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Title: The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure
Author: Gardner, E. C. (Eugene Clarence), 1836-1915
Language: English
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generously provided by the Hearth Library, Cornell
University (http://hearth.library.cornell.edu/).
THE HOUSE THAT JILL BUILT,
AFTER JACK'S HAD PROVED A FAILURE.
A BOOK ON
HOME ARCHITECTURE,
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS,
BY E.C. GARDNER,
_Author of "Homes and How to Make Them." "Home Interiors,"
"Common Sense in Church Building," etc._
SPRINGFIELD, MASS.:
W.F. ADAMS COMPANY,
1896.
1882,
BY OUR CONTINENT PUBLISHING Co.
_All rights reserved._
E.C. GARDNER, 1895.
Printed and Bound by
CLARK W. BRYAN COMPANY,
Springfield, Mass.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
A WISE FATHER AND A GLAD SON-IN-LAW 7
CHAPTER II.
MORAL SUASION FOR MALARIAL MARSHES 20
CHAPTER III.
A FIRST VISIT AND SAGE ADVICE 32
CHAPTER IV.
MANY FIRES MAKE SMALL DIVIDENDS 48
CHAPTER V.
WHEN THE FLOODS BEAT AND THE RAINS DESCEND 63
CHAPTER VI.
THE WISDOM OF JILL IN THE KITCHEN 78
CHAPTER VII
BE HONEST AND KEEP WARM 90
CHAPTER VIII
TRUTH, POETRY AND ROOFS 103
CHAPTER IX.
PROFESSIONAL ETIQUETTE--BLINDS AND BESSIE 115
CHAPTER X.
MORE QUESTIONS OF FIRE AND WATER 128
CHAPTER XI.
WHAT SHALL WE STAND UPON? 140
CHAPTER XII.
FROM MATHEMATICS TO ANCIENT BRIC-A-BRAC 151
CHAPTER XIII.
ECONOMY, CLEANLINESS, AND HEALTH 166
CHAPTER XIV.
SAFE FLUES AND MORE LIGHT 177
CHAPTER XV.
A DANGEROUS RIVAL 189
CHAPTER XVI.
A NEW WAY OF GETTING UP STAIRS AND A NEW MISSIONARY FIELD 203
CHAPTER XVII.
THE RIGHT SIDE OF PAINT, A PROTEST AND A PROMISE 221
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE HOUSE FINISHED AND THE HOME BEGUN 233
CHAPTER XIX.
TEN YEARS AFTER 250
CHAPTER XX.
A DOUBLE CONCLUSION 258
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
_From Drawings by the Author_.
PAGE
1. "COUSIN GEORGE'S EXTERIOR" 11
2. COUSIN GEORGE'S FIRST FLOOR 14
3. COUSIN GEORGE'S SECOND FLOOR 15
4. "WARMTH IS BEAUTY" 21
5. A HIDDEN FOE 23
6. A BURIED GRIDIRON 24
7. THE PROTECTING "CUT-OFF" 25
8. A "CROSS-SECTION" PROPHECY 28
9. HEAT FROM ALL SIDES 30
10. AUNT MELVILLE'S AMBITION 33
11. NO PLACE FOR THE BED 36
12. ENLARGED BY DESTRUCTION 37
13. A SLIGHT ADDITION 39
14. GROUND FLOOR OF AUNT MELVILLE'S AMBITION 42
15. FIRST FLOOR OF AUNT MELVILLE'S AMBITION 43
16. A SECURE OUTLOOK 49
17. MINED AND COUNTERMINED 52
18. A DORMER OF BURNED CLAY 55
19. THE TOPMOST PEAK 59
20. WILL'S MASTERPIECE 65
21. THE FIRST FLOOR OF WILL'S MASTERPIECE 73
22. THE SECOND FLOOR OF WILL'S MASTERPIECE 75
23. THE OUTSIDE OF TED'S HOUSE 79
24. JILL'S KITCHEN IN BLACK AND WHITE 83
25. THE FIRST FLOOR OF TED'S HOUSE 88
26. THE POOR BUT MODEST ATTORNEY'S COTTAGE 91
27. A DOUBLE TEAM 94
28. WARMTH UNDER THE WINDOW 96
29. STEAM PIPES BESIDE THE FIREPLACE 97
30. THE ATTORNEY'S FLOOR PLAN 101
31. NO CONCEALMENT OR DISGUISE 105
32. WITH A MULLION AND WITHOUT 110
33. JACK'S ARCHITECTURAL PHRENOLOGY 112
34. THE HAT MAKES THE MAN 113
35. THE CONTRIBUTION OF BESSIE'S FATHER 117
36. THE FIRST FLOOR OF THE CONTRIBUTION 123
37. A GARGOYLE 130
38. A CHOICE OF GUTTERS 131
39. A SIMPLE RECESS 133
40. IN THE MIDDLE RANK 135
41. THE WORTH OF A COSY COTTAGE 137
42. A PROMISE OF SOCIAL SUCCESS 141
43. A REASONABLE HOPE 143
44. FLOORS AS THEY ARE: FLOORS AS THEY MIGHT BE 145
45. BRICKS AND BOULDERS ON GRANITE UNDERPINNING 149
46. NOT BRILLIANT, BUT IMPRESSIVE 153
47. WOODEN RICHNESS 155
48. NO WASTE OF WOOD 156
49. FIRST FLOOR OF THE PROMISE 158
50. SECOND FLOOR OF THE PROMISE 159
51. NO PLACE FOR SECRET FOES 167
52. SAFE AND SAVING FLUES 179-80
53. A PICTURE IN GLASS OVER THE FIREPLACE 181
54. GLASS OF MANY COLORS, SHAPES AND SIZES 183
55. SHELVES IN THE MIDDLE, CUPBOARDS ABOVE AND BELOW 185
56. "THE OAKS" 191
57. OUTSIDE BARRIERS 195
58. INSIDE BARRIERS 196
59. COMMON UGLINESS--SIMPLE GRACE 197
60. FIRST FLOOR PLAN OF "THE OAKS" 201
61. LOOKING TOWARD SUNSET 205
62. NEAR THE TURNING-POINT 207
63. A CHOICE OF BALUSTERS 209
64. THE BIG FIREPLACE IN THE KEEPING-ROOM 211
65. ONE WAY TO BEGIN 213
66. A BROADSIDE OF AN EASY ASCENT 215
67. A DIVIDING SCREEN AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS 219
68. BITS OF CORNICES 223
69. MOULDINGS FAIR TO SEE, BUT HARD TO KEEP CLEAN 225
70. FRAGMENTS OF ARCHITRAVES 227
71. A CHOICE OF WAINSCOTS 229
72. WOOD PANELS FOR WALLS AND CEILINGS, WITH IRREGULARITIES
IN LEATHER, PAINT AND PAPER 231
73. THE HOUSE THAT JILL BUILT 235
74. THE FIRST FLOOR OF THE HOUSE THAT JILL BUILT 239
75. THE SECOND FLOOR OF THE HOUSE THAT JILL BUILT 241
76. THE EAST END OF JILL'S DINING-ROOM 243
77. A CASTLE IN SPAIN 263
_Also Initials, Tail-Pieces, etc._
INDEX OF SUBJECTS.
PAGE
BUILDING SITES 16
BRICKS 46, 53, 58
BLINDS 116
CHIMNEYS 179
CONTRACT WORK 233
COMPETITIVE PLANS 237
DOORS 194
FIREPROOF CONSTRUCTION 54
FALSE CHIMNEY-PIECE 98
FIREPLACES 134
FLOORS 140
FASHION 224
GUTTERS 129
HEATING 97, 132
HEIGHT OF ROOMS 138
HARD WOOD 197
INTERIOR FINISH 221
KITCHEN ARRANGEMENTS 81, 125
PLUMBING 166, 177
PANTRIES 186, 189
PAINT 223
ROOFS 69, 113
STAIRS 38, 214
STAINED GLASS 38, 183
TERRA COTTA 61
UNDER-DRAINING 24
VENTILATING FLUES 178
WINDOWS 110, 183
WOODEN BUILDINGS 51
PREFACE
TO THE REVISED EDITION.
On a recent visit to the young woman whose experiences and observations
are contained in this book, I was greatly pleased to find her zeal and
interest in domestic architecture unabated. She sees that there have
been changes and improvements in the art of house building, but
declares that while some of her opinions and suggestions of ten years
ago have been approved and accepted, it is still true that by far the
greater number of those who plan and build houses are guided by
transient fashion, thoughtless conservatism and a silly seeking for
sensational results, rather than by truth, simplicity and common sense.
She has no doubt that her daughter, Bessie, will study and practice
domestic architecture, and naturally expects the houses of the future
to contain charms and comforts of which we have as yet only the
faintest conception.
E.C. GARDNER.
_Springfield, Mass., November, 1895._
INTRODUCTION
"MR. E.C. Gardner, architect, has consented to write us a series of
articles upon house-building," said one of his associates to the editor
of OUR CONTINENT a few months since. "What do you think of it?"
"We have no sort of use for such a thing," replied the editor. "There
are treatises enough professing to instruct people how to build houses.
You can't make every man his own carpenter any more than you can make
him his own lawyer. More's the pity."
"But I thought you said you wanted some one who had sense enough to put
a thoroughly capable and accomplished housewife's notions of what a
house should be into readable prose?"
"So I did," responded the editor, "and I still want it, and am likely
to want it for a long time. I do not wish articles on _House_-building
but on _Home_-building, and you will never get such from an
architect."
"Don't be too sure of that," said the other, who had had a taste of the
writer's quality before. "Suppose he should wish to try it?"
"Well,--let him," was the grumbled assent.
The editor did not believe in architects. He had built one or two
houses that did well enough on paper, but were simply appalling in
their unfitness when he came to try to adapt the occupants to the
earthly tabernacles which had been erected for their use and
enjoyment. He had read house-building books, examined plans and
discoursed with architects until he verily believed that the whole
business was a snare and a delusion. After this experience he had
settled down to the serious belief that the best way to build a house
was to erect first a square building containing but one room, and then
add on rooms as the occupants learned their needs or the family
increased in numbers. In this way, he stoutly maintained, had been
erected all those old houses, whose irregularity of outline and
frequent surprises in interior arrangement never cease to charm. He
asserted boldly that a man's house ought to grow around him like an
oyster's-shell, and should fit him just as perfectly; in fact, that it
should be created, not built. From architects and their works he prayed
devoutly to be delivered, and having theretofore illustrated that part
of the proverb which avers that "fools build houses," he declared
himself determined thenceforth only to illustrate the latter-part of
the proverb:--"and wise men live in them."
Having, however, became sponsor in some sort for what Mr. Gardner might
write, he was bound to give attention to it. Very much to his surprise,
he found it instead of a thankless task, a most agreeable
entertainment. Seldom, indeed, have wit and wisdom been so happily
blended as in these pages. The narrative that runs through the whole
constitutes a silver thread of merriment on which the pearls of sense
are strung with lavish freedom. Every page is sure to contain the
subject-matter for a hearty laugh close-linked with a lesson that may
well be conned by the most serious-minded. The philosophy of
home-building and home-improving is expounded with a subtlety of humor
and an aptness of illustration as rare as they are relishable.
There are three classes of people to whom this little volume with its
quaint descriptions and wise suggestions will be peculiarly welcome.
_First_--Those who contemplate, at some time, the building of a
home. It matters not whether it is to be humble or palatial,
"The House that Jill Built" will be found to contain not only
the most valuable suggestions, but a humorous gaiety that will
be sure to add pleasure to this duty.
_Second_--Those who desire at any time to enlarge, modify or
improve the homes in which they live; for they will find very
forcibly illustrated in its pages the principles which should
govern such modification.
_Third_--Those who, like the writer hereof, have suffered in
purse and comfort from the lack of such a pleasant and
philosophical treatise, and who will be glad to see how their
blunders might have been avoided.
"The House that Jill Built" is founded on the rock of common sense. It
does not profess to tell the prospective builder how to be his own
architect and carpenter; it does not fit him out with a plan ready made
and tested--by somebody else: but deftly and easily it leads him to
think about the essential elements of the home he desires until, almost
unconsciously, he finds himself prepared to give such directions to an
honest architect as will secure for his home, convenience, safety and
that peculiar fitness which is the chief element of beauty in domestic
architecture. It is not so much for what is taught as for what is
suggested that the book is valuable. What the author has written is
perhaps not more remarkable than the peculiar art with which he compels
the reader to think for himself. "The House that Jill Built" may fairly
be said to take the first place among the many works that are designed
to make our domestic architecture what it ought to be--the art by which
the house-builder may erect a home adapted to his needs, commensurate
with his means, in harmony with its surroundings and conducive to the
health and comfort of its occupants. What the author's pen has so well
described his pencil has illustrated with equal happiness.
In penance for the lack of faith displayed at the outset and in hearty
approval of the pages that follow, the Editor has written these words.
A.W. TOURGÉE.
PHILADELPHIA, Oct., 1882.
THE HOUSE THAT JILL BUILT.
CHAPTER I.
A WISE FATHER AND A GLAD SON-IN-LAW.
Among the wedding-presents was a small white envelope containing two
smaller slips of paper. On one of these, which was folded around the
other, was written,
"A NEW HOUSE, FROM FATHER."
The enclosed slip was a bank-check, duly stamped and endorsed. Did any
old wizard's magic-box ever hold greater promise in smaller compass!
Certainly not more than the bride saw in imagination as she read the
figures upon the crisp bit of tissue. Walls, roof and stately chimneys
arose in pleasant pictures before her mental vision. There were broad
windows taking in floods of sunshine; fireplaces that glowed with
living flames and never smoked; lazy lounging places and cosy corners
for busy work or quiet study; sleepy bed-rooms; a kitchen that made
housework the finest art and the surest science, and oh, such closets,
such stairways, such comforts! such defiance of the elements, such
security against cold and heat, against fire, flood and tempest! such
economy! such immunity from all the ills that domestic life is heir to,
from intractable servants to sewer-gas!
If some ardent esthete had arrested her flight of fancy by asking
whether she found room for soul-satisfying beauty, she would have
dropped from her air-castle, landing squarely upon her feet, and
replied that if her house was comfortable and told no lies it would be
beautiful enough for her--which was saying a great deal, however
interpreted, for she loved beauty, as all well-balanced mortals ought,
and she would have been conspicuously out of place in a house that was
not beautiful.
