleeping in those sad nameless graves, 
 and may their rest be sweet ! " There the wicked cease 
 from troubling ; and there the weary be at rest. There the 
 
THE NOBLE ARMY OF MARTYRS 447 
 
 prisoners rest together ; they hear not the voice of the 
 oppressor." But, ye who have pity to spare, spare it 
 for the broken-hearted friends, who, to life s end, will suffer 
 over and over all that their dear ones endured. Pity the 
 mothers Avho hear their sons faint calls in dreams, who in 
 many a weary night-watch see them pining and wasting, and 
 yearn with a lifelong, unappeasable yearning to have been 
 able to soothe those forsaken, lonely death-beds. man 
 or woman, if you have pity to spare, spend it not on Lee or 
 Davis, spend it on their victims, on the thousands of 
 living hearts which these men of sin have doomed to an 
 anguish that will end only with life ! 
 
 Blessed are the mothers whose sons passed in battle, a 
 quick, a painless, a glorious death ! Blessed in comparison, 
 yet we weep for them. We rise up and give place at 
 sight of their mourning-garments. We reverence the sanc 
 tity of their sorrow. But before this other sorrow we are 
 dumb in awful silence. We find no words with which to 
 console such grief. We feel that our peace, our liberties, 
 have been bought at a fearful price, when we think of the 
 sufferings of our martyred soldiers. Let us think of them. 
 It w r as for us they bore hunger and cold and nakedness. 
 They might have had food and raiment and comforts, if 
 they would have deserted our cause, and they did not. 
 Cut off from all communication with home or friends or 
 brethren, dragging on the weary months, apparently for 
 gotten, still they would not yield, they would not fight 
 against us ; and so for us at last they died. 
 
 What return can we make them ? Peace has come, and 
 we take up all our blessings restored and brightened ; but 
 if we look, we shall see on every blessing a bloody cross. 
 
 When three brave men broke through the ranks of the 
 enemy, to bring to King David a draught from the home 
 well, for which he longed, the generous-hearted prince 
 would not drink it ; but poured it out as an offering before 
 
448 THK CHIMNEY-CORNER 
 
 the Lord ; for he said, " Is not this the blood of the men 
 that went in jeopardy of their lives ? " 
 
 Thousands of noble hearts have been slowly consumed to 
 secure to us the blessings we are rejoicing in. We owe a 
 duty to these our martyrs, the only one we can pay. 
 
 In every place, honored by such a history and example, 
 let a monument be raised at the public expense, on which 
 shall be inscribed the names of those who died for their 
 country, and the manner of their death. Such monuments 
 will educate our young men in heroic virtue, and keep alive 
 to future ages the flame of patriotism. And thus, too, to 
 the aching heart of bereaved love shall be given the only 
 consolation of which its sorrows admit, in the reverence 
 which is paid to its lost loved ones. 
 
OUR SECOND GIEL 
 
 OUR establishment on Beacon Street had been for some 
 days in a revolutionary state, owing to the fact that our 
 second girl had gone from us into the holy estate of matri 
 mony. Alice was a pretty, tidy, neat-handed creature, and, 
 like many other blessings of life, so good as to be little 
 appreciated while with us. It was not till she had left us 
 that we began to learn that clean glass, bright silver, spot 
 less and untumbled table-linen, and, in short, all the appe 
 tizing arrangements and appointments of our daily meals, 
 were not always and in all hands matters of course. 
 
 In a day or two, our silver began to have the appearance 
 of old pewter, and our glass looked as if nothing but muddy 
 water could be found. On coming down to our meals, we 
 found the dishes in all sorts of conversational attitudes on 
 the table, the meat placed diagonally, the potatoes cross 
 wise, and the other vegetables scattered here and there, 
 while the table itself stood rakishly aslant, and wore the 
 air of a table slightly intoxicated. 
 
 Our beautiful china, moreover, began to have little 
 chipped places in the edges, most unusual and distressing 
 to our eyes ; the handles vanished from our teacups, and 
 here and there a small mouthful appeared to be bitten out 
 of the nose of some pretty fancy pitchers, which had been 
 the delight of my eyes. 
 
 Now, if there is anything which I specially affect, it is a 
 refined and pretty table arrangement, and at our house for 
 years and years such had prevailed. All of us had rather 
 a weakness for china, and the attractions of the fragile 
 
450 OUR SECOND GIRL 
 
 world, as presented in the great crockery-stores, had been 
 many times too much for our prudence and purse. Conse 
 quently we had all sorts of little domestic idols of the 
 breakfast and dinner table, Bohemian-glass drink ing-mugs 
 of antique shape, lovely bits of biscuit choicely moulded 
 in classic patterns, beauties, oddities, and quaintnesses in 
 the way of especial teacups and saucers, devoted to different 
 members of the family, wherein each took a particular and 
 individual delight. Our especial china or glass pets of the 
 table often started interesting conversations on the state of 
 the plastic arts as applied to every-day life, and the charm 
 of being encircled, even in the material act of feeding our 
 mortal bodies, with a sort of halo of art and beauty. 
 
 All this time none of us ever thought in how great de 
 gree our feeling for elegance and refinement owed its gratifi 
 cation at the hour of meals to the care, the tidiness, and 
 neat handling of our now lost and wedded Alice. 
 
 Nothing presents so forlorn an appearance as battered 
 and neglected finery of any kind ; and elegant pitchers with 
 their noses knocked off, cut glass with cracked edges, and 
 fragments of artistic teacups and saucers on a tumbled table 
 cloth, have a peculiarly dismal appearance. In fact, we 
 had really occasion to wonder at the perfectly weird and 
 bewitched effect which one of our two Hibernian successors 
 to the pretty Alice succeeded in establishing in our table 
 department. Every caprice in the use and employment of 
 dishes, short of serving cream in the gravy-boats and using 
 the sugar-bowl for pickled oysters and the cream-pitcher for 
 vinegar, seemed possible and permissible. My horror was 
 completed one morning on finding a china hen, artistically 
 represented as brooding on a nest, made to cover, not boiled 
 eggs, but a lot of greasy hash, over which she sat so that 
 her head and tail bewilderingly projected beyond the sides 
 of the nest, instead of keeping lengthwise within it, as a 
 respectable hen in her senses might be expected to do. 
 
OUR SECOND GIRL 451 
 
 There certainly is a great amount of native vigor shown by 
 these untrained Hibernians in always finding an unexpected 
 wrong way of doing the simplest thing. It quite enlarges 
 one s ideas of human possibilities. 
 
 In a paroxysm of vexation, I reviled matrimony and 
 Murphy O Connor, who had stolen our household treasure, 
 and further expressed my griefs, as elder sons are apt to do, 
 by earnest expostulations with the maternal officer on the 
 discouraging state of things ; declaring most earnestly, morn 
 ing, noon, and night, that all was going to ruin, that every 
 thing was being spoiled, that nothing was even decent, and 
 that, if things went on so much longer, I should be obliged 
 to go out and board, by which style of remark I nearly 
 drove that long-suffering woman frantic. 
 
 " Do be reasonable, Tom/ 7 said she. " Can I make girls 
 to order ? Can I do anything more than try such as apply, 
 when they seem to give promise of success ? Delicacy of 
 hand, neatness, nicety of eye, are not things likely to be 
 cultivated in the Irish boarding-houses from which our can 
 didates emerge. What chance have the most of them had 
 to learn anything except the most ordinary rough house 
 work ? A trained girl is rare as a nugget of gold amid the 
 sands of the washings ; but let us persevere in trying, and 
 one will come at last. 37 
 
 " Well, I hope, at any rate, you have sent off that Bridget," 
 I said, in high disdain. " I verily believe, if that girl stays 
 a week longer, I shall have to leave the house." 
 
 " Compose yourself," said my mother ; " Bridget s bundle 
 is made up, and she is going. 1 7 m sorry for her too, poor 
 thing ; for she seemed anxious to keep the place." 
 
 At this moment the doorbell rang. " I presume that s 
 the new girl whom they have sent round for me to see," said 
 my mother. 
 
 I opened the door, and there in fact stood a girl dressed 
 in a neat-fitting dark calico, with a straw bonnet, simply 
 
452 OUR SECOND GIRL 
 
 tied with some dark ribbon, and a veil which concealed her 
 face. 
 
 " Is Mrs. Seymour at home ? " 
 
 " She is." 
 
 " I was told that she wanted a girl." 
 
 " She does ; will you walk in ? " 
 
 I pique myself somewhat on the power of judging char 
 acter, and there was something about this applicant which 
 inspired hope ; so that, before I introduced her into the 
 room, I felt it necessary to enlighten my mother with a 
 little of my wisdom. I therefore whispered in her ear, 
 with the decisive tone of an eldest son, " I think, mother, 
 this one will do ; you had better engage her at once." 
 
 " Have you lived out much ? " said my mother, com 
 mencing the usual inquiries. 
 
 " I have not, ma am. I am but lately come to the 
 city." 
 
 " Are you Irish ? " 
 
 "No, ma am ; I am American." 
 
 " Have you been accustomed to the care of the table, 
 silver, glass, and china ? " 
 
 " I think, ma am, I understand what is necessary for 
 that." 
 
 All this while the speaker remained standing with her 
 veil down ; her answers seemed to be the briefest possible ; 
 and yet, notwithstanding the homely plainness of her dress, 
 there was something about her that impressed both my 
 mother and me with an idea of cultivation and refinement 
 above her apparent station, there was a composure and 
 quiet decision in her manner of speaking which produced 
 the same impression on us both. 
 
 " What wages do you expect ? " said my mother. 
 
 " Whatever you have been accustomed to give to a girl 
 in that place will satisfy me," she said. 
 
 " There is only one thing I would like to ask," she 
 
OUR SECOND GIRL 453 
 
 added, with a slight hesitation and embarrassment of man 
 ner; "would it be convenient for me to have a room by 
 myself ? " 
 
 I nodded to my mother to answer in the affirmative. 
 
 The three girls who composed our establishment had 
 usually roomed in one large apartment, but there was a 
 small closet of a room which I had taken for books, fishing- 
 rods, guns, and any miscellaneous property of my own. I 
 mentally turned these out, and devoted the room to the 
 newcomer, whose appearance interested me. 
 
 And, as my mother hesitated, I remarked, with the as 
 sured tone of master of the house, that " certainly she could 
 have a small room to herself." 
 
 " It is all I ask," she briefly answered. " In that case, 
 I will come for the same wages you paid the last girl in my 
 situation." 
 
 " When will you come ? " said my mother. 
 
 " I am ready to come immediately. I only want time to 
 go and order my things to be sent here." 
 
 She rose and left us, saying that we might expect her 
 that afternoon. 
 
 " Well, sir," said my mother, " you seem to have taken 
 it upon you to settle this matter on your own authority." 
 
 " My dear little mother," said I, in a patronizing tone, 
 " I have an instinctive certainty that she will do. I wanted 
 to make sure of a prize for you." 
 
 " But the single room." 
 
 " Never mind ; I 11 move all my traps out of the little 
 third-story room. It s my belief that this girl or woman 
 has seen better days ; and if she has, a room to herself will 
 be a necessity of her case, poor thing ! " 
 
 " I don t know," said my mother hesitatingly. " I never 
 wish to employ in my service those above their station, 
 they always make trouble ; and there is something in this 
 woman s air and manner and pronunciation that makes me 
 
454 OUK SECOND GIRL 
 
 feel as if she had been born and bred in cultivated so 
 ciety." 
 
 " Supposing she has," said I ; "it s quite evident that 
 she, for some reason, means to conform to this position. 
 You seldom have a girl apply for work who conies dressed 
 with such severe simplicity ; her manner is retiring, and 
 she seemed perfectly willing and desirous to undertake any 
 of the things which you mentioned as among her daily 
 tasks." 
 
 On the afternoon of that day our new assistant came, and 
 my mother was delighted with the way she set herself at 
 work. The china-closet, desecrated and disordered in the 
 preceding reigns of terror and confusion, immediately under 
 went a most quiet but thorough transformation. Every 
 thing was cleaned, brightened, and arranged with a system 
 and thoroughness which showed, as my mother remarked, a 
 good head ; and all this was done so silently and quietly that 
 it seemed like magic. By the time we came down to break 
 fast the next morning, we perceived that the reforms of our 
 new prime minister had extended everywhere. The dining- 
 room was clean, cool, thoroughly dusted, and freshly aired ; 
 the tablecloth and napkins were smooth and clean ; the 
 glass glittered like crystal, and the silver wore a cheerful 
 brightness. Added to this were some extra touches of 
 refinement, which I should call table coquetry. The cold 
 meat was laid out with green fringes of parsley ; and a 
 bunch of heliotrope, lemon verbena, and mignonette, with a 
 fresh rosebud, all culled from our little back yard, stood in 
 a wineglass on my mother s waiter. 
 
 " Well, Mary, you have done wonders," said my mother, 
 as she took her place; "your arrangements restore appetite 
 to all of us." 
 
 Mary received our praises with a gracious smile, yet 
 with a composed gravity which somewhat puzzled me. She 
 seemed perfectly obliging and amiable, yet there was a 
 
OUR SECOND GIRL 455 
 
 serious reticence about her that quite piqued my curiosity. 
 I could not help recurring to the idea of a lady in disguise ; 
 though I scarcely knew to what circumstance about her I 
 could attach the idea. So far from the least effort to play 
 the lady, her dress was, in homely plainness, a perfect con 
 trast to that of the girls who had preceded her. It consisted 
 of strong dark-blue stuff, made perfectly plain to her figure, 
 with a narrow band of white linen around her throat. Her 
 dark brown hair was brushed smoothly away from her face, 
 and confined simply behind in a net ; there was not the 
 slightest pretension to coquetry in its arrangement ; in fact, 
 the object seemed to be to get it snugly out of the way, 
 rather than to make it a matter of ornament. Nevertheless, 
 I could not help remarking that there was a good deal of it, 
 and that it waved very prettily, notwithstanding the care 
 that had been taken to brush the curl out of it. 
 
 She was apparently about twenty years of age. Her face 
 was not handsome, but it was a refined and intelligent one. 
 The skin had a sallow hue, which told of ill health or of 
 misfortune ; there were lines of trouble about the eye ; but 
 the mouth and chin had that unmistakable look of firm 
 ness which speaks a person able and resolved to do a quiet 
 battle with adverse fate, and to go through to the end 
 with whatever is needed to be done, without fretfulness and 
 without complaint. She had large, cool, gray eyes, atten 
 tive and thoughtful, and she met the look of any one who 
 addressed her with an honest firmness ; she seemed to be, in 
 fact, simply and only interested to know and to do the work 
 she had undertaken, but what there might be behind and 
 beyond that I could not conjecture. 
 
 One thing about her dress most in contrast with that of 
 the other servants was that she evidently wore no crinoline. 
 The exuberance of this article in the toilet of our domestics 
 had become threatening of late, apparently requiring that 
 the kitchens and pantries should be torn down and rebuilt. 
 
456 OUR SECOND GIRL 
 
 As matters were, our three girls never could be in our kitchen 
 at one time without reelings and manoeuvrings of their 
 apparel which much impeded any other labor, and caused 
 some loss of temper ; and our china-closet was altogether 
 too small for the officials who had to wash the china there, 
 and they were constantly at odds with my mother for her 
 firmness in resisting their tendency to carry our china and 
 silver to the general melee of the kitchen sink. Moreover, 
 our dining-room not having been constructed with an eye to 
 modern expansions of the female toilet, it happened that, 
 if our table was to be enlarged for guests, there arose seri 
 ous questions of the waiter s crinoline to complicate the cal 
 culations ; and for all these reasons, I was inclined to look 
 with increasing wonder on a being in female form who could 
 so far defy the tyranny of custom as to dress in a convenient 
 and comfortable manner, adapted to the work which she 
 undertook to perform. A good-looking girl without crino 
 line had a sort of unworldly freshness of air that really con 
 stituted a charm. If it had been a piece of refined coquetry, 
 as certainly it was not, it could not have been better 
 planned. 
 
 Nothing could be more perfectly proper than the de 
 meanor of this girl in relation to all the proprieties of her 
 position. She seemed to give her whole mind to it with an 
 anxious exactness ; but she appeared to desire no relations 
 with the family other than those of a mere business charac 
 ter. It was impossible to draw her into conversation. If 
 a good-natured remark was addressed to her on any subject 
 such as in kindly disposed families is often extended as an 
 invitation to a servant to talk a little with an employer, 
 Mary met it with the briefest and gravest response that was 
 compatible with propriety, and with a definite and marked 
 respectfulness of demeanor which had precisely the effect of 
 throwing us all at a distance, like ceremonious politeness in 
 the intercourse of good society. 
 
OUR SECOND GIRL 457 
 
 " I cannot make out our Mary," said I to my mother ; 
 " she is a perfect treasure, but who or what do you suppose 
 she is ? " 
 
 " I cannot tell you," said my mother. " All I know is, 
 she understands her business perfectly, and does it exactly ; 
 but she no more belongs to the class of common servants 
 than I do." 
 
 " Does she associate with the other girls ? " 
 
 " Not at all except at meal- times, and when about her 
 work." 
 
 " I should think that would provoke the pride of sweet 
 Erin," said I. 
 
 " One would think so," said my mother ; " but she cer 
 tainly has managed her relations with them with a curious 
 kind of tact. She always treats them with perfect consid 
 eration and politeness, talks with them during the times 
 that they necessarily are thrown together in the most affable 
 and cheerful manner, and never assumes any airs of suprem 
 acy with them. Her wanting a room to herself gave them 
 at first an idea that she would hold herself aloof from them, 
 and in fact, for the first few days, there was a subterranean 
 fire in the kitchen ready to burst forth ; but now all that is 
 past, and in some way or other, without being in the least 
 like any of them, she has contrived to make them her fast 
 friends. I found her last night in the kitchen writing a 
 letter for the cook, and the other day she was sitting in her 
 room trimming a bonnet for Katy ; and her opinion seems 
 to be law in the kitchen. She seldom sits there, and spends 
 most of her leisure in her own room, which is as tidy as a 
 bee s cell." 
 
 " What is she doing there ? " 
 
 " Reading, sewing, and writing, as far as I can see. 
 There are a few books, and a portfolio, and a small inkstand 
 there, and a neat little work-basket. She is very nice 
 with her needle, and obliging in putting her talents to the 
 
458 OUR SECOND GIRL 
 
 service of the other girls ; but towards me she is the most 
 perfectly silent and reserved being that one can conceive. 
 I can t make conversation with her ; she keeps me off by a 
 most rigid respectfulness of demeanor which seems to say 
 that she wants nothing from me but my orders. I feel 
 that I could no more ask her a question about her private 
 affairs, than I could ask one of Mrs. McGregor in the next 
 street. But then it is a comfort to have some one so en 
 tirely trustworthy as she is in charge of all the nice little 
 articles which require attention and delicate handling. She 
 is the only girl I ever had whom I could trust to arrange a 
 parlor and a table without any looking after. Her eye and 
 hand, and her ideas, are certainly those of a lady, whatever 
 her position may have been." 
 
 In time our Mary became quite a family institution for 
 us, seeming to fill a thousand little places in the domestic 
 arrangement where a hand or an eye was needed. She was 
 deft at mending glass and china, and equally so at mending 
 all sorts of household things. She darned the napkins and 
 tablecloths in a way that excited my mother s admiration, 
 and was always so obliging and ready to offer her services 
 that, in time, a resort to Mary s work-basket and ever ready 
 needle became the most natural thing in the world to all of 
 us. She seemed to have no acquaintance in the city, never 
 went out visiting, received no letters, in short, seemed 
 to live a completely isolated life, and to dwell in her own 
 thoughts in her own solitary little room. 
 
 By that talent for systematic arrangement which she pos 
 sessed, she secured for herself a good many hours to spend 
 there. My mother, seeing her taste for reading, offered her 
 the use of our books ; and one volume after another spent 
 its quiet week or fortnight in her room, and returned to our 
 shelves in due time. They were mostly works of solid 
 information, history, travels, and a geography and 
 atlas which had formed part of the school outfit of one of 
 
OUR SECOND GIRL 459 
 
 the yoimger children she seemed interested to retain for 
 some time. "It is my opinion/ said my mother, "that she 
 is studying, perhaps with a view to getting some better 
 situation." 
 