Perhaps I ought to explain that the house that Jack built, intending to
establish Jill as its mistress when it should be completed, had proved
most unsatisfactory to that extremely practical young woman. In
consequence, she had obstinately refused to name the happy day till the
poor, patient fellow had kept bachelor's hall nearly a year. At last,
in consideration of an unqualified permission to "make the house over"
to any extent, the rough place that threatened to upset them was made
smooth. Her father's present, wisely withheld till peace was declared,
left nothing to be desired, and they started on their wedding journey
as happy as if they owned the universe. This excursion, however, came
near being a failure from the sentimental standpoint, because, wherever
Jill discovered a house that gave any outward sign of inward grace, it
must be visited and examined as to its internal arrangements. Naturally
this struck Jack as an unromantic diversion, but he soon caught the
spirit, and after much practice gave his salutatory address with
apparent eagerness:
"My wife and I happen to be passing through town and have been struck
by the appearance of your house. Will you kindly allow us to have a
glimpse of the interior?"
The request was invariably granted, for nothing is more gratifying than
the fame of having the "finest house in town." Unhappily the interiors
were never satisfactory to Jill, and her valedictory to the owners of
the striking houses seldom went beyond thanks for their courtesy.
"We visited several houses on our trip," she observed to her father--
"Several hundred," said Jack--
"But were disappointed in them all. Many of them must have cost more
than ours will cost, but the money seemed to us foolishly spent."
"Yes," said her husband, "we concluded that the chief plank in the
platform of the architects and builders was 'Millions for display--not
one cent for comfort.'"
"Well, Jack, we have learned one thing on our travels--where _not_ to
look for the plans of our house."
A box of letters from her dear five hundred friends awaited Jill's
return, and a whole afternoon was devoted to them. Each letter
contained some allusion to the new house. At least ten conveyed
underscored advice of the most vital importance, which, if not
followed, would demoralize the servants, distress her husband and
ultimately destroy her domestic peace. Taken at a single dose, the
counsel was confusing, to say the least; but Jill read it faithfully,
laid it away for future reference, and gave the summary to her husband
somewhat as follows:
"It appears, Jack, my dear, to be absolutely indispensable to our
future happiness that the house shall front north, south, east and
west."
"Let's build it on a pivot."
"We must not have large halls to keep warm in cold weather, and we
_must_ have large halls 'for style.' The stories must not be less than
eleven nor more than nine feet high. It must be carpeted throughout and
all the floors must be bare. It must be warmed by steam and hot water
and furnaces and fireplaces and base-burners and coal grates."
"We shan't have to go away from home to get into purgatory, shall we?"
"Hush! The walls of the rooms must be calcimined, painted, frescoed and
papered; they must be dyed in the mortar, finished with leather, with
tiles, with tapestry and with solid wood panels. There must be
blinds--outside blinds, awnings, inside shutters, rolling blinds,
Venetian shades and no blinds at all. There must be wide, low-roofed
piazzas all around the house, so that we can live out of doors in the
summer, and on no account must the sun be excluded from the windows of
the first story by piazza roofs. At least eight patent sanitary
plumbing articles, and as many cooking ranges, are each the only one
safe and fit to be used. The house must be high and low--"
"I'm Jack and you shall be game--"
[Illustration: COUSIN GEORGE'S EXTERIOR.]
"It must be of bricks, wood and stone, separately and in combination;
it must be Queen Anne, Gothic, French, Japanesque and classic American,
and it must be painted all the colors of an autumn landscape."
"Well, there's one comfort," said Jack; "you haven't paid for this
advice, so you won't be obliged to take it in order to save it."
"I should think not, indeed, but that isn't the trouble. These letters
are from my special friends, wise, practical people, who know
everything about building and housekeeping, and they speak from solemn
conviction based on personal experience."
"Moral: When the doctors differ, do as you please."
Three of the letters, reserved for the last on account of their unusual
bulk, contained actual plans. One was from an old school friend who had
married an architect and couldn't afford to send a wedding present, but
offered the plans as a sort of apology, privately feeling that they
would be the most valuable of all the gifts; the second was from a
married brother in Kansas who had just built himself a new house, and
thought his sister could not do better than use the same plans, which
he had "borrowed" from his architect; and the third was from Aunt
Melville, who was supposed (by herself) to hold the family destiny in
the hollow of her hand.
"For once," she wrote, "your father has done a most sensible thing.
Every girl ought to have a present of a new house on her wedding-day.
You were very silly to make such a fuss about the house that Jack
built, for it is a very stylish-looking house, even if it isn't quite
so convenient inside; but of course you can improve upon it, and
fortunately I can contribute just what you need--the plans of the house
that your Uncle Melville built for George last year. It isn't as large
as it ought to be, but it will suit you and Jack admirably. You must
tell me how much you have to spend. This house can be very prettily
built for eight or ten thousand dollars, and if you haven't as much as
that you must ask for more. The hall is decidedly stylish, and, with
the library at one side and drawing-room at the other, you will have
just room enough for your little social parties. The room behind the
drawing-room Jack needs for his private use, his study, office,
smoking-room or whatever he calls it--a place to keep his gun, his
top-boots, his fishing-rod and his horrid pipes; where he can revel to
his heart's content in the hideous disorder of a 'man's room,' pile as
much rubbish as he likes on the table, lock the doors and defy the rest
of the household on house-cleaning days. The dining-room is good and
the kitchen arrangements are perfect. George's wife has changed
servants but three times since they began housekeeping, nearly a year
ago, which certainly proves that there is every possible convenience
for doing work easily. The outside of the house is not wholly
satisfactory. There should be a tower, and you must put one on
somewhere."
[Illustration: COUSIN GEORGE'S FIRST FLOOR.]
[Illustration: COUSIN GEORGE'S SECOND FLOOR.]
Then followed several pages of advice about furnishings and a
postscript announced that Colonel Livingston was charmed with the house
and would probably build one like it for Clara. The charm of Aunt
Melville's advice lay in its abundant variety. It was new every morning
and fresh every evening. The latest thing was always the best. The
plans of to-morrow were certain to be better than those of yesterday.
Jill therefore made a careful study of the first installment, not
doubting that others of superior merit would be forthcoming. She found
many things to approve. The hall promised comfort and good cheer,
whether stylish or not. The vista across through the parlor bay and the
wide library window would give a pleasant freedom and breadth. The
stairs were well placed, the second landing with its window of stained
glass being especially attractive, whether as a point of observation or
as a cosy retreat, itself partly visible from the hall below. Every
chamber had a closet of its own, not to mention several extra ones, and
there was a place for every bed.
"As for your sanctum, Jack, I don't at all approve. It will be hard
enough, I've no doubt, to keep you from lapsing into barbarism, and I
shall never allow you to set up a den, a regular Bluebeard's room, all
by yourself. I promise never to put your table in order, but I wouldn't
trust the best of men with the care of a closet or a bureau-drawer for
a single week, much less of an entire room with two closets, a case of
drawers, a cupboard and a chimney-piece. But the chief fault of the
plan is that it doesn't happen to suit our lot. The entrances are not
right, the outlooks are not right, the chimneys are not right."
"Turn it around."
"And spoil it? No; I learned a second lesson on our journey, and it was
well worth what it cost. We shall never find a plan made for somebody
else that will suit us."
"Not good enough?"
"It isn't a question of goodness--it's a question of fitness. Neither
Cousin George's, nor any other house I ever saw, is precisely what we
need."
"Moral: Draw your own plans."
"We must, and we'll begin to-morrow."
"Why not this evening?"
"We couldn't see."
"Light the gas."
"Oh, but we must make the plans out of doors on the lot. We shall then
know where every room will be, every door and especially every window.
We must fix the centre of the sitting-room in the most commanding
situation, and be certain that the dining-room windows do not look
straight into somebody's wood-shed. Then, if there are any views of
blue hills and forests far away over the river, I shall be
uncomfortable if we do not get the full benefit of them."
"Don't you expect to have anything interesting inside the house?"
"Except my husband? Oh yes! but it would be a wicked waste of
opportunities not to accept the blessings provided for us without money
and without price, which only require us to stand in the right places
and open our hearts and windows to receive them."
Jill's second lesson was indeed worth learning, even if it cost a
wedding journey. Every house must suit its own ground and fit its own
household, otherwise it can neither be comfortable nor beautiful.
The next morning, armed with a bundle of laths, sharpened at one end,
and equipped with paper, pencil and tape-line, the prospective
house-builders proceeded to lay out, not the house but the plan. They
planted doors, windows, fireplaces and closets, stoves, lounges,
easy-chairs and bedsteads, as if they were so many seeds that would
grow up beside the laths on which their respective names were written
and bear fruit each according to its kind. Later in the day a high
step-ladder was introduced, from the top of which Jill scanned the
surrounding country, while Jack stood ready to catch her if she fell.
The neighbors were intensely interested, and their curiosity was mixed
with indignation when, toward night, a man was discovered cutting down
two of the rock-maple trees that Jill's grandfather planted more than
fifty years before, and which stood entirely beyond any possible
location of the new house.
"This evening, Jack, you must write for the architect to come."
"I thought you were going to make your own plans."
"I have made them, or rather I have laid them out on the ground and in
the air. I know what I want and how I want it. Now we must have every
particular set down in black and white."
Jack wrote accordingly. The architect was too busy to respond at once
in person, but sent a letter referring to certain principles that reach
somewhat below the lowest foundation-stones and above the tops of the
tallest chimneys.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER II.
MORAL SUASION FOR MALARIAL MARSHES.
"You are quite right," the architect wrote, "to fix the plan of your
house on the lot before it is made on paper, provided first the lot is
a good one. Nothing shows the innate perversity of mankind more
forcibly than the average character of the sites chosen for human
habitations in cities, in villages and in the open country. Or does it
rather indicate the instinctive struggle for supremacy over nature? The
'dear old nurse' is most peaceably inclined toward us, yet we shall
never be satisfied till all the valleys are exalted and the hills laid
low. Not because we object to hills and valleys--quite the contrary;
but we must show our strength and daring. Nobody wants the North Pole,
but we are furious to have a breach made in the wall that surrounds it.
If we discover a mighty primeval forest we straightway grind our axes
to cut it down; an open prairie we plant with trees. When we find
ourselves in an unclean, malarious bog, instead of taking the short cut
out, shaking the mud from our feet and keeping clear of it forever
after, we plunge in deeper still and swear by all the bones of our
ancestors that we will not only walk through it dry-shod, but will
build our homes in the midst of it and keep them clean and sweet and
dry. The good mother beckons to us with her sunshine and whispers
with her fragrant breezes that on the other side of the river or across
the bay the land is high and dry, that just beyond the bluffs are the
sunny slopes where she expected us to build our houses, and, like saucy
children as we are, we say that is the very reason we prefer to go
somewhere else.
[Illustration: WARMTH IS BEAUTY.]
[Illustration: A HIDDEN FOE.]
"Now, if the particular spot of earth on which you expect to set up the
temple of your home is not well adapted to that sacred purpose, think a
bit before you commence digging. If it is low, wet and difficult of
drainage; if the surface water or the drains from adjacent lands have
no outlet except across it; if its size and shape compel your house to
stand so near your neighbor on the south that he takes all the sunshine
and gives you the odors of his dinner and the conversation of his cook
in exchange; if there are no pleasant outlooks; if it is shaded by
trees owned by somebody who will not be persuaded to cut them down for
love nor money--by all means turn it into a fish-pond, a sheep-pasture
or a public park. You can never build upon it a satisfactory home.
Perhaps it is within five minutes' walk of the post-office and on the
same street with Mrs. Adoniram Brown, and these considerations outweigh
all others. In that case there is no help for you. You must make the
best of it as it is.
[Illustration: A BURIED GRIDIRON.]
"If you have a suspicion that the ground is naturally wet, that it
contains hidden springs or conceals an impervious basin, making in
effect a pool of standing water underground, the first necessity is a
clean outlet--not a sewer--low enough to underdrain the lot at least a
foot and a-half below the bottom of the cellar. Having found the clean
outlet, lay small drain tiles, two or three inches in diameter, under
the entire house and for several feet all around it, like a big
gridiron. When this is buried under one or two feet of clean gravel or
sand you will have a permanently dry plot of ground to build upon. The
same treatment will be effective if the ground is "springy." But there
must be a "cut-off" encircling the house. This you can make by digging
a trench a foot wide, reaching down to the drain tiles, and filling it
nearly to the top with loose stones or coarse gravel, the surface of
the ground being graded to slope sharply toward the trench. The surface
water between it and the house, and any moisture creeping toward the
house from without, will then be caught in this porous trap and fall to
the gridiron.
[Illustration: THE PROTECTING "CUT-OFF."]
"It is possible, theoretically, to build an underground cellar so tight
that it may be lifted up on posts and used for a water-tank, or set
afloat like a compartment-built iron steamer. Such walls may be
necessary under certain circumstances. They may be necessary for
cellars that are founded in swamps, in salt marshes below the level of
the sea, and in old river-beds, where the original iniquity of the
standing water is made still more iniquitous by the inevitable foulness
of the washing from streets and the unclean refuse from sinks and back
doors. But for buildings that have four independent walls, with room
enough for a man to ride around his own house in a wheelbarrow without
trespassing on his neighbors, and which are not hopelessly depressed
below all their surroundings, it is better to use a little moral
suasion on the land itself than to spend one's resources in a defiant
water-proof construction. Instead of drain tiles, small stones covered
with a thin layer of hay or straw before being buried in the sand may
be used if more economical.
"If you cannot find the clean outlet for these buried drains or tiles
below the level of the cellar bottom, then raise the cellar, house and
all. No matter if you are accused of having a 'stuck up' house--better
be stuck up than stuck in the mud. Raise it till the entire cellar is
well above the level of thorough drainage. If this happens to carry it
above the surface of the ground, set the house on posts and hang the
cellar under the floor like a work-bag under a table or the basket to a
balloon.
"The foundation walls must indeed touch solid bottom and extend below
the action of frost; but if the wall above the gridiron and below the
paving of the cellar is of hard stones, or very hard bricks laid in
cement, there will be little risk from rising moisture.
"After all, the chief danger is not from underground springs, from
clean surface water or an occasional rising of the floods, but from the
unclean wastes that in our present half-civilized state are constantly
going out of our homes to poison and pollute the earth and air around
them."
"Half-civilized indeed!" said Jack, interrupting the reading of the
letter. "Besides, he is premature as well as impertinent. He doesn't
know but the house will stand on a granite boulder."
"I suppose he intends to warn us, and I am not certain that our lot is
as dry as it ought to be. At all events we will have some holes dug in
different places and see if any water comes into them."
"Of course it will. Haven't we just had the 'equinoctial'? The ground
is full of water everywhere."
"If it is full this spring it will be full every spring. We may as well
order the drain tiles."
"It shall be done," said Jack. "Now let us have the second proviso. I
hope it will be shorter than the first."
"And, secondly," Jill continued reading, "provided you know what your
house is for. It is my conviction that of all the people who carefully
plan and laboriously build themselves houses, scarcely one in ten could
give a radical, intelligent reason for building them. To live in, of
course; but how to live is the question, and why. As they have been in
the habit of living? As their neighbors live? As they would like to
live? As they ought to live? Is domestic comfort and well-being the
chief motive? It is not, usually; hence, there are in the world a great
many more houses than homes."