 " Pray keep her with us," said I, " if you can. Why 
 don t you raise her wages ? You know that she does more 
 than any other girl ever did before in her place, and is so 
 trustworthy that she is invaluable to us. Persons of her 
 class are worth higher wages than common uneducated 
 servants." 
 
 My mother accordingly did make a handsome addition to 
 Mary s wages, and by the time she had been with us a year 
 the confidence which her quiet manner had inspired was 
 such that, if my mother wished to be gone for a day or 
 two, the house, with all that was in it, was left trustingly 
 in Mary s hands, as with a sort of housekeeper. She was 
 charged with all the last directions, as well as the keys to 
 the jellies, cakes, and preserves, with discretionary power as 
 as to their use ; and yet, for some reason, such was the 
 ascendency she contrived to keep over her Hibernian friends 
 in the kitchen, all this confidence evidently seemed to them 
 quite as proper as to us. 
 
 " She ain t quite like us," said Biddy one day, mysteri 
 ously, as she looked after her. " She s seen better days, or 
 I m mistaken ; but she don t take airs on her. She knows 
 how to take the bad luck quiet like, and do the best she 
 can." 
 
 " Has she ever told you anything of herself, Biddy ? " 
 said my mother. 
 
 " Me ? No. It s a quiet tongue she keeps in her head. 
 She is ready enough to do good turns for us, and to smooth 
 out our ways, and hear our stories, but it s close in her own 
 affairs she is. Maybe she don t like to be talkin , when 
 talkin does no good, poor soul ! " 
 
 Matters thus went on, and I amused myself now and 
 
4GO OUR SECOND GIRL 
 
 then with speculating about Mary. I would sometimes go 
 to her to ask some of those little charities of the needle 
 which our sex are always needing from feminine hands ; 
 but never, in the course of any of these little transactions, 
 could I establish the slightest degree of confidential commu 
 nication. If she sewed on a shirt-button, she did it with as 
 abstracted an air as if my arm were a post which she was 
 required to handle, and not the arm of a good-looking youth 
 of twenty -five, as I fondly hoped I was. And certain 
 remarks which I once addressed to her in regard to her 
 studies and reading in her own apartment were met with 
 that cool, wide-open gaze of her calm gray eyes, that seemed 
 to say, " Pray, what is that to your purpose, sir ? " and 
 she merely answered, " Is there anything else that you 
 would like me to do, sir ? " with a marked deference that 
 was really defiant. 
 
 But one day I fancied I had got hold of a clue. I 
 was standing in our lower front hall, when I saw young 
 McPherson, whom I used to know in New York, coming 
 up the doorsteps. 
 
 At the moment that he rung the doorbell, our Mary, 
 who had seen him from the chamber window, suddenly 
 grew pale, and said to my mother, " Please, ma am, will 
 you be so good as to excuse my going to the door ? I feel 
 faint." 
 
 My mother spoke over the banisters, and I opened the 
 door, and let in McPherson. 
 
 He and I were jolly together, as old classmates are wont 
 to be, and orders were given to lay a plate for him at 
 dinner. 
 
 Mary prepared the service with her usual skill and care, 
 but pleaded that her illness increased so that it would be 
 impossible for her to wait on table. Now, nobody in the 
 house thought there was anything peculiar about this but 
 myself. My mother, indeed, had noticed that Mary s faint- 
 
OUR SECOND GIRL 461 
 
 ness had come on very suddenly, as she looked out on the 
 street ; but it was I who suggested to her that McPherson 
 might have some connection with it. 
 
 a Depend upon it, mother, he is somebody whom she has 
 known in her former life, and does n t wish to meet," said I. 
 
 " Nonsense, Tom ; you are always getting up mysteries, 
 and fancying romances." 
 
 Nevertheless, I took a vicious pleasure in experimenting 
 on the subject ; and therefore, a day or two after, when I 
 had got Mary fairly within eye-range, as she waited on 
 table, I remarked to my mother carelessly, " By the bye, the 
 McPhersons are coming to Boston to live." 
 
 There was a momentary jerk of Mary s hand, as she was 
 filling a tumbler, and then I could see the restraint of self- 
 command passing all over her. I had hit something, I 
 knew ; so I pursued my game. 
 
 " Yes," I continued, " Jim is here to look at houses ; he 
 is thinking strongly of one in the next block." 
 
 There was a look of repressed fear and distress on Mary s 
 face as she hastily turned away, and made an errand into 
 the china-closet. 
 
 " I have found a clue," I said to my mother triumph 
 antly, going to her room after dinner. " Did you notice 
 Mary s agitation when I spoke of the McPhersons coming 
 to Boston ? By Jove ! but the girl is plucky, though ; it 
 was the least little start, and in a minute she had her 
 visor down and her armor buckled. This certainly becomes 
 interesting." 
 
 "Tom, I certainly must ask you what business it is of 
 yours," said my mother, settling back into the hortatory 
 attitude familiar to mothers. " Supposing the thing is as 
 you think, suppose that Mary is a girl of refinement 
 and education, who, from some unfortunate reason, has no 
 resource but her present position, why should you hunt 
 her out of it ? If she is, as you think, a lady, there is the 
 
462 OUR SECOND GIRL 
 
 strongest reason why a gentleman should respect her feel 
 ings. I fear the result of all this restless prying and inter 
 meddling of yours will be to drive her away ; and really, 
 now I have had her, I don t know how I ever could do 
 without her. People talk of female curiosity," said my 
 mother, with a slightly belligerent air ; " I never found but 
 men had fully as much curiosity as women. Now, what 
 will become of us all if your restlessness about this should 
 be the means of Mary s leaving us ? You know the per 
 fectly dreadful times we had before she came, and I don t 
 know anybody who has less patience to bear such things 
 than you." 
 
 In short, my mother was in that positive state of mind 
 which is expressed by the colloquial phrase of being on 
 her high horse. I as the male part of creation always 
 must in such cases became very meek and retiring, and 
 promised to close my eyes and ears, and not dream, or 
 think, or want to know, anything which it was not agreeable 
 to Mary and my mother that I should. I would not look 
 towards the doorbell, nor utter a word about the McPher- 
 sons, who, by the bye, decided to take the house in our 
 neighborhood. 
 
 But though I was as exemplary as one of the saints, 
 it did no good. Mary, for some reasons known to herself, 
 became fidgety, nervous, restless, and had frequent head 
 aches and long crying spells in her own private apartment, 
 after the manner of women when something is the matter 
 with them. 
 
 My mother was, as she always is with every creature in 
 her employ, maternal and sympathetic, and tried her very 
 best to get into her confidence. 
 
 Mary only confessed to feeling a little unwell, and hinted 
 obscurely that perhaps she should be obliged to leave the 
 place. But it was quite evident that her leaving was con 
 nected with the near advent of the McPhersons in the next 
 
OUR SECOND GIRL 463 
 
 block ; for I observed that she always showed some little 
 irrepressible signs of nervousness whenever that subject 
 was incidentally alluded to. Finally, on the day that their 
 furniture began to arrive, and to provide abundant material 
 for gossip and comment to the other members of the kitchen 
 cabinet, Mary s mind appeared suddenly made up. She 
 came into my mother s room looking as a certain sort of 
 women do when they have made a resolution which they 
 mean to stand by, very pale, very quiet, and very decided. 
 She asked to see my mother alone, and in that interview 
 she simply expressed gratitude for all her kindness to her, 
 but said that circumstances would oblige her to go to New 
 York. 
 
 My mother now tried her best to draw from her her his 
 tory, whatever that might be. She spoke with tact and ten 
 derness, and with the respect due from one human being to 
 another ; for my mother always held that every soul has its 
 own inviolable private door which it has a right to keep 
 closed, and at which even queens and duchesses, if they 
 wish to enter, must knock humbly and reverently. 
 
 Mary was almost overcome by her kindness. She thanked 
 her over and over ; at times my mother said she looked at 
 her wistfully, as if on the very point of speaking, and then, 
 quietly gathering herself within herself, she remained silent. 
 All that could be got from her was, that it was necessary 
 for her hereafter to live in New York. 
 
 The servants in the kitchen, with the warm-heartedness 
 of their race, broke out into a perfect Irish howl of sorrow ; 
 and at the last moment, Biddy, our fat cook, fell on her 
 neck and lifted up her voice and wept, almost smothering 
 her with her tumultuous embraces ; and the whole party of 
 them would go with her to the New York station, one car 
 rying her shawl, another her hand-bag and parasol, with 
 emulous affection ; and so our very pleasant and desirable 
 second girl disappeared, and we saw her no more. 
 
464 OUR SECOND GIRL 
 
 Six months after this, when our Mary had become only 
 a memory of the past, I went to spend a week or two in 
 Newport, and took, among other matters and things, a let 
 ter of introduction to Mrs. Mclntyre, a Scotch lady, who 
 had just bought a pretty cottage there, and, as my friend 
 who gave it told me, would prove an interesting acquaint 
 ance. 
 
 " She has a pretty niece," said he, " who I m told is 
 heiress to her property, and is called a very nice girl." 
 
 So, at the proper time, I lounged in one morning, and 
 found a very charming, cosy, home-like parlor, arranged 
 with all those little refined touches and artistic effects by 
 which people of certain tastes and habits at once recognize 
 each other in all parts of the world, as by the tokens of 
 freemasonry. I felt perfectly acquainted with Mrs. Mcln 
 tyre from the first glance at her parlor, where the books, 
 the music, the birds, the flowers, and that everlasting va 
 riety of female small- work prepared me for a bright, chatty, 
 easy-going, home-loving kind of body, such as I found Mrs. 
 Mclntyre to be. She was, as English and Scotch ladies are 
 apt to be, very oddly dressed in very nice and choice arti 
 cles. It takes the eye of the connoisseur to appreciate these 
 oddly dressed Englishwomen. They are like antique china ; 
 but a discriminating eye soon sees the real quality that un 
 derlies their quaint adornment. Mrs. Mclntyre was scrupu 
 lously, exquisitely neat. All her articles of dress were of 
 the choicest quality. The yellow and tumbled lace that was 
 fussed about her neck and wrists might have been the heir 
 loom of a countess ; her satin gown, though very short and 
 very scanty, was of a fabulous richness ; and the rings that 
 glittered on her withered hands were of the fashion of two 
 centuries ago, but of wonderful brilliancy. 
 
 She was very gracious in her reception, as my letter was 
 from an old friend, and said many obliging things of me ; 
 so I was taken at once to her friendship, with the frankness 
 
OUR SECOND GIRL 465 
 
 characteristic of people of her class when they make up their 
 minds to know you at all. 
 
 " I must introduce you to my Mary," she said ; " she 
 has just gone into the garden to cut flowers for the vases." 
 
 In a moment more " Mary " entered the room, with a 
 
 little white apron full of flowers, and a fresh bloom on her 
 
 cheeks ; and I was as the reader has already anticipated 
 
 to my undisguised amazement, formally introduced to 
 
 Miss Mary Mclntyre, our second girl. 
 
 Of all things for which I consider women admirable, there 
 is no trait which fills me with such positive awe as their 
 social tact and self-command. Evidently this meeting was 
 quite as unexpected to Mary as to me j but except for a 
 sudden flash of amused astonishment in the eyes, and a be 
 coming flush of complexion, she met me as any thorough 
 bred young lady meets a young man properly presented by 
 her maternal guardian. 
 
 For my part, I had one of those dreamy periods of exist 
 ence in which people doubt whether they are awake or 
 asleep. The world seemed all turning topsy-turvy. I was 
 filled with curiosity, which I could with difficulty keep 
 within the limits of conventional propriety. 
 
 " I see, Mr. Seymour, that you are very much aston 
 ished," said Mary to me, when Mrs. Mclntyre had left the 
 room to give some directions to the servants. 
 
 " Upon my word," said I, " I never was more so ; I feel 
 as if I were in the midst of a fairy tale." 
 
 " Nothing so remarkable as that," she said. lt But since 
 I saw you, a happy change, as I need not tell you now, has 
 come over my life through the coming of my mother s sister 
 to America. When my mother died, my aunt was in India. 
 The letters that I addressed to her in Scotland were a long 
 time in reaching her, and then it took a long time for her 
 to wind up her affairs there, and find her way to this coun 
 try." 
 
466 OUR SECOND GIRL 
 
 " But/ said I, " what could " 
 
 " What could induce me to do as I did ? Well, I knew 
 your mother s character, no matter how. I needed a 
 support and protection, and I resolved for a time to put my 
 self under her wing. I knew that in case of any real trou 
 ble I should find in her a true friend and a safe adviser, and 
 I hoped to earn her esteem and confidence by steadily doing 
 my duty. Some other time, perhaps, I will tell you more," 
 she added. 
 
 The return of Mrs. Mclntyre put an end to our private 
 communication, but she insisted, with true old-world hospi 
 tality, on my remaining to dinner. 
 
 Here I was precipitated into a romance at once. Mary 
 had just enough of that perverse feminine pleasure in teas 
 ing to keep my interest alive. The fact was, she saw me 
 becoming entangled from day to day without any more mis 
 givings of conscience than the celebrated spider of the poem 
 felt when she invited the fly to walk into her parlor. 
 
 Mrs. Mclntyre took me in a very marked way into her 
 good graces, and I had every opportunity to ride, walk, 
 sketch, and otherwise to attend upon Mary ; and Mary was 
 gracious also, but so quietly and discreetly mistress of her 
 self that I could not for the life of me tell what to make of 
 her. There were all sorts of wonders and surmises boiling 
 up within me. What was it about McPherson ? Was there 
 anything there ? Was Mary engaged ? Or was there any 
 old affair ? etc., etc. Not that it was any business of mine ; 
 but then a fellow likes to know his ground before Be 
 fore what ? I thought to myself, and that unknown WHAT 
 every day assumed new importance in my eyes. Mary had 
 many admirers. Her quiet, easy, self-possessed manners, 
 her perfect tact and grace, always made her a favorite ; but 
 I could not help hoping that between her and me there was 
 that confidential sense of a mutually kept secret which it is 
 delightful to share with the woman you wish to please. 
 
OUR SECOND GIRL 467 
 
 Why won t women sometimes enlighten a fellow a little 
 in this dark valley that lies between intimate acquaintance 
 and the awful final proposal ? To be sure, there are kind 
 souls who will come more than halfway to meet you, but 
 they are always sure to be those you don t want to meet. 
 The woman you want is always as reticent as a nut, and 
 leaves you the whole work of this last dread scene without 
 a bit of help on her part. To be sure, she smiles on you ; 
 but what of that ? You see she smiles also on Tom, Dick, 
 and Harry. 
 
 " Bright as the sun her eyes the gazers strike ; 
 And, like the sun, they shine on all alike." 
 
 I fought out a battle of two or three weeks with my fair 
 foe, trying to get in advance some hint from her as to what 
 she would do with me if I put myself at her mercy. No 
 use. Our sex may as well give up first as last before one 
 of these quiet, resolved, little pieces of femininity, who are 
 perfect mistresses of all the peculiar weapons, defensive and 
 offensive, of womanhood. There was nothing for it but to 
 surrender at discretion ; but when I had done this, I was 
 granted all the honors of war. Mrs. Mclntyre received me 
 with an old-fashioned maternal blessing, and all was as 
 happy as possible. 
 
 " And now," said Mary, " I suppose, sir, you will claim 
 a right to know all about me." 
 
 " Something of the sort," I said complacently. 
 
 " I know you have been dying of curiosity ever since I 
 was waiting behind your lordship s chair at your mother s. 
 I knew you suspected something then, confess now." 
 
 " But what could have led you there ? " 
 
 " Just hear. My mother, who was Mrs. Mclntyre s sister, 
 had by a first marriage only myself. Shortly after my 
 father s death, she married a widower with several children. 
 As long as she lived, I never knew what want or care or 
 trouble was ; but just as I was entering upon my seventeenth 
 
468 OUK SECOND GIRL 
 
 year she died. A year after her death, my stepfather, who 
 was one of those men devoted to matrimony at all hazards, 
 married another woman, by whom he had children. 
 
 " In a few years more, he died ; and his affairs, on exam 
 ination, proved to be in a very bad state ; there was, in fact, 
 scarcely anything for us to live on. Our stepmother had a 
 settlement from her brother. The two other daughters of 
 my father were married, and went to houses of their own ; 
 and I was left, related really to nobody, without property 
 and without home. 
 
 " I suppose hundreds of young girls are from one reason 
 or other left just in this way, and have, without any previ 
 ous preparation in their education and habits, to face the 
 question, How can I get a living ? 
 
 " I assure you it is a serious question for a young girl 
 who has grown up in the easy manner in which I had. My 
 stepfather had always been a cheery, kindly, generous man, 
 one of those who love to see people enjoy themselves, and 
 to have things done handsomely, and had kept house in a 
 free, abundant, hospitable manner ; so that when I came to 
 look myself over in relation to the great uses of life, I could 
 make out very little besides expensive tastes and careless 
 habits. 
 
 " I had been to the very best schools, but then I had 
 studied, as most girls in easy circumstances do, without a 
 thought of using my knowledge for any practical purpose. 
 I could speak very fair English ; but how I did it, or why, 
 I didn t know, all the technical rules of grammar had 
 passed from my head like a dream. I could play a little on 
 the piano, and sing a few songs ; but I did not know enough 
 of music to venture to propose myself as a teacher ; and so 
 with every other study. All the situations of profit in the 
 profession of teaching are now crowded and blocked by girls 
 who have been studying for that express object, and what 
 could I hope among them ? 
 
OUll SECOND GIRL 4G9 
 
 " My mother-in-law was a smart, enterprising, driving 
 woman of the world, who told all her acquaintance that, of 
 course, she should give me a home, although I was no kind 
 of relation to her, and who gave me to understand that I 
 was under infinite obligations to her on this account, and 
 must pay for the privilege by making myself generally use 
 ful. I soon found that this meant doing a servant s work 
 without wages. During six months I filled, I may say, the 
 place of a seamstress and nursery governess to some very 
 ungoverned children, varying with occasional weeks of ser 
 vant s work, when either the table girl or the cook left a 
 place vacant. For all this I received my board, and some 
 cast-off dresses and underclothes to make over for myself. 
 I was tired of this, and begged my stepmother to find me 
 some place where I could earn my own living. She was 
 astonished and indignant at the demand. When Providence 
 had provided me a good home, under respectable protection, 
 she said, why should I ask to leave it ? For her part, she 
 thought the situation of a young lady making herself gener 
 ally useful in domestic life, in the family of her near con 
 nections, was a delightful one. She had no words to say 
 how much more respectable and proper it was thus to live 
 in the circle of family usefulness and protection, than to go 
 out in the world looking for employment. 
 
 " I did not suggest to her that the chief difference in the 
 cases would be, that in a hired situation I should have regu 
 lar wages and regular work ; whereas in my present position 
 it was irregular work, and no wages. 
 
 " Her views on the subject were perhaps somewhat be 
 clouded by the extreme convenience she found in being able 
 to go into company, and to range about the city at all hours, 
 unembarrassed by those family cares which generally fall to 
 the mistress, but which her views of what constituted general 
 usefulness devolved upon me. 
 
 " I had no retirement, no leisure, no fixed place anywhere. 
 
470 OUR SECOND GIRL 
 
 My bed was in the nursery, where the children felt always 
 free to come and go ; and even this I was occasionally re 
 quested to resign, to share the couch of the housemaid, when 
 sickness in the family or a surplus of guests caused us to be 
 crowded for room. 
 
 "I grew very unhappy, my health failed, and the demands 
 upon me were entirely beyond my strength, and without any 
 consideration. The doer of all the odds and ends in a fam 
 ily has altogether the most work and least praise of any, as 
 I discovered to my cost. I found one thing after another 
 falling into my long list of appointed duties, by a regular 
 progress. Thus first it would be, Mary, won t you see to 
 the dusting of the parlors? for Bridget is etc., etc.; this 
 would be the form for a week or two, and then, { Mary, have 
 you dusted the parlors ? and at last, Mary, why have you 
 not dusted the parlors ? 
 