"Oh, bother the preaching! It's all true, but we don't happen to need
it. When is he coming?"
"Next week, and he hopes we shall have 'some general idea of what we
want.' How very condescending! We know precisely what we want, as I can
easily show him."
[Illustration: A "CROSS-SECTION" PROPHECY.]
Jill accordingly produced a fresh sheet of "cross-section" paper, on
whose double plaid lines the most helpless tyro in drawing can make a
plan with mathematical accuracy provided he can count ten, and on this
began to draw the plan of the first floor, expounding as she drew.
"If we call the side of the house which is next the street the front,
the main entrance must be at the east side, because we need the whole
of the south side for our living rooms. You know the view toward the
southwest is the finest we shall have, especially from the chambers."
"How do I know? I didn't climb the step-ladder."
"And we must have a large bay window directly on that corner. The hall
must run through the house crosswise, with the stairs on the west side
of the house. As there is nothing to be seen in this direction except
the white walls and green blinds of the parsonage, the windows on the
stair-landing shall have stained glass. The dining-room will be at the
north side of the hall, with plenty of eastern windows, and behind that
the kitchen with windows at opposite sides. But you wouldn't understand
the beauty of my kitchen arrangements now. By-and-by, when you are
wiser, I will explain them. Do you like a fireplace in the hall, Jack?"
"I don't know as I do. Do you?"
"Of course! certainly."
"I shall be of all men most miserable without one. Can't we have two?"
"Perhaps so; but first let me read you Cousin Bessie's letter:
MY DEAREST JILL: I'm perfectly delighted to hear about the new
house. It will be an immense success. I _know_ it will--you are
so wise and so _practical_. How I _shall_ enjoy visiting you!
It is delightful to build houses now. Everybody thinks so much
more of the beautiful than they used to. Some of my friends
have the _loveliest_ rooms. The tones are _so_ harmonious, the
decorations so _exquisite_! Such sympathetic feeling and
spiritual unity! I _wish_ you could see Kitty Kane's hall. It
isn't bigger than a bandbox, but there's the _cunningest_
little fireplace in one corner, with real antique andirons and
the quaintest old Dutch tiles. They never make a fire in it;
couldn't if they wanted to--it smokes so. But it is _so_ lovely
and gives the hall such a sweet expression. You _will_ forgive
me, won't you, Jill, dear? but you know you are _so_ practical,
and I _do_ hope you won't forget the esthetic needs of home
life. Your loving cousin, BET."
"Let's give up the hall fireplace," said Jack.
[Illustration: HEAT FROM ALL SIDES.]
"By no means; our hall is large and needs a fireplace--one that will
not smoke and will warm not only the hall in very cold weather, but the
whole house when it isn't quite cold enough for steam. The sides and
back will be of iron with an air-chamber behind them, into which fresh
air will be brought from out of doors and come out well warmed at the
sides." (Jill's idea was something like the above figure for the plan.)
"It will be a capital ventilator, too, for the centre of the house.
There will be a damper in the hearth to let the ashes down into the
ash-pit. I suppose a stove would answer, but this will be better
because it won't have to be blacked, and it will last as long as the
house."
"How will it look standing out there all alone by itself?"
"Haven't I told you, my dear, that whatever _is_ well looks well?"
"Yes, but it takes a mighty faith to believe it, and I'm not even a
mustard-seed. What is the little room in the southwest corner for?"
"That is the library, and for an ordinary family it is large enough. It
is twelve feet by fourteen. It will hold three or four thousand books,
a table, a writing-desk, a lounge and three or four easy chairs. More
room would spoil the privacy which belongs to a library and make it a
sort of common sitting-room. Moreover, by drawing aside the portières
and opening the doors we can make it a part of the large room when we
wish to; and, on the other hand, when they are closed and the bay
window curtains drawn, instead of one large room we shall have three
separate apartments for three solitary misanthropes, for three
_tête-a-têtes_, or for three incompatible groups, not counting the
hall--no, nor the stair-landing, which will be a capital place for a
quiet--"
"Flirtation."
At this point they were interrupted by a telegram from Aunt Melville,
begging them not to begin on George's plan, as she had found something
much more satisfactory.
CHAPTER III.
A FIRST VISIT AND SAGE ADVICE.
They didn't begin to build, from Cousin George's nor from any other
plan, for many weeks. Until the new house should be completed, Jill had
agreed to commence housekeeping in the house that Jack built, without
making any alterations in it, only reserving the privilege of finding
all the fault she pleased to Jack privately, in order, as she said, to
convince him that it would be impossible for them to be permanently
happy in such a house.
"I supposed," said Jack, with a groan, "that my company would make you
blissfully happy in a cave or a dug-out."
"So it would, if we were bears--both of us. As we are sufficiently
civilized, taken together, to prefer artificial dwellings, it will be
much better for us to find out what we really need in a home by actual
experiment for a year or two. You know everybody who builds one house
for himself always wishes he could build another to correct the
mistakes of the first."
"Yes, and when he has done it probably finds worse blunders in the
second. Still, I'm open to conviction, and after our late architectural
tour perhaps my house won't seem in comparison so totally depraved."
[Illustration: AUNT MELVILLE'S AMBITION.]
When they visited it, preparatory to setting up their household
gods--Jack's bachelor arrangements being quite inadequate to the new
order of things--Jack, with a flourish, threw the highly ornamental
front door wide open. Jill walked solemnly in, and, looking neither to
the right nor the left, went straight up stairs.
"Hello!" Jack called after her, "what are you going up stairs for?"
"I supposed you expected everybody to go to the second floor," said
Jill, looking over the bannister, "or you wouldn't have set the stairs
directly across the front entrance."
"I do, of course," Jack responded, following three steps at a time.
"And now will you please signify your royal pleasure as to apartments?"
"Oh, yes! The first requisite is a room with at least one south
window."
"Here it is. A southerly window and a cloudy sky--two windows, in fact.
And look here: see what a glorious closet. It goes clear up to the
ceiling."
"It isn't a closet at all; only a little cupboard. It wouldn't hold
one-half of your clothes nor a tenth part of mine. And there's no
fireplace in the room--not even a hole for a stovepipe."
"Furnace, my dear. We shall be warmed from the regions below. There's
the register."
"I see. But where shall the bed stand? On these two sides it would come
directly in front of a window; on this side there isn't room between
the two doors; on that, there's the 'set bowl'--I hate 'set
bowls'--and the furnace register in the floor."
[Illustration: NO PLACE FOR THE BED.]
"That's so. I never had any bed in this room. Try the dining-room
chamber; that has a south window. The bed can stand on the north side
and the dressing table over in the other corner."
"Yes, in the dark, with a window behind my back. Oh! Jack, why didn't
you get a wife before you planned your house?"
"I did try."
"You did! You never mentioned it to me before. What is this little room
for?"
"Why, nothing in particular. It came so, I suppose--part of the hall,
you know; but it wouldn't be of any use in the hall, so I made a room
of it. It will hold a cot bed if we should happen to have a house full
of company."
"It will never be needed for that with three other guest rooms; but I
see what can be done. You know I promised not to make any alterations;
but destruction isn't alteration, and as this little room is beside the
front chamber, with only the little cupboards between, a part of the
partition between the rooms can be destroyed. There will be no need of
a door; a portière will be better, and I can use the small room for a
dressing-room and closet. So _that_ is nicely arranged; and while you
are marking where the partition is to be cut away I will explore the
first story."
[Illustration: ENLARGED BY DESTRUCTION.]
Now, the stairs were built in a very common fashion, having a sharp
turn at the top, which made the steps near the balustrade exceedingly
steep and narrow. Jill's foot slipped on the top step and down she
went, feet foremost, never stopping till she reached the hall floor
below. Jack, hearing the commotion, ran to the rescue, caught his foot
in the carpet and came tumbling after, with twice as much noise and not
half as much grace. Happily the staircase was well padded under the
carpet, and finding Jill unhurt as well as himself, Jack helped her to
rise and coolly remarked:
"You certainly can't find any fault with the stairs, Jill, dear. If
there had been one of those square landings midway it would have taken
twice as long to come down. I--I had them made so on purpose. Will you
walk into my parlor?"
They went in and sat down in easy-chairs.
"I suppose," said Jill, "that our native land contains about a million
houses with stairs like these and just such halls--if people will
persist in calling them 'halls,' when they are only little narrow,
dark, uncomfortable entries. If we were going to make any alterations
in this house--which we are not, only destructions--- I should take
these out, cut them in two in the middle, double them up, straighten
the crook at the top and shove them outside the house, letting the main
roof drop down to cover them. Then I would make a large landing at the
turn, large enough for a wide seat, a few book shelves and a pretty
window. This could be of stained glass, unless the view outside is more
interesting than the window itself. The merit of a stained-glass
window," Jill observed, very wisely, "is that the sunlight makes a
beautiful picture of it inside the house during the day, and the same
thing, still more beautiful, is thrown out into the world by the
evening lamps, and the darker the night the brighter the picture. After
the stairs were moved out, the little hall, if joined by a wide
doorway, to the room we are now in would become of some value. There is
no grate in this room, and a chimney might be built in the outer wall,
with a fireplace opposite the wide doorway. Then, taken all together,
we should have a very pretty sitting-room. I shouldn't call that an
alteration--should you, Jack?--only an addition."
[Illustration: A SLIGHT ADDITION.]
"Certainly not. Tearing down partitions, taking out plumbing, building
a few chimneys, moving stairways, and such little things, can't be
called 'alterations'--oh, no."
"And the house will be worth so much more when you come to sell it."
"Of course. But why do you call this a 'sitting-room?' It wouldn't be
possible to sell a house that has no parlor; besides this is marked
'parlor' on the plan."
"I prefer the spirit of the plan to the letter of it. This is the
pleasantest room--almost the only pleasant room on this floor. It is
sunny and convenient, it looks out upon the street and across the lawn,
and whatever it is labeled it will _be_ our common every-day
sitting-room. For similar reasons we will take the chamber over it for
our own room."
"What becomes of our hospitality if we keep the best for ourselves?"
"What becomes of our common sense if we make ourselves uncomfortable
the year round in order to make a guest a little less uncomfortable
over night. I try to love my neighbor as myself; I can't love him three
hundred and sixty-five times as well. Now, if you are rested, we will
go and see if the architect has come."
He had not arrived, but they found a ponderous package of plans from
Aunt Melville, with an explanatory note, a letter from Cousin Bessie
admonishing Jill that her new home ought to be "a perfect poem,
pervaded and perfumed by a rare feeling of tender longing and homely
aspiration," and another from her father's oldest sister.
[Illustration: GROUND FLOOR OF AUNT MELVILLE'S AMBITION.]
[Illustration: FIRST FLOOR OF AUNT MELVILLE'S AMBITION.]
"For fifty years," Aunt Jerusha wrote, "I have lived in what would now
be called an old-fashioned house, though it was new enough when I came
to it, and I always think of the Scripture saying when I hear about the
many inventions that men have sought out and are putting into houses
now-a-days. The danger is not so much from the inventions themselves as
from what they lead to. They promise great things, but I've learned to
be suspicious of anything or anybody that makes large promises. I've
learned, too, that realities sometimes go by contraries as well as
dreams. The poorest folks are often the richest, and the greatest
saving often turns out to be the greatest waste. Air-tight stoves saved
the wood-pile, but they gave us colds and headaches. So your uncle put
them away and we went back to the fireplaces. Then came the hot-air
furnaces, which seemed so much less trouble than open fires, but taking
care of the open fires wasn't half so troublesome as taking care of
sick folks; and the same thing we learned to our bitter cost of the
plumbing pipes that creep around like venomous serpents and promise to
save so many steps. Perhaps they do, but it seems to me that much of
our vaunted labor-saving is at best only a transfer. We work all the
harder at something else or compel others to work for us. When I began
housekeeping I had no difficulty in taking care of my large house
without any help, nor in caring for my family while it was small. Yet I
hadn't a single modern invention or labor-saving machine, I have had a
great many since and have tried a great many more. When I find one that
helps in the work that _must_ be done I am glad to keep it. If it
merely does something new--something I had never done before--I keep
the old way. Multiplying wants may be a means of grace to the
half-civilized, but our danger lies in the other direction: we have too
many wants already. And this is what I sat down to say to you, my dear
child: Don't make housekeeping such a complex affair that you must give
to it all your time and strength, leaving no place for the 'better
part.' Don't fill your house with furniture too fine to be used, and
don't try to have everything in the latest fashion. I see many
beautiful things and read of many more, but nothing is half so
beautiful to me as the things that were new fifty years ago and are
still in daily use. Of planning houses I know but little. For one
thing, I should say, have the kitchen and working departments as close
at hand as possible. This will save many weary steps, whether you do
your own work or leave it with servants, the best of whom need constant
watching and encouragement, or they will not make life any easier or
better worth living."
"Isn't this rather a solemn letter?" Jack inquired.
"Yes; it's a solemn subject."
"_Shall_ you 'do your own work'?"
"Of course I shall. How can I help it?
'Each hath a work that no other can do;'
but just precisely what my own work will be I am not at present
prepared to say."
"Is Aunt Melville as solemn as Aunt Jerusha?"
"Aunt Melville assures her dear niece that 'the last plans are
absolutely beyond criticism: the rooms are large and elegant, the
modern conveniences perfect, the kitchen and servants' quarters
isolated from the rest of the house'--"
"That won't suit the other aunty."
"The porte cochère and side entrance most convenient and the front
entrance sufficiently distinguished by the tower. I particularly like
the porte cochère at the side. If none of your callers came on foot
there would be no objection to having it at the front entrance, but it
isn't pleasant to be compelled to walk up the carriage-way. As you
see, this is a brick house, and I am persuaded you ought to build of
bricks. It will cost ten or fifteen per cent. more--possibly
twenty--but in building a permanent home you ought not to consider the
cost for a moment.'"
"That's a comfortable doctrine, if everybody would live up to it," said
Jack.
"Yes; and like a good many other comfortable doctrines, it contains too
much truth to be rejected--not enough to be accepted. We _must_ count
the cost, but if we limit ourselves to a certain outlay, and positively
refuse to go beyond that, we shall regret it as long as we live. We may
leave some things unfinished, but whatever is done past alteration,
either in size or quality, must be right, whatever it costs."
And herein Jill displayed her good sense. It is, indeed, a mistake to
build a house beyond the possibility of paying for it, or of
maintaining it without a constant struggle, but in building a permanent
home there is more likely to be lasting regret through too close
economy in the first outlay, than through extravagance--regret that can
only be cured by an outlay far exceeding what the original cost would
have been.
The architect came as the sun went down, and, after being duly warmed,
fed and cheered, was informed by Jill that all she expected from him
that evening was an explanation of the respective merits of wood and
brick houses. Jack begged the privilege of taking notes, to keep
himself awake, Jill begged the architect to be as brief as possible,
and the architect begged for a small blackboard and a piece of chalk,
that he might, in conveying his ideas, use the only one, true, natural
and universal language which requires no grammar, dictionary or
interpreter.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER IV.
MANY FIRES MAKE SMALL DIVIDENDS.
There are two things belonging to modern civilization," the architect
began, "that fill me with amazement. This morning, at the usual hour, I
sat at my own breakfast table. During the day I have been reading and
writing, eating, drinking and making merry with pleasant acquaintances,
old and new. I have observed the architecture of a dozen cities and a
hundred villages and have seen landscapes without number. I have been
occupying an elegantly finished and furnished drawing-room all the
time, with every possible comfort and convenience at hand, and now am
sitting at your fireside, two hundred and fifty miles from home. I have
just assured the girl I left behind me of my safe arrival, and have
listened to her grateful reply. With my ten thousand companions going
in the same direction I have met ten thousand others crossing and
recrossing our path, every one of whom was as safe and comfortable as
ourselves, every one of whom knew the hour and the minute at which he
would reach his destination. To an observer above the clouds our
pathways would appear more frail than the finest gossamer; and the most
daring engineer that ever lived, seeing for the first time our mode of
travel, would stake his reputation that we were rushing to
inevitable destruction. Yet every foot of our way has been so guarded
that not one of these swiftly-moving palaces has swerved from its track
or been hindered on its course. This annihilation of space, with the
human skill, vigilance and fidelity incidental to it, are more
wonderful to me than any tales of magic, stranger than any fiction. I
believe because I see; nevertheless it is incredible. My second
amazement is that fire insurance companies should continue to live and
thrive against such apparently fearful odds, for I see whole villages
and cities composed of buildings that seem expressly designed to invite
speedy combustion, and at the same time to resist all attempts to
extinguish a fire once started in their complex interiors. Indeed, the
most effective modes of treatment yet discovered for a burning building
are drowning it with all its contents in a deluge of water or blowing
it up with gunpowder. It is an open question which of the two methods
is to be preferred.
[Illustration: A SECURE OUTLOOK.]
"Let me show you how a wooden house is built. The sills and joists of
the first floor are comparatively safe, because they are not boxed in
with dry boards, and even with furnace and ash-pits in the cellar there
would be little danger from a fire down below if it were not for the
careful provision made for carrying it into the upper part of the
structure. This provision, however, is most effectively made by means
of the upright studs and furrings that stand all around the outside of
the building and reach across it wherever a partition is needed.
Accordingly, every wooden house has from one hundred to one thousand
wooden flues of a highly inflammable character arranged expressly to
carry fire from the bottom to the top, valiantly consuming themselves
in the operation. Furthermore, they are frequently charged with
shavings and splinters of wood, which, becoming dry as tinder, will
respond at once to a spark from a crack in the chimney, an overheated
stove or furnace-pipe, or a match in the hands of an inquisitive
mouse. They are, likewise, so arranged that no water can be poured
inside them till they fall apart and the house collapses, for they
reach to the roof, whose sole duty is to keep out water, whether it
comes from the clouds or from a hose-pipe, but which, for economical
reasons, is made sufficiently open to allow the air to pass through it
freely, thus insuring a good draught when the fire begins to burn. To
complete the system and prevent the possibility of finding where the
fire began, the spaces between the joists of the upper floors
communicate with the vertical flues, and these highways and byways for
rats and mice, for fire and smoke, for odors from the kitchen, noises
from the nursery and dust from the furnace and coal-bin, are also
strewn with builders' rubbish, which carries flame like stubble on a
harvest-field.
[Illustration: MINED AND COUNTERMINED.]
"Brick houses, as usually built, are not much better, but that is not
the fault of the bricks--_they_ are tougher than good intentions; they
have been burned once and fire agrees with them. In fact, there is no
building material so thoroughly reliable, through thick and thin, in
prosperity and in adversity, as good, honest, well-burned bricks. But
the ordinary brick house is double--a house within a house--a wooden
frame in a brick shell. Like logs in a coal-pit, the inner house is
well protected from outside attacks, but the flames, once kindled
within, will run about as freely as in a wooden building, and laugh at
cold water, which, however abundantly it is poured out, can never reach
the heart of the fire till its destructive work is accomplished. Thrown
upon the outer walls, it runs down the bricks or clapboards; poured
over the roof, it is carried promptly to the ground, as it ought to
be; shot in through the windows, it runs down the plastering, washes
off the paper, soaks the carpets, ruins the merchandise and spoils
everything that water can spoil, while the fire itself roars behind the
wainscot, climbs to the rafters and rages among the old papers, cobwebs
and heirlooms in the attic till the roof falls in, the floors go down
with a crash and an upward shower of sparks, and only the tottering
walls, with their eyeless window sockets, or the ragged, blackened
chimney's, remain."
"One road leads to fire and the other to combustion; that's plain
enough," said Jack; "but where do the merits come in? I thought we were
to learn the relative merits of bricks and wood."
"Wood has one conspicuous merit, a virtue that covers a multitude of
sins--it is cheap; but let me first arrange the fire-escapes."
"By all means. Otherwise we shall be cremated before morning."
"If you understand my sketch you will see that but one thing is needful
to retard the progress of hidden fire, even in a wooden building, long
enough at least for one to go up the hill and fetch a pail of water.
This remedy consists simply in choking the flues and stopping the
draught, which can easily be done by filling in with bricks and mortar
between all the studs of both outer walls and inner partitions at or
near the level of each floor. A cut-off half way up is an additional
safeguard. The horizontal passages between the floor-joists should also
be closed in a similar manner, otherwise the smoke and sparks from a
burning lath next the kitchen stove-pipe will come up through the
cracks in the floor of the parlor, chamber, or around some remote
fireplace, where the insurance agent will be assured 'there hadn't been
a fire kindled for six months.' These occasional dampers are a partial
remedy, and if carefully fitted in the right places will save many tons
of coal and greatly diminish the chances of total destruction in case
of fire. The complete remedy is to leave no spaces that can possibly be
filled.
[Illustration: A DORMER OF BURNED CLAY.]
"I supposed air spaces were necessary for warmth and dryness," said
Jill.
"So they are. But there are air spaces in a woolen blanket, in a
brickbat and in common mortar, as well as in sawdust, ashes and
powdered charcoal, quite enough to serve as non-conductors of heat and
of moisture too, if properly protected. One of the best and most
available materials at present known for this purpose is 'mineral
wool,' a product of iron 'slag.' If the open spaces between the studs
and rafters of a wooden building (or in a brick building between the
furrings) are filled with this substance, or anything else equally
good, if there is anything else--of course sawdust or other
inflammable material would not answer except for an ice-house or a
water-tank--'fire-bugs' would find it difficult to follow their
profession with any success, and the insurance companies would build
more elegant offices and declare larger dividends than ever before.
Houses might be burned possibly, but the inmates would have ample time
to fold their nightgowns, pack their trunks, take up the carpets and
count the spoons before vacating the premises."
"How much will that sort of stuffing cost?"
"For a wooden dwelling house of medium size a few hundred dollars would
cover the first outlay, and the saving in worry would be worth twice as
much every year."
"Now to consider the relative merits of brick and wood, for I see Jack
is going to sleep again: The chief excellence of wood has already been
mentioned. It is cheap, so cheap that any man who can earn a dollar a
day and live on fifty cents, may at the end of a year, have a house of
his own in which he can live and begin to bring up a family in comfort
and safety. He that builds of bricks may rejoice in the durability and
strength of his house, in its security against fire and sudden changes
of temperature, in economy of fuel in cold weather, of ice in warm
weather, and of paint in all weathers; in the possibility of the
highest degree of external beauty, and in the blessed consciousness
that his real estate will not deteriorate on his hands or be a worn-out
and worthless legacy to his children."
"You must wear peculiar spectacles if you can discover beauty in a
square brick house!"
[Illustration: THE TOPMOST PEAK.]
"Rectitude, of which a brick is the accepted type, certainly has a
beauty of its own. But if a brick house is not beautiful--here again
the fault is not, dear Jack, in the bricks; but in ourselves, our
prejudices and our architects--other things being equal, it should be
more beautiful than a wooden house, because the material employed is
more appropriate for its use. (I should like to deliver an oration at
this point, for upon this Golden Rule of utility hang all the law and
the prophets of architectural beauty, but will defer it to a more
fitting occasion.) There is, in truth, no limit to the grace of form,
color and decoration possible with burned clay. As a marble statue is
to a wooden image, so, for the outer walls of a building, is clay that
has been moulded and baked, to the products of the saw-mill, the
planing-mill, lathe and fret-saw."
"Oh, you mean terra cotta?"
"I mean clay that has been wrought into forms of use and beauty, and
prepared by fire to endure almost to the end of time. It is most
commonly found in plain rectangular blocks, but in accordance with the
artistic spirit of the age, brains are now mixed with the sordid earth,
and lasting beauty glows upon the rich, warm face of the strong brick
walls."--
"Yea, verily, amen and amen! Beauty, eloquence and true poetry, bright
gleams of prophetic fire, patriotism, piety and the music of the
spheres. I can see them all in my mind's eye and hear them in my mind's
ear. Jill, my dear, our house shall be bricks--excuse me, I mean
_brains_--and mortar, from turret to foundation stone. Consider that
settled, and if the meeting is unanimous we will now adjourn till
to-morrow morning."
"One moment, if you please. Filling the spaces behind the lathing in a
brick house with some fireproof and non-conducting material is a
concession to usual modes of building. A more satisfactory construction
still would be to build the wails of hollow bricks and with air spaces
so disposed that neither wood furrings nor laths would be necessary.
There is, moreover, no good reason why the inner surfaces of the main
walls of a brick house and both sides of the partitions should not form
the final finish of the rooms. Glazed bricks or tiles built into the
walls, or secured to them after they are built, are vastly more
satisfactory than a fragile and incongruous patchwork of wood, leather,
metal, paper, paint and mortar, thrown together in some of the thousand
and one fantastic fashions that spring up in a day, run their little
course, and speedily return to the dust they have spent their short
lives in collecting. I am afraid to dwell on this theme lest I should
lie awake all night in a fever of futile protest."
"Pray don't run any risks. I move we now adjourn."
"Yes; but first let me ask one question," said Jill. "Would not the
difference of cost between a house built in the ordinary combustible
style and the same made fire-proof, or even 'slow-burning,' pay the
cost of insurance at the usual rates many times over and leave a large
margin besides?"
"Undoubtedly it would."
"Then, as an investment, what object is there in attempting to make
buildings fireproof or even approximately so?"
"Excuse me. I thought you were going to ask only one question."
CHAPTER V.
WHEN THE FLOODS BEAT AND THE RAINS DESCEND.
After the architect had retired to his room it occurred to him that he
might have answered Jill's conundrum as to the profit of building
fire-proof houses by reminding her that pecuniary loss is not the sole
objection to being burned out of house and home whenever the fire fiend
happens to crave a flaming sacrifice, in the daytime or in the night,
in summer or in midwinter, in sickness or in health; that not only
heir-looms, but hearthstones and door posts, endeared by long
associations, have a value beyond the power of insurance companies to
restore, and that protection against fire means also security against
many other ills to which the dwellers in houses are liable, not to
refer to the larger fact that there is no real wealth without
permanence, while the destruction of anything useful in the world,
wherever the loss may seem to fall, impoverishes the whole. Having
settled this point to his own satisfaction, he sought his pillow in a
comfortable frame of mind. Comfortable, but not wholly at rest, for no
sooner did he close his eyes than the "fever of futile protest"
asserted itself in turbulent visions of paper, paint and plastering.
Dados danced around in carnival dress; wall decorations went waltzing
up and down, changing in shape, size and color like the figures in a
kaleidoscope; Chinese pagodas on painted paper dissolved into brazen
sconces, and candelabra sat where no light would ever shine; glazed
plaques turned into Panama hats and cotton umbrellas, the classic
figures in the frieze began to chase the peacocks furiously across the
ceilings, the storks hopped wildly around on their one available leg,
draperies of every conceivable hue and texture, from spider webs to
sole leather, shaking the dust from their folds, slipped uneasily about
on their glittering rings, and showers of Japanese fans floated down
like falling apple blossoms in the month of May. He seemed to see the
Old Curiosity Shop, the uncanny room of Mr. Venus, a dozen foreign
departments of the Centennial, ancient garrets and modern household art
stores, all tumbled together in hopeless confusion, and over all an
emerald, golden halo that grew more and more concentrated till it burst
into gloom as one gigantic sunflower, which, suddenly changing into the
full moon just rising above the top of a neighboring roof, put an end
to his chaotic dreams.
Not willing to be moonstruck, even on the back of his head, he arose
and went to the window to draw the curtain. There was a sort of
curtainette at the top, opaque and immovable, serving simply to reduce
the height of the window. At the sides there were gauzy draperies, too
fancifully arranged to be rashly moved and too thin to serve the
purpose of a curtain even against moonlight. He tried to close the
inside shutters, but they clung to their boxes, refusing to stir
without an order from the carpenter. At the risk of catching a cold or
a fall, he opened the window and endeavored to bring the outside
blinds together. One fold hung fast to the wall, the other he contrived
to unloose, but the hook to hold it closed was wanting, and when he
tried to fasten it open again the catch refused to catch, so he was
compelled to shut the window and leave the swinging blind at the mercy
of the wind. He then improvised a screen from a high-backed chair and
an extra blanket, and again betook himself to bed. Stepping on a tack
that had been left over when the floor matting was laid provoked
certain exclamations calculated to exorcise the demon--or should I say
alarm the angel?--of decorative art, and he was soon wrapped in the
slumber of the just, undisturbed by esthetic visions.
[Illustration: WILL'S MASTERPIECE.]
After a time he became dimly conscious of a sense of alarm. At first,
scarcely roused to understand the fear or its cause, he soon recognized
a noise that filled his soul with terror--the stealthy sound of a
midnight assassin; a faint rasping, intermittent and cautious, a sawing
or filing the bolt of his door. He made a motion to spring up, upset a
glass of water by his bedside and--frightened the rats from the
particular hole they were trying to gnaw. In their sudden fright they
dropped all pretense of secresy. They called each other aloud by name
and scattered acorns, matches, butternuts and ears of corn in every
direction, which rolled along the ceiling, fell down the partitions,
knocked the mortar off the back of the laths and raised such a noisy
commotion as ought to have roused the whole neighborhood. No one
stirred, and the architect once more addressed himself to blessed
sleep, feeling that morning must soon put an end to his tribulations.
How long he slept he had no means of knowing. It was still dark when he
awoke: dark but not still. A distant footfall tinkled on the matted
floor, followed by another and another in rapid, measured succession.
Could there be a cat or a dog in the room? He could see nothing. The
moon was gone and the room was dark as Egypt. Possibly some animal
escaped from a traveling menagerie had hidden in the chamber. He lay
still and listened while the step--step--step--kept on without break or
change. Presently he thought of ghosts, and as ghosts were the one
thing he was not afraid of he turned over and went to sleep for good
just as the village clock struck eleven.