 " As I said, I never studied anything to practical advan 
 tage ; and though I had been through arithmetic and algebra, 
 I had never made any particular use of my knowledge. But 
 now, under the influence of misfortune, my thoughts took 
 an arithmetical turn. By inquiring among the servants, I 
 found that, in different families in the neighborhood, girls 
 were receiving three dollars a week for rendering just such 
 services as mine. Here was a sum of a hundred and fifty- 
 six dollars yearly, in ready money, put into their hands, 
 besides their board, the privilege of knowing their work 
 exactly, and having a control of their own time when cer 
 tain definite duties were performed. Compared with what 
 I was doing and receiving, this was riches and ease and 
 rest. 
 
 " After all, I thought to myself, why should not I find 
 some respectable, superior, motherly woman, and put myself 
 under her as a servant, make her my friend by good con 
 duct, and have some regular hours and some definite in 
 come, instead of wearing out my life in service without pay ? 
 
OUR SECOND GIRL 471 
 
 Nothing stood in my way but the traditionary shadow of 
 gentility, and I resolved it should not stop me. 
 
 " Years before, when I was only eight or ten years old, 
 I had met your mother with your family at the seaside, 
 where my mother took me. I had seen a great deal of her, 
 and knew all about her. I remembered well her habitual 
 consideration for the nurses and servants in her employ. I 
 knew her address in Boston, and I resolved to try to find a 
 refuge in her family. And so there is my story. I left a 
 note with my stepmother, saying that I was going to seek 
 independent employment, and then went to Boston to your 
 house. There I hoped to find a quiet asylum, at least, 
 till I could hear from my aunt in Scotland. The delay of 
 hearing from her during those two years at your house often 
 made me low-spirited." 
 
 " But what made you so afraid of McPherson ? " said I 
 nervously. " I remember your faintness, and all that, the 
 day he called. 7 
 
 " Oh, that ? Why, it was merely this, they were on 
 intimate visiting terms with my mother-in-law, and I knew 
 that it would be all up with my plans if they were to be 
 often at the house." 
 
 " Why did n t you tell my mother ? " said I. 
 
 " I did think of it, but then" She gave me a curious 
 glance. 
 
 " But what, Mary ? " 
 
 " Well, I could see plainly enough that there were no 
 secrets between you and her, and I did not wish to take so 
 fine a young gentleman into my confidence," said Mary. 
 " You will observe I was not out seeking flirtations, but an 
 honest independence." 
 
 My mother was apprised of our engagement in due form, 
 and came to Newport, all innocence, to call on Miss Mclntyre, 
 
472 OUR SECOND GIRL 
 
 her intended daughter-in-law. Her astonishment at the mo 
 ment of introduction was quite satisfactory to me. 
 
 For the rest, Mary s talents in making a home agreeable 
 have had since then many years of proof ; and where any 
 of the little domestic chasms appear which are formed by 
 the shifting nature of the American working-class, she al 
 ways slides into the place with a quiet grace, and reminds 
 me, with a humorous twinkle of the eye, that she is used 
 to being second girl. 
 
A SCHOLAR S ADVENTURES IN THE COUNTRY 
 
 " IF we could only live in the country," said my wife, 
 " how much easier it would be to live ! " 
 
 " And how much cheaper ! " said I. 
 
 " To have a little place of our own, and raise our own 
 things ! " said my wife. " Dear me ! I am heartsick when I 
 think of the old place at home, and father s great garden. 
 What peaches and melons we used to have ! what green 
 peas and corn ! Now one has to buy every cent s worth of 
 these things and how they taste ! Such wilted, misera 
 ble corn ! Such peas ! Then, if we lived in the country, 
 we should have our own cow, and milk and cream in abun 
 dance ; our own hens and chickens. We could have cus 
 tard and ice-cream every day." 
 
 " To say nothing of the trees and flowers, and all that," 
 said I. 
 
 The result of this little domestic duet was that my wife 
 and I began to ride about the city of - - to look up some 
 pretty, interesting cottage, where our visions of rural bliss 
 might be realized. Country residences, near the city, we 
 found to bear rather a high price ; so that it was no easy 
 matter to find a situation suitable to the length of our purse ; 
 till, at last, a judicious friend suggested a happy expedient. 
 
 " Borrow a few hundred," he said, "and give your note ; 
 you can save enough, very soon, to make the difference. 
 When you raise everything you eat, you know it will make 
 your salary go a wonderful deal further." 
 
 " Certainly it will," said I. " And what can be more 
 beautiful than to buy places by the simple process of giving 
 one s note ? t is so neat, and handy, and convenient ! " 
 
474 A SCHOLAR S ADVENTURES IN THE COUNTRY 
 
 " Why," pursued my friend, " there is Mr. B., my next- 
 door neighbor t is enough to make one sick of life in the 
 city to spend a week out on his farm. Such princely living 
 as one gets ! And he assures me that it costs him very 
 little scarce anything perceptible, in fact." 
 
 "Indeed ! " said I ; "few people can say that." 
 
 " Why," said my friend, " he has a couple of peach-trees 
 for every month, from June till frost, that furnish as many 
 peaches as he, and his wife, and ten children can dispose of. 
 And then he has grapes, apricots, etc. ; and last year his 
 wife sold fifty dollars worth from her strawberry patch, and 
 had an abundance for the table besides. Out of the milk of 
 only one cow they had butter enough to sell three or four 
 pounds a week, besides abundance of milk and cream ; and 
 madam has the butter for her pocket money. This is the 
 way country people manage." 
 
 " Glorious ! " thought I. And my wife and I could 
 scarcely sleep, all night, for the brilliancy of our anticipa 
 tions ! 
 
 To be sure our delight was somewhat damped the next 
 day by the coldness with which my good old uncle, Jere 
 miah Standfast, who happened along at precisely this crisis, 
 listened to our visions. 
 
 " You 11 find it pleasant, children, in the summer time," 
 said the hard - fisted old man, twirling his blue - checked 
 pocket-handkerchief ; " but I m sorry you ve gone in debt 
 for the land." 
 
 " Oh, but we shall soon save that it s so much cheaper 
 living in the country ! " said both of us together. 
 
 " Well, as to that, I don t think it is, to city-bred folks." 
 
 Here I broke in with a flood of accounts of Mr. B. s 
 peach-trees, and Mrs. B. s strawberries, butter, apricots, etc., 
 etc. ; to which the old gentleman listened with such a long, 
 leathery, unmoved quietude of visage as quite provoked me, 
 and gave me the worst possible opinion of his judgment. J 
 
A SCHOLAR S ADVENTURES IN THE COUNTRY 475 
 
 was disappointed, too ; for as he was reckoned one of the 
 best practical farmers in the county, I had counted on an 
 enthusiastic sympathy with all my agricultural designs. 
 
 " I tell you what, children," he said, " a body can live in 
 the country, as you say, amazin cheap ; but then a body 
 must knoiv how" and my uncle spread his pocket-hand 
 kerchief thoughtfully out upon his knees, and shook his 
 head gravely. 
 
 I thought him a terribly slow, stupid old body, and won 
 dered how I had always entertained so high an opinion of 
 his sense. 
 
 " He is evidently getting old," said I to my wife ; " his 
 judgment is not what it used to be." 
 
 At all events, our place was bought, and we moved out, 
 well pleased, the first morning in April, not at all remember 
 ing the ill savor of that day for matters of wisdom. Our 
 place was a pretty cottage, about two miles from the city, 
 with grounds that had been tastefully laid out. There was 
 no lack of winding paths, arbors, flower borders, and rose 
 bushes, with which my wife was especially pleased. There 
 was a little green lot, strolling off down to a brook, with a 
 thick grove of trees at the end, where our cow was to be 
 pastured. 
 
 The first week or two went on happily enough in getting 
 our little new pet of a house into trimness and good order ; 
 for as it had been long for sale, of course* there was any 
 amount of little repairs that had been left to amuse the leisure 
 hours of the purchaser. Here a doorstep had given way, 
 and needed replacing ; there a shutter hung loose, and wanted 
 a hinge ; abundance of glass needed setting ; and as to paint 
 ing and papering, there was no end to that. Then my wife 
 wanted a door cut here, to make our bedroom more con 
 venient, and a china closet knocked up there, where no china 
 closet before had been. We even ventured on throwing out 
 a bay-window from our sitting-room, because we had luckily 
 
476 A SCHOLAR S ADVENTURES IN THE COUNTRY 
 
 lighted on a workman who was so cheap that it was an actual 
 saving of money to employ him. And to be sure our dar 
 ling little cottage did lift up its head wonderfully for all this 
 garnishing and furbishing. I got up early every morning, 
 and nailed up the rosebushes, and my wife got up and watered 
 geraniums, and both nattered ourselves and each other on our 
 early hours and thrifty habits. But soon, like Adam and Eve 
 in Paradise, we found our little domain to ask more hands 
 than ours to get it into shape. So says I to my wife, "I will 
 bring out a gardener when I come next time, and he shall 
 lay the garden out, and get it into order ; and after that I 
 can easily keep it by the work of my leisure hours." 
 