In the morning when he awoke, it rained. The ghostly footfalls
continued; in fact, they had considerably increased, but they were no
longer ghostly. A dark spot on the ceiling directly over the portfolio
of plans he had laid on the floor betrayed their source. Portfolio and
contents were as well soaked as if the fire companies had been at
them--all from a leak in the roof.
After breakfast, when Jill proposed to spend the time till it cleared
off in looking over the plans he had brought, the architect was obliged
to explain the disaster.
"It is just as well," said he. "I brought them because you asked me to
bring them, not because I supposed there would be one among them that
would suit you. But they are not wasted. These poor, dumb, dripping
plans preach a most eloquent sermon, the practical application of which
is only too evident."
"But how _can_ you make a tight roof? There has always been a leak here
when it rains with the wind in a certain quarter. We keep a pan under
it all the time, but somebody forgot to empty it; so it ran over last
night."
"You ought to see the house that I built," said Jack. "The wind may
blow where it listeth and never a drop comes through the roof."
"Oh, Jack, what a story! Only yesterday you showed me where the ceiling
was stained and the paper just ready to come off."
"That wasn't from rain water. It was from snow and ice water, which is
a very different affair. We had peculiar weather last winter. I know a
man who lost three thousand dollars' worth of frescoes in one night."
"It is indeed a different matter as regards the construction of the
roof, but the water is wet all the same, and a roof is inexcusable that
fails to keep all beneath it dry, however peculiar the weather may be.
No, it is not difficult to make a tight roof with the aid of common
sense and common faithfulness. The most vulnerable spots during a rain
storm are beside the dormers and the chimneys, over the bay-window
roofs and in the valleys, that is, wherever the plane surface and the
uniform slope of the roof is broken. In guarding these it is not safe
to assume that water never runs up hill; a strong wind will drive it up
the slope of a roof under slates, shingles or flashings as easily as it
drives up the high tide of Lincolnshire. It will cause the water
pouring down the side of a chimney, a dormer window, or any other
vertical wall, to run off in an oblique direction and into cracks that
never thought of being exposed to falling rain. 'Valleys' fail to
carry their own rivers when they are punctured by nails carelessly
driven too far within their borders; when the rust that corrupts the
metal of which they are commonly composed has eaten their substance
from the under side perhaps, their weakness undiscovered till the
torrent breaks through; when they become choked with leaves and dust
and overflow their banks; when they are torn asunder by their efforts
to accommodate themselves to changes of temperature, and when ice cakes
come down from the steep roofs and break holes through them.
"The other danger is peculiar to cold climates, where the roof must
protect not only from driving rain but from snow and ice in all their
moods and tenses. When the higher peaks feel the warmth of the sun or
the internal heat of the building, the lower slopes and valleys being
without such influence, it sometimes happens that the rills will be set
to running by the warmth of the upper portions, while the colder
climate below will stop them in their course, building around the
slate, shingles or tiles an impervious ice dam, from which the
descending streams can find no outlet except by 'setting back' under
the slates and running down inside. Eave spouts and conductors are
especially liable to this climatic influence, for nothing is more
common than to find them freezing in the shade while the roofs above
are basking in the sun. As Jack observes, admitting water above an ice
dam is a different kind of sin in a roof from that which caused the
ruin of my plans last night, but it is no less unpardonable. The same
treatment that will make a roof non-conducting of fire will, to some
extent, overcome this danger, or a double boarding may be laid upon the
rafters, with an air space between. This or the mineral wool packing
will prevent the premature melting of snow from the internal heat. The
only sure salvation for gutters is to take them down and lay them away
in a cool, dry place. Thorough work, ample outlets and abundant room
for an overflow on the outward side will make them reasonably safe. In
general it is better to let the water fall to the ground, as directly
as possible, and let the snow slide where it will, provided there is
nothing below to be injured by an avalanche. A hundred-weight of warm
snow or a five-pound icicle falling ten feet upon a slated roof or a
conservatory skylight is sure to make a lasting impression."
"Isn't this discourse a little out of season?" said Jack. "We don't buy
furs in July nor refrigerators in January. If you expect advice to be
followed, you mustn't offer it too long beforehand. Now, as your plans
haven't yet recovered from their bath, let us see if Jill's air-castles
can be brought down to the region of human possibilities."
"I am not quite ready for that," said Jill. "First, let me show you the
plans my old friend has sent me, and read you her description of them.
Here are the plans and here is the letter:
"'Of all the plans Will has ever made'--her 'Will' is an architect, you
know--'these seem to me most likely to suit you and Jack, although they
are by no means, adapted to conventional, commonplace housekeepers. In
the centre of the first floor the large hall, opening freely to the
outside world, is a sort of common ground, hospitable and cheerful,
where the stranger guest and the old friend meet; where the children
play, where the entire household are free to come and go without
formality. The furniture it contains is for use and comfort. It is
never out of order, because it is subject to no formal rules. At the
left of the hall is the real family home, more secluded and more
significant of your own taste and feeling. Instead of many separate
apartments for general family use, here are drawing-room, sitting-room,
library and parlor, all in one. This is the domestic sanctuary, the
essential family home into which outsiders come only by special
invitation. From the central hall runs the staircase that leads to the
still more personal and private apartments above, one of which belongs
to each member of the family. At the right of the hall is the
dining-room, near enough to make its contribution to physical comfort
and enjoyment at the proper time, but easily excluded when its inferior
service is not required.'
"I don't understand that," said Jill.
"I do," said Jack. "It means that the meat that perisheth ought not to
be set above the feast of reason and flow of soul; that the dining-room
ought to be convenient but subordinate, not the most conspicuously
elegant part of the establishment, unless we keep a boarding-house and
reckon eating the chief end of man. Where do you say the library is?"
"Included in the drawing-room. Probably the corner marked 'Boudoir'
contains a writing desk with more or less books and other literary
appliances. It has a fireplace of its own and portières would give it
complete seclusion."
[Illustration: FIRST FLOOR OF WILL'S MASTERPIECE.]
"Where is the smoking-room?"
"I don't know. She didn't send the plans for the stable."
"How savage! Please go on with the letter."
Jill continued:
"'The floors of the dining-room and hall are on the same level, but
that of the drawing-room is one or two feet higher--'
"I don't like that at all. Should stumble forty times a day."
"'--which is typical of its higher social plane, makes a charming
raised seat on the platform at the foot of the stairs, and gives a more
picturesque effect than would be possible if all the rooms were on a
par.'
"Can't help that. I shouldn't like it. I'd rather be a commonplace
housekeeper."
"'The higher broad landing in the staircase, running quite across the
hall, makes a sort of gallery with room for a few book-shelves, a
lounging-seat in the window, a band of musicians on festival occasions,
with perhaps a pretty view from the window.'
"If the landscape happens to fit the plan."
"'Under the lower portion, of the stairs there is a toilet room, and at
the same end of the hall wide doors lead to the piazza. A long window
also gives access to the same piazza from the drawing-room. In the
second story the chambers have plenty of closets and dressing-rooms,
and yet but few doors. Indeed, many of these may be omitted by using
portières between each chamber and its dressing-room. You will notice,
too, that by locking one door on each story the servants' quarters can
be entirely detached from the rest of the house.'
"Yes," said Jill, laying down the letter; "and that suggests another
question: What do you think of a plan like this which provides no
passage from the kitchen to the front part of the house except across
the dining-room?"
[Illustration: SECOND FLOOR OF WILL'S MASTERPIECE.]
"I should refer the question back to the housekeepers themselves; it
is domestic rather than architectural. If the kitchen servant attends
to the door bell, and is constantly sailing back and forth between the
cooking-stove and the front door like a Fulton Ferry boat, the amount
of travel would justify a special highway--even a suspension bridge.
Likewise, when the side entrance for the boys and other careless
members of the family is behind the dining-room, that apartment will
become a noisy thoroughfare, unless there is a corridor passing around
it. This is a common dilemma in planning the average house, and while a
direct communication between the front and rear portions is always
desirable, crossing one of the principal rooms is often the least of
two evils. It seems to be so in this plan."
"Go on, Jill."
"There is but one more sentence about the plan: 'The outside of the
house is severely plain, but you can easily make it more ornamental.'"
"That's true. Nothing is easier than to make things ornamental. The
hard thing is to make them simply useful. Now if you want my candid
opinion of this plan," Jack continued, "I should say it is first-rate
if the front door looks toward the east: if there is a grand view of
rivers and mountains toward the southwest; if the family live on the
west piazza all the forenoon; if they board a moderate family of
servants in the north end (which I notice is a few steps lower than the
dining-room--for social reasons, I suppose)--if they keep up rather a
'tony' style of living in the south end; are not above condescending to
men of low estate to the extent of receiving common people in the big
hall, but holding themselves about two steps above the average human;
and, finally, if and provided the butler's pantry is made as large
again for a smoking-room, and the kitchen pantry made large enough to
hold the butler. With these few remarks, I think we may lay this set of
plans on the table."
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VI.
THE WISDOM OF JILL IN THE KITCHEN.
"Perhaps Jack will remember," said Jill, as she prepared to explain her
plans, "that we examined not long ago a large number of somewhat
pretentious houses, but did not find one that was satisfactory, the
defects being usually in what I should call the working department of
the house. The large front rooms were often exceedingly charming,
elegantly furnished and well arranged."
"For which reason," said Jack, "the family seemed to be religiously
kept out of them unless they had on their company manners and their
Sunday clothes, or wished to make themselves particularly miserable by
having a wedding, a sewing society or an evening party."
"The rear boundary of the dining-room seemed like Mason and Dixon's
line in the old times; once beyond it, we entered a region 'without law
or ornament or order,' a realm of architectural incompetence, confusion
and evil work--if it is fair to call the arrangements of the domestic
part of a house an architectural matter."
"Certainly it is," Jack affirmed, "and it's my opinion that no
architect ought to receive his diploma until he has served one year in
a first-class family as cook, butler and maid-of-all-work."
[Illustration: THE OUTSIDE OF TED'S HOUSE.]
"One would almost be inclined to think that such an experience, with
another year at bridge building, had been with certain 'practical
architects and builders' the entire course of study."
"It was plain enough," Jill continued, "that these houses were planned
by _men_, who were not only ignorant of the details of housework but
who held them in low esteem, as of no special importance. They
evidently exhausted their room and their resources on what they are
pleased to call the 'main' part of the house, leaving the kitchen and
all its accessories to be fashioned out of the chips and fragments that
remained. It would be a similar thing if a man should build a factory,
fill it with machinery, furnish and equip the offices, warerooms and
shipping docks, but leave no room for the engine that is to drive the
whole or for the fuel that feeds the engine. When 'we women' practice
domestic architecture, as we surely ought and shall,--"
"When it's fashionable."
"--we shall change all that. If there can be but two good rooms in a
house it is better to have a kitchen and sitting-room than a
dining-room and parlor. I propose to begin at the other end of the
problem in planning our house. It may not suit anybody else, but if it
suits Jack and I it will be a model home."
"That sentiment is a solid foundation to build upon," said the
architect. "I wish it was more popular. Build to suit yourselves, not
your neighbors."
"And now if you will walk into my kitchen, which is _not_ up nor down a
winding stair? but on the same level with the dining-room, you shall
judge whether it can be made a stern reality or must always remain the
ghostly wing of a castle in the air. The approach from outside is
through the little entry at the farther corner, where 'the butcher, the
baker, and the candlestick maker,' the grocer, the fish-man, the
milk-man and the ice-man bring their offerings. The other entrance is
by way of the lobby adjoining the main staircase hall. This lobby or
'garden entrance' is a sort of Mugby Junction, where we can take the
cars for the cellar, for the second floor by the back stairs route, for
the dining-room or for out of doors, and where we find refreshment in
the way of a wash-basin and minor toilet conveniences. Under the main
staircase there is also a large closet opening into this same lobby. My
kitchen you see has windows at opposite sides, not only to admit plenty
of light, for cleanliness is a child of light--"
"That's true," said Jack. "In a dark room it's hard to tell a dried
blueberry from a dried--currant."
"Not only for light, but that the summer breezes may sweep through it
when the windows are open, and, as far as possible, keep a river of
fresh air rollings between the cooking range and the dining-room. It is
long and narrow, that it may have ample wall space and yet keep the
distance between the engine and machine shop, that is, the range with
its appurtenances, and the packing-room--I mean the butler's pantry--as
short as possible."
"I'm glad there's going to be a 'butler's pantry,' it sounds so
stylish. I notice that among people who have accommodations for a
'butler' in their house plans, about one in a hundred keeps the
genuine article. All the rest keep a waitress or a 'second girl.'
Sometimes the cook, waitress, butler, chambermaid, valet and
housekeeper are all combined in one tough and versatile handmaiden."
[Illustration: JILL'S KITCHEN IN BLACK AND WHITE.]
"Well, call it china closet, though it is really something more than
that, or serving-room, or dining-room pantry--whatever you please. We
shall keep two servants in the house, one of whom will wait on the
table; consequently I do not want a door from this room-of-many-names
to the kitchen. It is much easier to maintain the dignity and order
that belong to our precious pottery, our blue and crackled ware, our
fair and frail cut glass, if they are not exposed to frequent attacks
from the kitchen side. There is, however, an ample sliding door or
window in the partition, and a wide serving table before it, on which
the cook will deposit the dinner as she takes it from the range. A part
of the top of this table is of slate, and may be kept hot by steam or
hot water from the range. With but one servant it would of course be
necessary to make the route from the kitchen range to the dining-room
table more direct."
"What if you had none?"
"If I had none, my kitchen, dining-room, store-room, china-closet,
butler's pantry and all the blessed facilities for cooking, serving and
removing the meals should be within a radius of ten feet. How any
mortal woman with a soul above dress trimmings can be content to spend
three hours in preparing meals to be eaten in thirty minutes passes my
comprehension. When I 'do my own work,' as Aunt Jerusha says, there
will be no extra steps, no extra dishes, no French cooking, no
multiplying of 'courses.'"
"No cards, no cake, no style."
"Yes, indeed! The most distinguished and elegant style. Such style as
is not possible except where all the household service is performed by
the most devoted, the most thoughtful, the most intelligent, if I may
say so--"
"Certainly the most intelligent, amiable, accomplished and altogether
lovely member of the family. I agree to that."
"There will be no _pretense_ of style--if that is what you mean, no
vain endeavor to conceal poverty or ignorance, but a delightful
Arcadian candor and simplicity that will leave the mistress of the
house, who is also housekeeper, nurse, cook, dairymaid, butler,
waitress, laundress, seamstress, governess and family physician,
abundant time and strength for such other occupations and amusements as
may be most congenial. It would be a delightful way of living, and I
should not hesitate to try it if I felt certain that I _had_ a soul
above dress trimmings. I am not willing to be a household drudge,
overwhelmed by the 'work that is never done;' therefore, to be on the
safe side, we will keep two servants.
"The cooking range, whether of the portable or 'set' kind, will have a
brick wall behind it and at each side, which, carried above, will form
a sort of canopy to conduct into the chimney the superfluous heat in
warm weather and the steam and smoke from cooking at all times. I
suppose some housekeepers would object to separating the two pantries,
but they have no common interests requiring close proximity. The
kitchen pantry is a store-room and a kind of private laboratory, where
the mysterious experiments are made that develop our taste for esthetic
cooking and give us an experimental knowledge of dyspepsia. Its
operations precede the work of the range to which it is a near
neighbor, as it ought to be. It has also the merit of being in the cool
northwest corner of the house, with small windows on two adjacent
sides, which are better than a single window, for the air of a
store-room or pantry cannot be changed too freely in warm weather.
"Do you see the closets at the end of this pantry? One is for ice,
which is shoved in through a little door just above the sink where it
is brought by the ice-man; the other is for a cold closet and is built
in such a way as to get the full benefit of its cold-blooded neighbor.
Don't forget, in making the plan, that the door through which the ice
slides must be large enough to take in the largest cakes, and must be
so arranged that after being washed at the sink they will slide easily
without lifting or _banging_ into their proper places inside."
"And let me suggest," said the architect, "that the waste-pipe that
carries off the melted ice be allowed to run straight out of doors,
without making the acquaintance of the sewer or any other drain-pipe."
"Please remember that then, as well as the door. The kitchen sink is at
the west end of the room, between and under two windows, which must be
at least three feet from the floor. It is near to the pantry door, to
accommodate the dishes used in cooking; yet not so near that one cannot
stand beside it without danger of being roasted or broiled; near to the
cellar door, from whence come the Murphys and other vegetables to have
their faces washed and their eyes put out. Of course there is a china
sink in the china closet, to insure tender treatment for all the table
ware, and I should like a sort of window or slide behind the sideboard
opening through it. Sometimes it will be convenient for the waitress to
arrange the articles to be used on the table within reach from the
dining-room side, and save a special journey whenever a dish, or a
spoon is changed."
"It strikes me," said Jack, "that when it comes to spoons you're
drawing it pretty fine. I suppose these are modern improvements, but
how much better will the dinners be than the dinners cooked in my
kitchen? Two servants will do all the work for the same wages."
"Real labor-saving is a religious duty, like all other economy; and if
we don't have better domestic service with better facilities for doing
work the fault is our own."
"But I don't see that this kitchen is any better than mine."
"Of course you don't; you're a man; but for one thing, your china
closet hasn't even a window of its own. How do you expect glasses to be
made clean and silver bright in such a place? Now observe my plan: Not
only is the kitchen light, but the entry where the ice comes in, the
pantry where the food is prepared, the butler's pantry, the stairs to
the cellar and to the second floor, and Mugby Junction, are all light.
There isn't a dark corner on the premises, and consequently no excuse
for uncleanness or accidents."
"Just think of the flies."
"Windows are easily darkened. But I am not quite ready to talk over
these minor matters. The general plan is the first thing, and I think
you will agree with me that it is well begun."
"According to Poor Richard, then, it is half done. So it's time for
recess."
"Very well; way of change let us look at the plans of brother Ted's
house in Kansas. Its situation is different from ours, as it stands on
a high bluff in a bend of the Missouri, and the parlor looks over the
water in three different directions, up and down and across the river.
The piazza seems to be arranged to make the most of this situation, and
Ted thinks it impossible to contrive a more charming arrangement for
hall, parlor and dining-room. They use the parlor as a common
sitting-room, and the hall still more commonly, especially in warm
weather. Ted doesn't realize that half the charm of the house lies in
its adaptation to the site."
[Illustration: THE FIRST FLOOR OF TED'S HOUSE.]
"That ought to be the case with every country or suburban house."
"It certainly will not fit our lot, and it seems to me best suited for
a summer home or for a warm climate."
Here Jack was called to his office, and Jill withdrew to attend to some
household duties, first requesting the architect to redraw the plans so
as to show accurately the construction and details.
"That is to say," said Jack, "while Jill makes a pudding for dinner and
I write a business letter of three lines, you are to lay out in
complete shape the plans for a house containing all the modern
abominations and improvements, that will cost ten thousand dollars,
occupy two years in building and last forever. That's a modest
request."
"Not extravagant compared with the demands often made upon domestic
architects, for it involves no downright contradictions. I am not asked
to show how a house worth ten thousand dollars can be built for five,
or to break the Golden Rule, or to change the multiplication table and
the cardinal points of the compass."
CHAPTER VII.
BE HONEST AND KEEP WARM.
The architect went home to translate the instructions he had received
into the language that builders understand. Jack and Jill established
themselves in the house that Jack built. The proposed amendments were
indefinitely postponed; Jill having consented to take the house
temporarily as she had taken Jack permanently--for better or
worse--only claiming her reserved right, in the case of the house, of
privately finding all the fault she pleased. Even the staircase, so
favorable to a swift descent, remained unchanged, and in their own room
the bed stood squarely in the middle of the floor. Jack averred that
this was intended when the house was planned, because the air is so
much better in the centre of a room, and there is not so much danger of
being struck by lightning.
One day there came a cold, gloomy rain on the wings of a raw east wind,
and after Jack had gone to his office it occurred to Jill that a fire
on the hearth in the parlor, which they used as a common sitting-room,
would be exceedingly comfortable, but on removing a highly ornamental
screen that served as a "fireboard," she found neither grate nor
fireplace, only a blank wall plastered and papered. Her righteous
wrath was kindled, not because she was compelled to get warm in some
other way, but by the fraudulent character of the chimney-piece. "I can
imagine nothing more absurdly impertinent," she declared to Jack when
he came home, "than that huge marble mantel standing stupidly against
the wall where there isn't even a chimney for a background. As a piece
of furniture it is superfluous; as a wall decoration it is hideous; as
a shelf it is preposterous; as a fireplace it is a downright lie. If
our architect suggests anything of the kind he will be dismissed on the
instant."
[Illustration: THE POOR BUT MODEST ATTORNEY'S COTTAGE]
"Don't you think the room would look rather bare without a mantel? You
know it's the most common thing in the world to have them like this. I
can show you a hundred without going out of town."
"Common! It's worse than common; it is vulgar, it is atrocious, it is
the sum of all villainies!" said Jill, her indignation rising with each
succeeding epithet. "A fireplace is a sacred thing. To pretend to have
one when you have not is like pretending to be pious when you know you
are wicked; it is stealing the livery of a warm, gracious, kindly
hospitality to serve you in making a cold, heartless _pretense_ of
welcome."
"I didn't mean to do anything wrong," Jack protested with exceeding
meekness. "Such mantels were all the fashion when this house was built,
and fashions in marble can't be changed as easily as fashions in paper
flowers."
"There ought not to be 'fashions' in marble, but of course it was
fashion. Nothing else than the blindest of all blind guides could have
led people into anything so hopelessly silly and unprincipled. I shall
never enjoy this room again," she continued, "knowing, as well I know,
that yonder stately piece of sculpture is a whited sepulchre, a
delusion and a snare. I shall feel that I ought to unmask it the moment
a visitor comes in, lest I should be asked to make a fire on the hearth
and be obliged to confess the depravity in our own household."
[Illustration: A DOUBLE TEAM.]
"Now, really, my dear, don't you think you are coming it rather strong,
if I may be allowed the expression? Isn't it possible that your present
views may be slightly tinged by the color of the east wind, so to
speak?"
"Not in the least. You know perfectly well, Jack, that insincerity is
the bane of domestic and social life; that hypocrisy is a child of the
Evil One, and that vain and false pretensions are the fatal lures that
lead us on to destruction. How can we respect ourselves or expect our
friends to respect us if the most conspicuous thing in the house is a
palpable fraud?"
"Very well, dear, I'll bring up a can of nitro-glycerine to-morrow and
blow the whole establishment into the middle of futurity. Meanwhile,
let us see if anything can be done to make it endurable a few hours
longer."
Dropping on his knees in front of the fictitious fireplace, Jack pulled
the paper from the wall, disclosing a sheet-iron stove-pipe receiver,
set there for a time of need, and communicating in some mysterious way
with a sooty smoke flue. Having found this, he telephoned to the stove
store for a portable grate--that is to say, a Franklin stove with
ornamental tiles in the face of it--and in less than an hour the room
was radiant with the blaze of a hickory fire, while a hitherto unknown
warmth came to the lifeless marble from its new neighbor. By sitting
directly in front of it Jill discovered that in appearance the general
effect was nearly as good as that of a genuine fireplace, the warmth
diffused being decidedly greater.
"I'm sorry I lost my temper," said she, after they had sat a while in
silence enjoying the ameliorating influence of the blaze, "but I _do_
hate a humbug. We will let this stove stand here all summer to remind
you that neither your house nor your wife is perfect, and to keep me
warm when the east wind blows."
[Illustration: WARMTH UNDER THE WINDOW.]
Jack's response to this magnanimous remark must be omitted, as it had
no direct bearing upon house-building.
"When I went into the kitchen this morning to get warm," Jill observed
later in the evening, "I found Bridget ironing; the stove was red-hot,
the bath boiler was bubbling and shaking with the imprisoned steam, and
the outside door was wide open. It struck me that there was heat enough
going out of doors, not to mention the superheated air of the kitchen
itself, to have made the whole house comfortable such days as this, if
it could only be saved. Don't you think it would be possible to attach
a pipe to some part of the cooking-range that would carry steam or hot
water to the front of the house. We shouldn't want it when the furnace
was running, nor in very warm weather, and at such times it could be
turned off."
Jack thought it could be done, and expressed a willingness to be a
roasted martyr occasionally if he could by that means make some use of
the perennial fire in the kitchen, a fire that seemed to be the hottest
when there was no demand for it.
[Illustration: STEAM PIPES BESIDE THE FIREPLACE.]
"It's my conviction," said he, "that if the heat actually evolved from
the fuel consumed by the average cook could be conserved on strictly
scientific principles, it would warm the house comfortably the year
round without any damage to the cooking, and with a saving of all the
bother of stoves, fireplaces and furnaces." And his conviction was well
founded, provided the house is not too large and the weather is not too
cold. "Shall we try it in the new house?"
"No, not unless somebody invents a new patent low-pressure,
automatic-cooking-range-warming-attachment before we are ready for it.
We shall have fireplaces in every room--real ones--and steam radiators
beside."
"What! in every room, those ugly, black, bronzy, oily, noisy, leaking,
sizzling, snapping steam radiators that are always in the way and keep
the air in the room so dry that everybody has catarrh, the doors won't
latch, and the furniture falls to pieces? You know how the old heirloom
mahogany chair collapsed under Madam Abigail at Mrs. Hunter's
party--went to pieces in a twinkling like the one-horse shay--and all
on account of the steam heat."
"Yes, I remember; it was a comical tragedy; and before we run any such
risks let us look over our advisory letters. Here's one from Uncle
Harry, who, as you know, is never without a hobby of some sort. Just at
present he is devoted to sanitary questions. To be well warmed,
ventilated and plumbed is the chief end of man. He begins by saying
that 'sun's heat is the only external warmth that is natural or
beneficial to human beings. When men have risen above the dark clouds
of sin and ignorance they will discover how to preserve the extra
warmth of the torrid zone and of the hot summers in our own latitudes
to be evenly diffused through colder climes and seasons. Next to sun's
heat is that which comes from visible combustion--the burning of wood
and coal. Such spontaneous, radiant, living warmth differs essentially
from that which we receive by contact with artificially-warmed
substances, somewhat as fruit that has been long gathered differs from
that taken directly from the vine.'"
"Isn't this getting sort of misty, what you might call 'transcendental
like'?"
"Possibly, and this is still more so: 'Warmth is the vital atmosphere
of life, and a living flame imparts to us some of nature's own
mysterious vitality. Hence, the sun's rays and the blaze of burning
fuel give not only a material but a spiritual comfort and cheer, which
mere warm air is powerless to impart. Here is another reason why direct
radiation, even from a black iron pipe, is preferable to a current of
warm air brought from a distance: in a room warmed by such a current
nothing is ever quite so warm as the air itself unless so situated as
to obstruct its flow, but every solid substance near a hot stove or
radiator absorbs the radiated heat and is satisfied, while the air for
respiration remains at a comparatively low temperature.'"
"There may be a little sense in that," said Jack, "but the rest is
several fathoms too deep for me. Has he any practical advice to give?"
"That depends upon what you call practical. 'I have little patience,'
he says, 'with the common objection to direct radiation, that it brings
no fresh air. Fresh air can be had for the asking under a small stove
or radiator standing in a room as well as under a large stove or boiler
standing in the cellar; neither does the dampness or dryness of the
atmosphere depend primarily upon the mode of warming it, while, as for
the appearance of steam pipes, if they are not beautiful as usually
seen, it only proves that art is not wisely applied to iron work, and
that architects have not learned the essential lesson that whatever
gives added comfort to a house will, if rightly treated, enhance its
beauty. Steam-pipes or radiators may stand under windows, behind an
open screen or grill of polished brass, or they may be incorporated
with the chimney piece, and need not, in either case, be unsightly or
liable to work mischief upon the carpets or ceilings under them.
Wherever placed, a flue to bring in fresh air should be provided and
fitted with a damper to control the currents.'"
"I like the notion of putting them beside the fireplace," said Jack.
"When they are both running, it would be like hitching a pair of horses
before an ox-team or a steam engine attachment to an overshot
water-wheel. It means business. Uncle Harry improves. What next?"
"He expounds his theories of light and shade, of plumbing, sewer-gas
and malaria, and casually remarks that 'the variation of the north
magnetic pole and the points of compass are not yet fully understood in
their relation to human welfare.'"
"I should hope not! He must be writing under the influence of a full
moon. Let us try a fresh correspondent."
"Very well. Here is Aunt Melville's latest, with a new set of plans.
There will be neither trancendentalism nor vain repetitions here:
"'MY DEAR NIECE: Since writing you last I have had a most
interesting experience, and hasten to give you the benefit of
it. You remember Mr. Melville's niece married a young attorney
in Tumbledonville; very talented and of good family, but poor,
_desperately_ poor. He hadn't over two or three thousand
dollars in the world, but he has built a marvelous little
house, of which I send you the plans. You enter a lovely hall,
positively larger than, mine, an actual room in fact, with a
staircase running up at one side and a charming fireplace at
the right, built, if you will believe it, of common red bricks
that cost only five dollars a thousand. It couldn't have taken
over two hundred and fifty to build it.--'
[Illustration: THE ATTORNEY'S FLOOR PLAN.]