 Our gardener was a very sublime sort of man, an Eng 
 lishman, and of course used to laying out noblemen s places, 
 and we became as grasshoppers in our own eyes when he 
 talked of Lord This and That s estate, and began to ques 
 tion us about our carriage drive and conservatory ; and we could 
 with difficulty bring the gentleman down to any understand 
 ing of the humble limits of our expectations ; merely to dress 
 out the walks, and lay out a kitchen garden, and plant pota 
 toes, turnips, beets and carrots, was quite a descent for him. 
 In fact, so strong were his aesthetic preferences, that he per 
 suaded my wife to let him dig all the turf off from a green 
 square opposite the bay window, and to lay it out into divers 
 little triangles, resembling small pieces of pie, together with cir 
 cles, mounds, and various other geometrical ornaments, the 
 planning and planting of which soon engrossed my wife s 
 whole soul. The planting of the potatoes, beets, carrots, etc., 
 was intrusted to a raw Irishman ; for as to me, to confess the 
 truth, I began to fear that digging did not agree with me. It 
 is true that I was exceedingly vigorous at first, and actually 
 planted with my own hands two or three long rows of pota 
 toes ; after which I got a turn of rheumatism in my shoulder, 
 which lasted me a week. Stooping down to plant beets and 
 radishes gave me a vertigo, so that I was obliged to content 
 
A SCHOLAR S ADVENTURES IN THE COUNTRY 477 
 
 myself with a general superintendence of the garden ; that is 
 to say, I charged my Englishman to see that my Irishman did 
 his duty properly, and then got on to my horse and rode to 
 the city. But about one part of the matter, I must say, I 
 was not remiss ; and that is, in the purchase of seed and gar 
 den utensils. Not a day passed that I did not come home 
 with my pockets stuffed with choice seeds, roots, etc. ; and 
 the variety of my garden utensils was unequaled. There 
 was not a pruning hook of any pattern, not a hoe, rake, or 
 spade great or small, that I did not have specimens of; and 
 flower seeds and bulbs were also forthcoming in liberal pro 
 portions. In fact, I had opened an account at a thriving 
 seed store ; for when a man is driving business on a large 
 scale, it is not always convenient to hand out the change for 
 every little matter, and buying things on account is as neat 
 and agreeable a mode of acquisition as paying bills with one s 
 notes. 
 
 " You know we must have a cow," said my wife, the morn 
 ing of our second week. Our friend the gardener, who had 
 now worked with us at the rate of two dollars a day for 
 two weeks, was at hand in a moment in our emergency. 
 We wanted to buy a cow, and he had one to sell a won 
 derful cow, of a real English breed. He would not sell 
 her for any money, except to oblige particular friends ; but 
 as we had patronized him, we should have her for forty 
 dollars. How much we were obliged to him ! The forty 
 dollars were speedily forthcoming, and so also was the cow. 
 
 " What makes her shake her head in that way ? " said my 
 wife, apprehensively, as she observed the interesting beast 
 making sundry demonstrations with her horns. " I hope 
 she s gentle." 
 
 The gardener fluently demonstrated that the animal was a 
 pattern of all the softer graces, and that this head-shaking 
 was merely a little nervous affection consequent on the em 
 barrassment of a new position. We had faith to believe 
 
478 A SCHOLAR S ADVENTURES IN THE COUNTRY 
 
 almost anything at this time, and therefore came from the 
 barn yard to the house as much satisfied with our purchase 
 as Job with his three thousand camels and five hundred 
 yoke of oxen. Her quondam master milked her for us the 
 first evening, out of a delicate regard to her feelings as a 
 stranger, and we fancied that we discerned forty dollars 
 worth of excellence in the very quality of the milk. 
 
 But alas ! the next morning our Irish girl came in with a 
 most rueful face. " And is it milking that baste you d have 
 me be after ? " she said ; " sure, and she won t let me come 
 near her." 
 
 " Nonsense, Biddy!" said I; " you frightened her, per 
 haps ; the cow is perfectly gentle ; " and with the pail 
 on my arm I sallied forth. The moment madam saw me 
 entering the cow yard, she greeted me with a very expres 
 sive flourish of her horns. 
 
 " This won t do," said I, and I stopped. The lady evi 
 dently was serious in her intentions of resisting any personal 
 approaches. I cut a cudgel, and, putting on a bold face, 
 marched towards her, while Biddy followed with her milk 
 ing stool. Apparently the beast saw the necessity of tem 
 porizing, for she assumed a demure expression, and Biddy 
 sat down to milk. I stood sentry, and if the lady shook 
 her head I shook my stick ; and thus the milking opera 
 tion proceeded with tolerable serenity and success. 
 
 " There ! " said I, with dignity, when the frothing pail 
 was full to the brim. " That will do, Biddy," and I 
 dropped my stick. Dump ! came madam s heel on the side 
 of the pail, and it flew like a rocket into the air, while the 
 milky flood showered plentifully over me, and a new broad 
 cloth riding-coat that I had assumed for the first time that 
 morning. " Whew ! " said I, as soon as I could get my 
 breath from this extraordinary shower bath ; " what s all 
 this ? " My wife came running towards the cow yard, as I 
 stood with the milk streaming from my hair, filling my 
 
A SCHOLAR S ADVENTURES IN THE COUNTRY 479 
 
 eyes, and dropping from the tip of my nose ; and she and 
 Biddy performed a recitative lamentation over me in alter 
 nate strophes, like the chorus in a Greek tragedy. Such 
 was our first morning s experience ; but as we had an 
 nounced our bargain with some considerable flourish of 
 trumpets among our neighbors and friends, we concluded 
 to hush the matter up as much as possible. 
 
 " These very superior cows are apt to be cross," said I ; 
 " we must bear with it as we do with the eccentricities of 
 genius ; besides, when she gets accustomed to us, it will be 
 better." 
 
 Madam was therefore installed into her pretty pasture lot, 
 and my wife contemplated with pleasure the picturesque 
 effect of her appearance, reclining on the green slope of the 
 pasture lot, or standing ankle deep in the gurgling brook, 
 or reclining under the deep shadows of the trees. She was, 
 in fact, a handsome cow, which may account, in part, for 
 some of her sins ; and this consideration inspired me with 
 some degree of indulgence towards her foibles. 
 
 But when I found that Biddy could never succeed in 
 getting near her in the pasture, and that any kind of suc 
 cess in the milking operations required my vigorous personal 
 exertions morning and evening, the matter wore a more 
 serious aspect, and I began to feel quite pensive and appre 
 hensive. It is very well to talk of the pleasures of the 
 milkmaid going out in the balmy freshness of the purple 
 dawn ; but imagine a poor fellow pulled out of bed on a 
 drizzly, rainy morning, and equipping himself for a scamper 
 through a wet pasture lot, rope in hand, at the heels of 
 such a termagant as mine ! In fact, madam established a 
 regular series of exercises, which had all to be gone through 
 before she would suffer herself to be captured ; as, first, she 
 would station herself plump in the middle of a marsh, which 
 lay at the lower part of the lot, and look very innocent and 
 absent-minded, as if reflecting on some sentimental subject. 
 
480 A SCHOLAR S ADVENTURES IN THE COUNTRY 
 
 " Suke ! Suke ! Suke ! " I ejaculate, cautiously tottering 
 along the edge of the marsh, and holding out an ear of corn. 
 The lady looks gracious, and comes forward, almost within 
 reach of my hand. I make a plunge to throw the rope 
 over her horns, and away she goes, kicking up mud and 
 water into my face in her flight, while I, losing my balance, 
 tumble forward into the marsh. I pick myself up, and, 
 full of wrath, behold her placidly chewing her cud on the 
 other side, with the meekest air imaginable, as who should 
 say, "I hope you are not hurt, sir." I dash through swamp 
 and bog furiously, resolving to carry all by a coup de main. 
 Then follows a miscellaneous season of dodging, scampering, 
 and bopeeping, among the trees of the grove, interspersed 
 with sundry occasional races across the bog aforesaid. I 
 always wondered how I caught her every day ; and when 
 I had tied her head to one post and her heels to another, I 
 wiped the sweat from my brow, and thought I was paying 
 dear for the eccentricities of genius. A genius she certainly 
 was, for besides her surprising agility, she had other talents 
 equally extraordinary. There was no fence that she could 
 not take down ; nowhere that she could not go. She took 
 the pickets off the garden fence at her pleasure, using her 
 horns as handily as I could use a claw hammer. Whatever 
 she had a mind to, whether it were a bite in the cabbage 
 garden, or a run in the corn patch, or a foraging expedition 
 into the flower borders, she made herself equally welcome 
 and at home. Such a scampering and driving, such cries 
 of " Suke here " and " Suke there," as constantly greeted 
 our ears, kept our little establishment in a constant commo 
 tion. At last, when she one morning made a plunge at the 
 skirts of my new broadcloth frock coat, and carried off one 
 flap on her horns, my patience gave out, and I determined 
 to sell her. 
 
 As, however, I had made a good story of my misfortunes 
 among my friends and neighbors, and amused them with 
 
A SCHOLAR S ADVENTURES IN THE COUNTRY 481 
 
 sundry whimsical accounts of my various adventures in the 
 cow-catching line, I found, when I came to speak of selling, 
 that there was a general coolness on the subject, and nobody 
 seemed disposed to be the recipient of my responsibilities. 
 In short, I was glad, at last, to get fifteen dollars for her, 
 and comforted myself with thinking that I had at least 
 gained twenty-five dollars worth of experience in the trans 
 action, to say nothing of the fine exercise. 
 
 I comforted my soul, however, the day after, by purchas 
 ing and bringing home to my wife a fine swarm of bees. 
 
 " Your bee, now," says I, " is a really classical insect, 
 and breathes of Virgil and the Augustan age, and then 
 she is a domestic, tranquil, placid creature. How beautiful 
 the murmuring of a hive near our honeysuckle of a calm, 
 summer evening ! Then they are tranquilly and peacefully 
 amassing for us their stores of sweetness, while they lull us 
 with their murmurs. What a beautiful image of disinter 
 ested benevolence ! " 
 
 My wife declared that I was quite a poet, and the bee 
 hive was duly installed near the flower plots, that the deli 
 cate creatures might have the full benefit of the honeysuckle 
 and mignonette. My spirits began to rise. I bought three 
 different treatises on the rearing of bees, and also one or 
 two new patterns of hives, and proposed to rear my bees on 
 the most approved model. I charged all the establishment 
 to let me know when there was any indication of an emi 
 grating spirit, that I might be ready to receive the new 
 swarm into my patent mansion. 
 