"Just think of that! A charming fireplace for a dollar and a
quarter!--"
"Communicating with the hall by a wide door beautifully draped
with some astonishingly cheap material is the parlor, fully
equal in every respect to my library, and adjoining that the
dining-room, nearly as large. On the same side is a green-house
between two bay windows, the whole arrangement having a
wonderful air of gentility and culture. I am convinced that you
ought to invest three-fourths of your father's wedding present
in some safe business, and with the remainder build a house
like this, buying a small lot for it, and defer the larger
house for a few years. Keeping house alone with Jack and
perhaps one maid-of-all-work will be perfectly respectable and
dignified; the experience will do you good, and I have no doubt
you will enjoy it. It will not only be a great economy in a
pecuniary way, but society is very exacting, and a large house
entails heavy social burdens which you will escape while living
in a cottage. This will give you plenty of time to improve your
taste in art, which is indispensable at present. There will be
great economy, too, in the matter of furniture. A large house
_must_ be furnished according to prevailing fashions, but in a
small one you may indulge any unconventional, artistic fancy
you please.'"
"If Aunt Melville's advice and plans could be applied where they are
needed they would be extremely valuable. Suppose we found a society and
present them to it for gratuitous distribution."
"We can't spare them yet; we shall not use them, but it is well to hear
all sides of a question."
CHAPTER VII.
TRUTH, POETRY AND ROOFS.
"How the wind does blow!" said Jill, as she laid aside Aunt Melville's
latest, and Jack laid another log into the open stove. "It is a genuine
'gale from the northeast.'"
"So it is, and that reminds me," Jack exclaimed, jumping up, "that a
driving rain from the northeast always gets the better of the attic
window over the guest-room. There's something mysterious about that
window," he explained. "It opens like a door; I believe they call it a
'casement' window, and in such a storm as this I have to keep sopping
up the water that blows in. I had a carpenter look at it, but he said
it couldn't be fixed without making a new one or fastening it up so it
couldn't be opened at all. We don't have a northeast rain-storm very
often, and that's the only window that ever leaks--except the skylight
and the round one in the west gable which is hung at the top to swing
inward and couldn't be expected to hold water."
Jill found some towels, and they hurried to the attic to "sop up" the
rain that was driving under the sash and had already made its mark on
the ceiling below. Then they examined the skylight and the round
window, and just as they were about to descend perceived a smell of
burning wood. Jack rushed down to the sitting-room, telling Jill to fly
for a pail of water, found the wall beside the stove-pipe very hot, ran
for an axe, and, smashing a hole through the lath and plastering,
discovered a bit of wood furring to which the laths had been nailed
resting directly against the sheet iron pipe. Catching the pail of
water which Jill was about to pour into the stove, he cooled the hot
pipe and extinguished the wood about to burst into flame, the smoke of
which, rising beside the chimney to the attic, had warned them of the
danger below. He then cut away around the pipe till the solid brick
chimney was exposed, gathered up the rubbish, piling the chips upon the
fire in the stove, and lay back in his chair, evidently enjoying the
situation.
"How can you be so reckless, Jack, as to keep a fire in such a
chimney?"
"The chimneys are all right, my dear. I took special pains with them
when the house was built. The only danger there ever was lay in that
little piece of inch board that happened to be too near the pipe."
"And how are we to know what other little pieces of board may be too
near? I think it's a very dangerous house to live in. If we hadn't gone
up to the attic when we did it would have been all in flames."
"And we shouldn't have gone to the attic at all if my windows had been
proof against the east wind."
"No, nor would you have known we were having a gale from the northeast
if I hadn't quoted the 'Wreck of the Hesperus.'"
[Illustration: NO CONCEALMENT OR DISGUISE.]
"Consequently we owe our preservation to the well-beloved poet."
"Moral: Study the poets."
"Moral number two: Build leaky casements."
"Number three: When the wood around a chimney takes fire it doesn't
prove a 'defective flue.'"
"Number four: A small fault hidden is more dangerous than a large one
in sight."
"Very true; and if modern builders had kept to the poet's standard,
and, like those in the elder days of art,
'wrought with greatest care,
Each minute and hidden part,'
we should not be trembling before a black and ragged chasm in the wall,
afraid to go to bed lest the fire should break out anew and burn us in
our sleep."
"There's not the least danger. We are as safe as a barrel of gunpowder
in a mill pond. There is nothing to set us on fire. That bit of dry
wood was the key to the whole situation. We have captured that and can
make our own terms. Still, if you feel nervous we will sit up and 'talk
house' till the fire goes out."
Jill acceded to this proposal and began to discourse, taking moral
number four for a text.
"I wish it were possible," said she, "to build a house with everything
in plain sight, the chimneys, the hot-air pipes from the furnace, if
there are any, the steam pipes, the ventilators, the gas pipes, the
water pipes, the speaking tubes, the cranks and wires for the
bells--whatever really belongs to the building. They might all be
decorated if that would make them more interesting, but even if they
were quite unadorned they ought not to be ugly. If we could see them we
shouldn't feel that we are surrounded by hidden mysteries liable at any
time to explode or break loose upon us unawares. Those things that get
out of order easily ought surely to be accessible. I don't believe
there would have been half the trouble with plumbing, either in the way
of danger to health or from dishonest and ignorant work, if it had not
been the custom to keep it as much as possible out of sight. There is a
great satisfaction, too, in knowing that everything is genuine."
"We might build a log house. The logs are solid, and the chimney, if
there happens to be one, won't pretend to be of the same material as
the walls of the building."
"I like better the notion of letting the material of which brick walls
and partitions are composed form the actual finish inside as well as
outside. The floors, too, should be bare, and the beams that support
them ought to be visible, and in case of a wooden house, the posts,
braces and other timbers should be left in sight when the building is
finished. It is a sad pity that modern modes of building, like modern
manners and fashions, conceal actual construction and character, making
a mask that may hide great excellence or absolute worthlessness."
"Won't all these pipes, wooden beams, bell ropes and things be
fearfully dusty and cumber the housekeeper with too much serving? I
supposed you would vote for smooth, flat, hard wood and painted walls,
they are so much easier to keep clean."
"Perhaps I shall; but we must remember the gnat and the camel and try
to be consistent. A single portière, especially if it be of the
rag-carpet style, has a greater dust-collecting capacity than a whole
houseful of wooden floors, ceilings and wainscots, even when they are
moulded and ornamentally wrought. Surely they will not be troublesome
if they are plain and simple, and only think how much more interesting
than flat square walls and ceilings, which we feel compelled to cover
with some sort of decoration to make them endurable. I suppose
architects have outgrown the sheet-iron and stucco style of building,
and do not generally approve of 'graining' honest pine in imitation of
coarse-grained chestnut. But these are not the only concealments and
disguises that ought to be reformed. If we cannot make our house a
model in any other respect, I hope it will be free from hypocrisy and
silly affectations."
"By all means; but you mustn't forget that reformers risk martyrdom.
However, you can't be too honest for me; I am ready to sign any pledge
you offer, even though it prohibit paint, putty and all other cloaks
for poverty, ignorance and dishonesty."
"There's a time and place for paint and putty, lath, plaster and paper,
but we ought not to be helplessly dependent upon them."
"Have you any idea how the house will look outside," asked Jack, giving
the fire a poke, "or is that to be left to take care of itself?"
"No, indeed! not left to take care of itself. In that part of the
undertaking we are bound to believe that the architect is wiser than
we, and must accept in all humility what he decrees. Still I think the
law of domestic architecture at least should be 'from within out.' For
the sake of the external appearance it ought not to be necessary to
make the rooms higher or lower than we want them for use, neither
larger nor more irregular in shape. It ought not to be necessary to
build crooked chimneys for the sake of a dignified standing on the
roof, or to make a pretense of a window where none is needed. The
windows are for you and me to look out from and to let in the sunlight,
not for the benefit of outside observers, and should be treated
accordingly. We will not have big posts--mullions, do you call
them?--in the middle of them, as there are in these. When I try to look
down the street to see if you are coming home I can scarcely see
obliquely to the corner of the lot, and we don't get half as much
sunshine as we should if the windows were all in one."
[Illustration: WITH A MULLION AND WITHOUT.]
"Why not, if there's the same amount of glass?"
"Because the sun can't shine around a corner; and Jack, why did you set
them so near the floor? There's no chance for a seat under them, and
they do not give as much light or ventilation as they would if they ran
nearly up to the ceiling."
"What is the use of making them long at the top? They are always half
covered up with lambrequins or some fanciful contrivance."
"Indeed, they will not be; our windows will be arranged to be wholly
uncovered whenever we need the light. Too many windows are not so
unmanageable as too many doors, and I should like one room with a whole
broadside of glass; but for most rooms the fewer windows the better,
provided they are broad and high. I despise a room in which you can't
sit down without being in front of a window or walk around without
running against a door, that has no large wall spaces for pictures and
no room for a piano, a book-case, a cabinet or a large lounge. A small
room, that has doors or windows on all sides does not seem like a room
intended for permanent occupation, but rather as a sort of outer court
or vestibule belonging to something farther on."
"I suppose the architect will claim the porches, balconies, and things
of that sort, as belonging to the exterior, and design them as he
pleases; but I think we have a right to insist that they shall add to
our comfort. They must be large enough to be used, they must be put
where we can use them conveniently, and they must not interfere with
the interior arrangements; beyond that we shall accept what the
architect sets before us."
"'Asking no questions for conscience sake.' How about the roof--is that
also a matter of evolution?"
"No; because the inside of the roof is of but little consequence. It
must keep out the rain and wind, snow and ice; it must be strong and
economically built and have a reasonable amount of light. The rest we
shall leave to the architect. As Uncle Harry observes, 'the material
part of the house rests upon the foundation stones; its spiritual
character is displayed chiefly in the roof, which may change to an
unlimited extent the expression of the building it covers.'"
[Illustration: JACK'S ARCHITECTURAL PHRENOLOGY.]
"That's so. Let me make the roofs for a people and I care not who
builds the houses. The roof on the house is like the hat on the man, as
I can show you," said Jack, taking a piece of charcoal from the stove
and drawing on the back of the fireboard some astonishing illustrations
of his theory.
"Here is the president of a big corporation who must be dignified
whether he has a soul or not. He represents the 'renaissance.' No
nonsense about him, no sentiment, no sympathy, no anything but--himself
and his own magnificence."
"This fellow is a brakeman--prompt, efficient, laconic. Same head, you
see, but different hat. He stands for the hipped roof which has one
duty to do and does it."
[Illustration: THE HAT MAKES THE MAN.]
"Give the dignified president a smashing blow on the head and you see
what he may become after an unsuccessful defalcation--an unfortunate
tramp, who has 'seen better days.' He is a capital illustration of the
roofs called 'French,' that were so imposing a few years ago, and are
about as agreeable in the way of landscape decoration as the tramp
himself, but not half so picturesque.
"Pull the string again and we have a benevolent 'broad-brim,' stiff,
symmetrical and proper to the last degree, like an Italian villa; and,
once more changing the straight lines to crooked ones, the conventional
formalist becomes the unconventional, free-and-easy South-westerner,
who may stand for Swiss or any other go-as-you-please style."
"It is midnight and the fire is out; let's adjourn."
[Illustration.]
CHAPTER IX.
PROFESSIONAL ETIQUETTE--BLINDS AND BESSIE.
The next demonstration from the architect was a pencil drawing of the
floor plans, submitted for inspection and criticism. Concerning these
he wrote to Jill's entire satisfaction. "From many of my clients I
should expect the first question would be, 'Will a house built in this
shape look well outside?' It is not necessary to remind you that at
this stage of the proceedings such an inquiry is wholly irrelevant. The
interior arrangements should be made without a thought of the exterior
effect, precisely as if the house were to wear the ring of Gyges and be
forever invisible to outsiders. There are several points, however, on
which I await further instructions----"
"What's the use of having an architect," Jack inquired, "if you've got
to keep instructing him all the time?"
----"provided you wish to give instructions," Jill continued reading.
"There is often a misunderstanding between architect and client, and I
wish to avoid it in the present case by saying at the outset that while
there are many things which, in my opinion, should be referred to you,
I am ready to decide them for you if you wish me to do so; but even in
such cases I prefer to set before you the arguments pro and con, after
which, if you still desire it, I shall accept the arbitration. This is
not a rule that works both ways or applies universally, for while
referring to you matters relating to use and expenditure, and at the
same time standing ready to decide them for you, I cannot promise to
accept your advice in matters of construction and design. I trust I
have not yet reached the fossiliferous state of mind that prevents my
listening with sincere respect to candid suggestions, even from those
who are not fairly competent to give advice; but on these points you
must not expect me to follow your taste and judgment in opposition to
my own, even if you do pay the bills. When your physician prescribes
arsenic and you inform him that you shall give it to your poodle and
take strychnine instead, he will doubtless infer that his services are
no longer desired; he will know that while he might be able to kill
you, he could not hope to cure you. Patients have rights that
physicians are bound to respect, but the right to commit suicide and
ruin the physician's reputation is not among them. The relations of
client and architect are similar.
"This is one of the questions which I refer to you, but will answer for
you if you send it back: How shall the eyes of the house be closed?
Shall the eyelids be outside blinds, inside folding shutters, 'Queen
Anne' rolling blinds, sliding blinds or Venetian shades? There are good
reasons for and against each kind; either, if adopted, compels some
compromise. Whichever road you take you will wish you had taken the
other.
[Illustration: THE CONTRIBUTION OF BESSIE'S FATHER.]
"For instance, in hot weather outside blinds that shield the glass
from the direct rays of the sun keep the rooms cooler than any form of
inside shutters; they allow a gradation of light and a free circulation
of air. You can even leave the window open during a summer shower
without danger of being drenched. Last but not least they are
inexpensive. The wrong side of the outside blinds appears when you wish
to make wide windows, or mullioned windows, or windows that cannot
command at each side an unobstructed wall space equal to at least half
their own width for the blinds to rest against when open. Under such
circumstances, which are by no means rare, outside blinds are
stubbornly unmanageable.
"Inside blinds that fold back and swing away from the windows must have
wide recessed jambs to hold them when they are not in use. If the
windows are broad these 'pockets' will require a thick wall and thus
increase the actual size of the house. A little space may be saved by
allowing them to stand out obliquely when open, or turn around upon the
inside face of the wall, but either mode increases the cost of
finishing the rooms. If these blinds are made of open slats, many
housekeepers despise them as being no better than small cabinets
maliciously contrived to accumulate dust; if of solid panels, they make
a room perfectly dark, or when opened ever so slightly admit unbroken
rays of sunlight. On the other hand, inside blinds are accessible; they
can be opened and closed without leaning half one's length out of the
window; they do not hide the glory of plate glass; they graciously
permit windows to stand where they please and to be as large as they
please; and they never quarrel with piazza roofs, awnings, hoods or
other outside accessories.