 Accordingly, one afternoon, when I was deep in an article 
 that I was preparing for the " North American Review," in 
 telligence was brought me that a swarm had risen. I was 
 on the alert at once, and discovered, on going out, that the 
 provoking creatures had chosen the top of a tree about thirty 
 feet high to settle on. Now my books had carefully in 
 structed me just how to approach the swarm and cover them 
 
482 A SCHOLAR S ADVENTURES IN THE COUNTRY 
 
 with a new hive ; but I had never contemplated the possi 
 bility of the swarm being, like Hainan s gallows, forty 
 cubits high. I looked despairingly upon the smooth-bark 
 tree, which rose, like a column, full twenty feet, without 
 branch or twig. " What is to be done ? " said I, appealing 
 to two or three neighbors. At last, at the recommendation 
 of one of them, a ladder was raised against the tree, and, 
 equipped with a shirt outside of my clothes, a green veil 
 over my head, and a pair of leather gloves on my hands, I 
 went up with a saw at my girdle to saw off the branch on 
 which they had settled, and lower it by a rope to a neigh 
 bor, similarly equipped, who stood below with the hive. 
 
 As a result of this manoeuvre the fastidious little insects 
 were at length fairly installed at housekeeping in my new 
 patent hive, and, rejoicing in my success, I again sat down 
 to my article. 
 
 That evening my wife and I took tea in our honeysuckle 
 arbor, with our little ones and a friend or two, to whom I 
 showed my treasures, and expatiated at large on the comforts 
 and conveniences of the new patent hive. 
 
 But alas for the hopes of man ! The little ungrateful 
 wretches what must they do but take advantage of my 
 oversleeping myself, the next morning, to clear out for new 
 quarters without so much as leaving me a P. P. C. ! Such 
 was the fact ; at eight o clock I found the new patent hive 
 as good as ever ; but the bees I have never seen from that 
 day to this ! 
 
 " The rascally little conservatives ! " said I ; " I believe 
 they have never had a new idea from the days of Virgil 
 down, and are entirely unprepared to appreciate improve 
 ments." 
 
 Meanwhile the seeds began to germinate in our garden, 
 when we found, to our chagrin, that, between John Bull 
 and Paddy, there had occurred sundry confusions in the 
 several departments. Radishes had been planted broadcast^ 
 
A SCHOLAR S ADVENTURES IN THE COUNTRY 483 
 
 carrots and beets arranged in hills, and here and there a 
 whole paper of seed appeared to have been planted bodily. 
 My good old uncle, who, somewhat to my confusion, made 
 me a call at this time, was greatly distressed and scandalized 
 by the appearance of our garden. But by a deal of fussing, 
 transplanting, and replanting, it was got into some shape 
 and order. My uncle was rather troublesome, as careful 
 old people are apt to be annoying us by perpetual inquir 
 ies of what we gave for this and that, and running up pro 
 voking calculations on the final cost of matters ; and we 
 began to wish that his visits might be as short as would be 
 convenient. 
 
 But when, on taking leave, he promised to send us a fine 
 young cow of his own raising, our hearts rather smote us 
 for our impatience. 
 
 " Tain t any of your new breeds, nephew, 7 said the old 
 man, " yet I can say that she s a gentle, likely young crit- 
 tur, and better worth forty dollars than many a one that s 
 cried up for Ayrshire or Durham ; and you shall be quite 
 welcome to her." 
 
 We thanked him, as in duty bound, and thought that if 
 he was full of old-fashioned notions, he was no less full of 
 kindness and good will. 
 
 And now, with a new cow, with our garden beginning to 
 thrive under the gentle showers of May, with our flower 
 borders blooming, my wife and I began to think ourselves 
 in Paradise. But alas ! the same sun and rain that warmed 
 our fruit and flowers brought up from the earth, like sulky 
 gnomes, a vast array of purple-leaved weeds, that almost in 
 a night seemed to cover the whole surface of the garden 
 beds. Our gardeners both being gone, the weeding was 
 expected to be done by me one of the anticipated relaxa 
 tions of my leisure hours. 
 
 " Well," said I, in reply to a gentle intimation from my 
 wife, " when my article is finished, I 11 take a day and 
 weed all up clean." 
 
484 A SCHOLAR S ADVENTURES IN THE COUNTRY 
 
 Thus days slipped by, till at length the article wae 
 dispatched, and I proceeded to my garden. Amazement ! 
 Who could have possibly foreseen that anything earthly 
 could grow so fast in a few days ! There were no bounds, 
 no alleys, no beds, no distinction of beet and carrot, nothing 
 but a flourishing congregation of weeds nodding and bobbing 
 in the morning breeze, as if to say, " We hope you are well, 
 sir we ve got the ground, you see ! " I began to explore, 
 and to hoe, and to weed. Ah ! did anybody ever try to 
 clean a neglected carrot or beet bed, or bend his back in a 
 hot sun over rows of weedy onions ! He is the man to feel 
 for my despair ! How I weeded, and sweat, and sighed ! 
 till, when high noon came on, as the result of all my toils, 
 only three beds were cleaned ! And how disconsolate looked 
 the good seed, thus unexpectedly delivered from its shelter 
 ing tares, and laid open to a broiling July sun! Every 
 juvenile beet and carrot lay flat down wilted, and drooping, 
 as if, like me, they had been weeding, instead of being 
 weeded. 
 
 " This weeding is quite a serious matter," said I to my 
 wife ; " the fact is, I must have help about it ! " 
 
 " Just what I was myself thinking," said my wife. " My 
 flower borders are all in confusion, and my petunia mounds 
 so completely overgrown, that nobody would dream what 
 they were meant for ! " 
 
 In short, it was agreed between us that we could not 
 afford the expense of a full-grown man to keep our place ; 
 yet we must reinforce ourselves by the addition of a boy, 
 and a brisk youngster from the vicinity was pitched upon 
 as the happy addition. This youth was a fellow of decid 
 edly quick parts, and in one forenoon made such a clearing 
 in our garden that I was delighted. Bed after bed appeared 
 to view, all cleared and dressed out with such celerity that 
 I was quite ashamed of my own slowness, until, on examina 
 tion, I discovered that he had, M ith great impartiality, 
 pulled up both weeds and vegetables. 
 
A SCHOLAR S ADVENTURES IN THE COUNTRY 485 
 
 This hopeful beginning was followed up by a succession 
 of proceedings which should be recorded for the instruction 
 of all who seek for help from the race of boys. Such a 
 loser of all tools, great and small ; such an invariable leaver- 
 open of all gates, and letter-down of bars ; such a person 
 ification of all manner of anarchy and ill luck, had never 
 before been seen on the estate. His time, while I was gone 
 to the city, was agreeably diversified with roosting on the 
 fence, swinging on the gates, making poplar whistles for 
 the children, hunting eggs, and eating whatever fruit hap 
 pened to be in season, in which latter accomplishment 
 he was certainly quite distinguished. After about three 
 weeks of this kind of joint gardening, we concluded to dis 
 miss Master Tom from the firm, and employ a man. 
 
 " Things must be taken care of," said I, " and I cannot 
 do it. ? T is out of the question." And so the man was 
 secured. 
 
 But I am making a long story, and may chance to outrun 
 the sympathies of my readers. Time would fail me to tell 
 of the distresses manifold that fell upon me of cows dried 
 up by poor milkers ; of hens that would n t set at all, and 
 hens that, despite all law and reason, would set on one egg ; 
 of hens that, having hatched families, straightway led them 
 into all manner of high grass and weeds, by which means 
 numerous young chicks caught premature colds and perished ; 
 and how, when I, with manifold toil, had driven one of these 
 inconsiderate gadders into a coop, to teach her domestic hab 
 its, the rats came down upon her and slew every chick in 
 one night ; how my pigs were always practicing gymnastic 
 exercises over the fence of the sty, and marauding in the 
 garden. I wonder that Fourier never conceived the idea 
 of having his garden land ploughed by pigs ; for certainly 
 they manifest quite a decided elective attraction for turning 
 up the earth. 
 
 When autumn came, I went soberly to market, in the 
 
486 A SCHOLAR S ADVENTURES IN THE COUNTRY 
 
 neighboring city, and bought my potatoes and turnips like 
 any other man ; for, between all the various systems of 
 gardening pursued, I was obliged to confess that my first 
 horticultural effort was a decided failure. But though all 
 my rural visions had proved illusive, there were some very 
 substantial realities. My bill at the seed store, for seeds, 
 roots, and tools, for example, had run up to an amount 
 that was perfectly unaccountable ; then there were various 
 smaller items, such as horseshoeing, carriage mending for 
 he who lives in the country and does business in the city 
 must keep his vehicle and appurtenances. I had always 
 prided myself on being an exact man, and settling every 
 account, great and small, with the going out of the old year ; 
 but this season I found myself sorely put to it. In fact, 
 had not I received a timely lift from my good old uncle, 
 I should have made a complete break down. The old gen 
 tleman s troublesome habit of ciphering and calculating, it 
 seems, had led him beforehand to foresee that I was not ex 
 actly in the money-making line, nor likely to possess much 
 surplus revenue to meet the note which I had given for 
 my place ; and, therefore, he quietly paid it himself, as I 
 discovered, when, after much anxiety and some sleepless 
 nights, I went to the holder to ask for an extension of 
 credit. 
 
 " He was right, after all," said I to my wife ; " to live 
 cheap in the country, a body must know how. : 
 
TKIALS OF A HOUSEKEEPER 
 
 I HAVE a detail of very homely grievances to present ; 
 but such as they are, many a heart will feel them to be 
 heavy the trials of a housekeeper. 
 
 " Poh ! " says one of the lords of creation, taking his 
 cigar out of his mouth, and twirling it between his two first 
 fingers, " what a fuss these women do make of this simple 
 matter of managing a family ! I can t see for my life as 
 there is anything so extraordinary to be done in this matter 
 of housekeeping : only three meals a day to be got and cleared 
 off and it really seems to take up the whole of their mind 
 from morning till night. I could keep house without so 
 much of a flurry, I know." 
 
 Now, prithee, good brother, listen to my story, and see 
 how much you know about it. I came to this enlightened 
 West about a year since, and was duly established in a com 
 fortable country residence within a mile and a half of the 
 city, and there commenced the enjoyment of domestic fe 
 licity. I had been married about three months, and had 
 been previously in love in the most approved romantic way, 
 with all the proprieties of moonlight walks, serenades, sen 
 timental billets doux, and everlasting attachment. 
 
 After having been allowed, as I said, about three months 
 to get over this sort of thing, and to prepare for realities, I 
 was located for life as aforesaid. My family consisted of 
 myself and husband, a female friend as a visitor, and two 
 brothers of my good man, who were engaged with him in 
 business. 
 
 I pass over the first two or three days, spent in that pro- 
 
488 TRIALS OF A HOUSEKEEPER 
 
 cess of hammering boxes, breaking crockery, knocking things 
 down and picking them up again, which is commonly called 
 getting to housekeeping. As usual, carpets were sewed and 
 stretched, laid down, and taken up to be sewed over ; things 
 were formed, and reformed, transformed, and co?zformed, 
 till at last a settled order began to appear. But now came 
 up the great point of all. During our confusion we had 
 cooked and eaten our meals in a very miscellaneous and pas 
 toral manner, eating now from the top of a barrel, and now 
 from a fireboard laid on two chairs, and drinking, some from 
 teacups, and some from saucers, and some from tumblers, 
 and some from a pitcher big enough to be drowned in, and 
 sleeping, some on sofas, and some on straggling beds and 
 mattresses thrown down here and there wherever there was 
 room. All these pleasant barbarities were now at an end. 
 The house was in order, the dishes put up in their places ; 
 three regular meals were to be administered in one day, all 
 in an orderly, civilized form ; beds were to be made, rooms 
 swept and dusted, dishes washed, knives scoured, and all the 
 et cetera to be attended to. Now for getting " help," as 
 Mrs. Trollope says ; and where and how were we to get it ? 
 We knew very few persons in the city ; and how were we 
 to accomplish the matter ? At length the " house of em 
 ployment " was mentioned ; and my husband was dispatched 
 thither regularly every day for a week, while I, in the mean 
 time, was very nearly dispatched by the abundance of work 
 at home. At length, one evening, as I was sitting com 
 pletely exhausted, thinking of resorting to the last feminine 
 expedient for supporting life, viz., a good fit of crying, my 
 husband made his appearance, with a most triumphant air, 
 at the door. " There, Margaret, I have got you a couple at 
 last cook and chambermaid." So saying, he flourished 
 open the door, and gave to my view the picture of a little, 
 dry, snuffy-looking old woman, and a great, staring Dutch 
 girl, in a green bonnet with red ribbons, with mouth wide 
 
TRIALS OF A HOUSEKEEPER 489 
 
 open, and hands and feet that would have made a Greek 
 sculptor open his mouth too. I addressed forthwith a few 
 words of encouragement to each of this cultivated-looking 
 couple, and proceeded to ask their names ; and forthwith 
 the old woman began to snuffle and to wipe her face with 
 what was left of an old silk pocket-handkerchief preparatory 
 to speaking, while the young lady opened her mouth wider, 
 and looked around with a frightened air, as if meditating 
 an escape. After some preliminaries, however, I found out 
 that my old woman was Mrs. Tibbins, and my Hebe s name 
 was Kotterin ; also, that she knew much more Dutch than 
 English, and not any too much of either. The old lady was 
 the cook. I ventured a few inquiries. "Had she ever 
 cooked ? " 
 
 " Yes, ma am, sartain 5 she had lived at two or three places 
 in the city." 
 
 " I suspect, my dear," said my husband confidently, " that 
 she is an experienced cook, and so your troubles are over ; " 
 and he went to reading his newspaper. I said no more, but 
 determined to wait till morning. The breakfast, to be sure, 
 did not do much honor to the talents of my official ; but it 
 was the first time, and the place was new to her. After 
 breakfast was cleared away I proceeded to give directions for 
 dinner ; it was merely a plain joint of meat, I said, to be 
 roasted in the tin oven. The experienced cook looked at 
 me with a stare of entire vacuity. " The tin oven," I re 
 peated, " stands there," pointing to it. 
 
 She walked up to it, and touched it with such an appear 
 ance of suspicion as if it had been an electrical battery, and 
 then looked round at me with a look of such helpless igno 
 rance that my soul was moved. " I never see one of them 
 things before," said she. 
 
 " Never saw a tin oven ! " I exclaimed. " I thought 
 you said you had cooked in two or three families." 
 
 " They does not have such things as them, though," re- 
 
490 TRIALS OF A HOUSEKEEPER 
 
 joined rny old lady. Nothing was to be done, of course, but 
 to instruct her into the philosophy of the case ; and having 
 spitted the joint, and given numberless directions, I walked 
 off to my room to superintend the operations of Kotterin, 
 to whom I had committed the making of my bed and the 
 sweeping of my room, it never having come into my head 
 that there could be a wrong way of making a bed ; and to 
 this day it is a marvel to me how any one could arrange 
 pillows and quilts to make such a nondescript appearance as 
 mine now presented. One glance showed me that Kotterin 
 also was "just caught" and that I had as much to do in 
 her department as in that of my old lady. 
 
 Just then the doorbell rang. "Oh, there is the door 
 bell, " I exclaimed. " Run, Kotterin, and show them into 
 the parlor." 
 
 Kotterin started to run, as directed, and then stopped, 
 and stood looking round on all the doors and on me with a 
 wofully puzzled air. " The street door," said I, pointing 
 towards the entry. Kotterin blundered into the entry, and 
 stood gazing with a look of stupid wonder at the bell ring 
 ing without hands, while I went to the door and let in 
 the company before she could be fairly made to understand 
 the connection between the ringing and the phenomenon of 
 admission. 
 
 As dinner time approached, I sent word into my kitchen 
 to have it set on ; but recollecting the state of the heads 
 of department there, I soon followed my own orders. I 
 found the tin oven standing out in the middle of the kitchen, 
 and my cook seated a la Turc in front of it, contem 
 plating the roast meat with full as puzzled an air as in the 
 morning. I once more explained the mystery of taking it 
 off, and assisted her to get it on to the platter, though some 
 what cooled by having been so long set out for inspection. 
 I was standing holding the spit in my hands, when Kot 
 terin, who had heard the doorbell ring, and was deter- 
 
TRIALS OF A HOUSEKEEPER 491 
 
 mined this time to be in season, ran into the hall, and, soon 
 returning, opened the kitchen door, and politely ushered in 
 three or four fashionable looking ladies, exclaiming, " Here 
 she is." As these were strangers from the city, who had 
 come to make their first call, this introduction was far from 
 proving an eligible one the look of thunderstruck aston 
 ishment with which I greeted their first appearance, as I 
 stood brandishing the spit, and the terrified snuffling and 
 staring of poor Mrs. Tibbins, who again had recourse to her 
 old pocket-handkerchief, almost entirely vanquished their 
 gravity, and it was evident that they were on the point of 
 a broad laugh ; so, recovering my self-possession, I apolo 
 gized, and led the way to the parlor. 
 
 Let these few incidents be a specimen of the four mortal 
 weeks that I spent with these " helps," during which time 
 I did almost as much work, with twice as much anxiety, as 
 when there was nobody there ; and yet everything went 
 wrong besides. The young gentlemen complained of the 
 patches of starch grimed to their collars, and the streaks of 
 black coal ironed into their dickies, while one week every 
 pocket-handkerchief in the house was starched so stiff that 
 you might as well have carried an earthen plate in your 
 pocket ; the tumblers looked muddy ; the plates were never 
 washed clean or wiped dry unless I attended to each one ; 
 and as to eating and drinking, we experienced a variety 
 that we had not before considered possible. 
 
 At length the old woman vanished from the stage, and 
 was succeeded by a knowing, active, capable damsel, with a 
 temper like a steel-trap, who remained with me just one 
 week, and then went off in a fit of spite. To her succeeded 
 a rosy, good-natured, merry lass, who broke the crockery, 
 burned the dinner, tore the clothes in ironing, and knocked 
 down everything that stood in her way about the house, 
 without at all discomposing herself about the matter. One 
 night she took the stopper from a barrel of molasses, and 
 
492 TRIALS OF A HOUSEKEEPER 
 
 came singing off upstairs, while the molasses ran soberly 
 out into the cellar bottom all night, till by morning it was 
 in a state of universal emancipation. Having done this, 
 and also dispatched an entire set of tea things by letting 
 the waiter fall, she one day made her disappearance. 
 
 Then, for a wonder, there fell to my lot a tidy, efficient, 
 trained English girl ; pretty, and genteel, and neat, and 
 knowing how to do everything, and with the sweetest tem 
 per in the world. " Now," said I to myself, " I shall rest 
 from my labors." Everything about the house began to 
 go right, and looked as clean and genteel as Mary s own 
 pretty self. But, alas ! this period of repose was inter 
 rupted by the vision of a clever, trim-looking young man, 
 who for some weeks could be heard scraping his boots at 
 the kitchen door every Sunday night ; and at last Miss 
 Mary, with some smiling and blushing, gave me to under 
 stand that she must leave in two weeks. 
 
 " Why, Mary," said I, feeling a little mischievous, 
 " don t you like the place ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, ma am." 
 
 " Then why do you look for another ? " 
 
 " I am not going to another place." 
 
 " What, Mary, are you going to learn a trade ? " 
 
 "No, ma am." 
 
 " Why, then, what do you mean to do ? " 
 
 " I expect to keep house myself, ma am," said she, laugh 
 ing and blushing. 
 
 " Oh ho ! " said I, " that is it ; " and so in two weeks 
 I lost the best little girl in the world : peace to her mem 
 ory. 
 
 After this came an interregnum, which put me in mind 
 of the chapter in Chronicles that I used to read with great 
 delight when a child, where Basha, and Elah, and Tibni, 
 and Zimri, and Omri, one after the other, came on to the 
 throne of Israel, all in the compass of half a dozen verses. 
 
TRIALS OF A HOUSEKEEPER 493 
 
 We had one old woman, who stayed a week, and went away 
 with the misery in her tooth ; one young woman, who ran 
 away and got married ; one cook, who came at night and 
 went off before light in the morning ; one very clever girl, 
 who stayed a month, and then went away because her mother 
 was sick ; another, who stayed six weeks, and was taken with 
 the fever herself ; and during all this time, who can speak 
 the damage and destruction wrought in the domestic para 
 phernalia by passing through these multiplied hands ? 
 
 What shall we do ? Shall we give up houses, have no 
 furniture to take care of, keep merely a bag of meal, a por 
 ridge pot, and a pudding stick, and sit in our tent door in 
 real patriarchal independence ? What shall we do ? 
 

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