"Shutters that coil up into a box over the window or down into a box
below it have the modest excellence of being always out of the way when
they are not wanted, of staying where they are put when partially open,
of occupying but little space and never standing in the way of the
window curtains. They are, in fact, wooden shades similar to the
old-fashioned green slat curtains, that were rolled up by drawing a
cord, but are far more substantial. The single slats of which they are
composed do not revolve, and consequently it is not easy to 'peep
through the blind just to hear the band play.'
"Venetian shades, with their multiplicity of bright-colored straps,
cords, hooks and trimmings, are picturesque and graceful. They are
somewhat subject to dust and repairs, and when the window is open are
not proof against tornadoes and thunder showers.
"Inside blinds are sometimes contrived to slide sideways, like barn
doors, into cavities formed to receive them. If built with extreme care
and handled with the utmost tenderness they are a degree less obtrusive
than when wholly dependent on hinges. Likewise, outside blinds may be
contrived to swing horizontally as well as vertically, standing out
from the top of the window like a small shed roof. They are not quite
wide enough to serve as awnings, and are liable to catch more wind than
they can hold."
"It strikes me that the whole thing is a 'blind.' What is he driving
at?"
"The conclusion of the matter seems to be given in this sentence: 'You
will perceive, therefore, that a decision in regard to blinds should be
made even before the house is staked out, since the size of the
foundation itself may be affected by it, as well as the minor
details.'"
"I'm ready for the question; are you?"
"Yes. In the bay windows and for the long windows that give access to
the balconies and piazzas we will have blinds that roll up out of the
way. A few of the windows on the sunny side will have for summer use
outside blinds, a few more will have cloth awnings. The most of the
windows will have no blinds at all, only such shades and curtains as we
choose to furnish. I don't think the eyes of a house ought to be closed
much of the time. It is certainty absurd to hang blinds at all the
windows when we only need them at a few."
"Oh, but won't the neighbors rage and imagine vain things when they see
a house with here and there a blind and here and there an awning?"
"The wise ones will approve; the foolish ones will demonstrate their
folly by criticising what they don't understand."
"Very well, that point is settled. Unless the next is sharp and short
you must decide it without my help. It is high time I was at the
office."
"We will defer them all. It is time for me to be at my household
duties. You know Cousin Bessie comes this afternoon, and I've noticed
that extremely intellectual people are sometimes extremely fond of a
good dinner."
"If Bessie is coming I must anoint my beard with oil of sunflowers and
trot out my old gold slippers. Shall I send up some pale lilies for
dessert? And that reminds me--Jim came home last night and I asked the
old fellow to come up to dinner. How do you suppose Bess found it out?"
"Don't be spiteful, Jack. She didn't find it out at all. I invited her
a week ago. Now go to the office, please, while I put the house in
order."
During this important process Jill entertained herself by philosophical
reflection upon the style of living that requires a house to be
constantly "put in order." She recalled certain of Uncle Harry's
observations to the effect that in a truly civilized state housekeeping
would be so conducted and houses would be so contrived that instead of
causing care and labor proverbially endless, housekeepers would no more
be burdened by their domestic duties than are the fowls of the air.
Jill had too much of the rare good sense, incorrectly called "common,"
to attempt to reduce Uncle Harry's theories to practice all at once.
She knew that though we may not reach the summit of our ambition, it is
well to advance toward it even by a single step, or failing in that, to
help prepare a way for some one else. She understood the wisdom of
striving to increase the fraction of life by dividing the denominator,
and at the same time cherished the broader hope that her life and her
home might be filled with whatever is of most enduring worth.
Moralizing thus, but always with an architectural or house-building
background, she continued her work, noticing the sharp grooves and
projecting mouldings that caught the dust, the high, ugly thresholds,
the doors that swung the wrong way, compelling half a dozen extra steps
in passing through them; shelves that were too high or too narrow;
drawers that refused to "draw" or dropped helplessly on the floor as
soon as they were drawn out far enough to display the spoons and
spices they contained; window stools that came down behind tables and
shelves, forming a sort of receptacle for lost articles belonging to
the kitchen or pantry--all of which she resolved should not be
repeated. When Bessie arrived the house was in that most perfect order
which gives no sign of unusual preparation.
[Illustration: FIRST FLOOR OF THE CONTRIBUTION.]
"This is too perfectly lovely for anything," exclaimed Bessie. "I just
_dote_ on domestic duties. You can't help being overpoweringly happy,
Jill, with such a home and _such_ a husband. Then only to think of the
new house drives me completely frantic. What _will_ it be like? Are the
plans made? Oh! I do hope not, for I have a _million_ of things to tell
you about that are totally _unspeakable_."
"Then you are just in time. We had a long letter from the architect
this morning asking for instructions on various matters."
"How perfectly fascinating! Let's sit down this minute and begin upon
them."
But Jill preferred waiting till Jack came home, bringing with him his
younger brother, just home for summer vacation.
"It isn't necessary to announce dinner," said she. "The preliminary
odors have already advertised it through the entire house."
"I thought these observations were to be strictly confidential,"
observed Jack.
"That wasn't 'finding fault.' It was a mere casual remark. Some people
may think it pleasanter to be summoned by the odor of broiling fish
than by the noise of a dinner-bell."
"Indeed I do," said Bessie, taking Jack's proffered arm. "Odors are too
delicious for anything. They are so refined and spiritual I'm sure I
could live on them. I would far prefer the fragrance of a dish of
strawberries to the fruit itself."
"We shall get along capitally then. You can smell of the berries and
I'll eat them afterwards. You see now, Jill, the advantage of having a
house built like this. Cousin Bessie proposes that we live on the
fragrance of the food. It won't be necessary even to come to the
dining-room. We can all stay in the parlor or in our chambers and
absorb sustenance from the circumambient air, as the sprightly goldfish
gathers honey from the inside of a glass ball."
"Please don't make fun of me, Cousin Jack, for I do truly _revel_ in
fragrance, and I'm sure your house is _beautifully_ planned. Don't you
think so, Mr. James?"
"I realty don't know much about such things. I never did like to know
what I was going to have for dinner long beforehand--it makes me so
awfully hungry."
"Precisely so, Jim; it gives you am appetite. I had the house planned
in this way for that very purpose."
"Now that you have introduced the subject," said Jill, "I will tell you
how _I_ should have planned it. There should have been a 'cut-off'
somewhere--a little lobby between the kitchen and the rest of the
house, with a ventilating flue so large that neither smoke nor steam
nor perfumed air could pass it without being caught up and carried to
the sky. Of course these odors ought not to get away from the
ventilator above the range, but the best contrivances are not proof
against the carelessness of the cook when she is in a hurry--as she
always is just before dinner."
When they returned to the sitting-room Bessie brought down a set of
plans her father had sent for Jack and Jill to examine, thinking they
would suit their lot and taste. They did suit the lot fairly, but
Jill's mind was too fully made up to accept any change from her own
plan. The exterior she approved cordially, but to Bessie's despair
would not promise to imitate it, preferring to leave the outside to her
architect without reserve.
While they were spoiling their eyes in the twilight Jack pressed the
electric "button" that lighted the gas instantaneously all over the
house, causing Bessie to cry out in protest against such a sudden
transition. "It is so violent, so unlike the slow, sweet processes of
nature. I never shall learn to like gas, and the electric light is
absolutely _horrid_. Don't you love tapers, Mr. James?"
"Tapirs? I don't think I'm a judge; I never had one. I should rather
have a tame zebra."
"Oh, I mean tapers for light!"
"Excuse me--certainly: yes, that is, I think I do. We don't use them
very often. Do you mean tallow or wax?"
"Wax, of course! They have such elegant decorations on them. I had a
most exquisite sconce Christmas, with two of the loveliest tapers
completely covered with Moorish arabesques in crimson and old gold."
"What becomes of the decorations when the tapers burn up?"
"Well, we don't burn them much. Indeed, I don't think we ought to use
artificial light at all. The mysterious light of the moon and stars is
so much more enchanting. Don't you love to muse and dream in the fading
twilight?"
"No, not very well. The trouble is if I get to sleep before I go to bed
I don't sleep as well afterward."
"Oh, I don't mean actual dreams, but vague, dreamy musings, esthetic
aspirations and longings. Do you never long for abstract beauty?"
"Well, no, not long. If I can't get what I want pretty quick I
generally go for something else."
This irrelevant conversation was vastly entertaining to Jack, who,
knowing how unlike were the dispositions of his brother and his wife's
cousin, had contrived their meeting with special reference to his own
amusement. When the clock told the hour for retiring he brought Bessie
a tin candlestick, in which a tallow candle smoked and spluttered in a
feeble way, but filled the soul of the young lady with admiration, it
was so "full of feeling."
"Life is so much richer when our environment is illuminated and
glorified--"
"By tapers," said Jack as he bade her an affectionate good-night.
CHAPTER X.
MORE QUESTIONS OF FIRE AND WATER.
"We must devote this evening exclusively to the new house," said Jill,
as Jack started for his office. "The architect is waiting for
instructions, and every day we lose now will give us another day of
vexation and impatience when we are waiting for the house to be
finished."
"That's true, and it's a chronological fact that house-builders often
forget. Very well, I'll come home early. Will Bessie be here?"
"Certainly. She has come for a long visit."
"Then I shall bring up Jim again. One-half Bess says he can't
understand, and he doesn't approve of the other half; but we couldn't
keep him away if we tried. So we'll invite him to come. It's great fun
to hear Bessie's comments and witness Jim's helplessness."
"If you are going to devote yourself to Jim and Bessie," said Jill
severely, "I may as well answer these questions without consulting you
at all."
"Oh, pray don't do that. Give me a chance to express my opinions. Some
of them are strikingly bold and original. Besides, you will need me to
conduct the meeting."
It happened, accidentally of course, that Bessie's evening dress was of
a color that looked well by gaslight, and no objection was made to the
unnatural illumination.
Jill took up the architect's letter, where she had left it, at the
conclusion of the blind question. "Another point that was mentioned
when I was at your father's house must be decided soon: Shall there be
gutters to catch the water from the roof, with pipes of some sort to
convey it to the ground, or shall it be left to take care of itself? If
there are none, the ground around the house should pitch sharply away
from the walls and a slight depression should be formed, into which the
water would fall. This shallow ditch should be perhaps two feet wide,
as the drops will not always come down in straight lines. It may be
paved with small stones or bricks, between which the grass will grow,
or it maybe more carefully lined with asphalt paving. If it is desired
to conduct the water to a certain point, this drain can descend
slightly toward it, and, if the lawn will not be injured by an
occasional inundation, even the shallow ditch may be omitted, making
merely a one-sided slope, hardened to prevent the water from wearing a
ragged, unsightly channel around the house. The advantages of disposing
of the water in this way, dispensing with the gutters, are its economy
and its permanence. Whatever the material may be of which they are
made, gutters attached to the eaves or roof cause more or less trouble
and expense from the time they are put in place till the house is given
up to the owls and the bats. They are liable to be corroded by rust, to
be clogged with leaves and dust, to be choked with ice, or to become
loosened from their fastenings. If used at all, they should be frankly
acknowledged. This is not, however, a point on which I am in need of
instructions, but would remind you that one of the interesting
illustrations of the happy skill of the old masters in making a virtue
of necessity is found in the effective treatment of the waterspouts and
conductors. They made them bold, quaint and picturesque in appearance,
far removed from the tin contrivances that we hang in frail awkwardness
to our roofs."
[Illustration: A GARGOYLE]
"How perfectly delightful!" exclaimed Bessie. "Those horribly grotesque
old gargoyles are just glorious. Don't you delight in the antique, Mr.
James, when it isn't too horrible?"
"Yes, they are awfully jolly. We had a great time with them last
'Fourth.' I got myself up as a pirate king--black flag, skull and
cross-bones, you know. It was awfully jolly."
"I never saw any of that kind, but you _will_ have some gargoyles,
won't you, Jill?"
"Possibly, for the architect says' whether you have gutters entirely
around the house or not; it will doubtless be necessary to catch the
water that would fall upon the steps or balconies in short
eave-troughs, and as they are certain to be conspicuous they should be
respectfully treated. As they add to the comfort of the house they
should also add to its beauty.' Now what shall be said on this subject?
His opinion appears to be that if we do not need to save the water for
use, and if it will do no harm upon the ground around the house, it
will be best to omit them except where protection is needed for
something below. He sends some sketches and says 'they represent a few
of the methods by which the water may be caught and carried to the
ground. Number two and number three will prevent the sliding of the
snow from the roof, which is sometimes desirable, but not always.
Gutters made in this form should be so near the eaves that in case of
accidental injury the water could not find its way inside the main
walls. Number five has the advantage of leaving the house uninjured
whatever happens to the gutter itself. It may leak through its entire
length or run over on both sides without doing other harm than wasting
the water.' I don't see," said Jill, laying down the letter, "how we
can give instructions without dictating in matters of 'construction and
design,' concerning which the architect distinctly objects to advice."
[Illustration: A CHOICE OF GUTTERS.]
"Tell him we don't care what becomes of the water and the lawn will
take care of itself. Then 'instruct' him to exercise his own
discretion. That's what he is for. What next?"
"He would like to know our wishes in regard to fireplaces."
"I thought the heating question had been decided once according to
Uncle Harry's doctrines."
"Not fully. We shall have both steam and open fires; the architect
understands that, but he doesn't know how many fireplaces nor what
kind. We can tell him how many easily enough: one in each room of the
first story except the kitchen, but including the hall, and one in each
of the bed-rooms."
[Illustration: "A SIMPLE RECESS."]
"Including the guest chambers?"
"By all means. There is nothing that makes one feel so thoroughly
welcome, so delightfully at home as a room with an open fire. Mahogany
four-posters, velvet carpets and sumptuous fare are trivial compliments
in comparison. Concerning the style and cost he says: 'Of designs there
is an endless variety, and there is a wide range in cost, from the
simple recess in the side of a plain brick chimney'--"
"One of the kind that Aunt Melville builds for a dollar and a quarter."
"'--to the elaborate affairs that cost as much as a comfortable
cottage. It would be idle for me to attempt to give you a full
description of them all--my letter would appear like a manufacturer's
catalogue. Indeed, you can find whole books on the subject, large books
too, which it will be interesting and profitable for you to study; but
first it is necessary to lay out the chimneys to accommodate the sizes
and styles to be chosen. You will easily understand that a grate for
burning coal alone, especially hard coal, may be much smaller than a
fireplace to hold hickory logs that it takes two men to carry; but the
heat of anthracite coal would soon destroy the lining of a fireplace
adapted to an ordinary fire of wood. It cannot be necessary to remind
you that the best open fireplaces, whether for wood or coal, are those
which, instead of sending three-fourths of the heat up the chimney
flue, give it out from all sides, to be saved either directly or by
being conveyed to an adjoining or upper room. It is also possible to
make a fireplace that will accommodate either wood or coal, but like
all compromises this is attended with certain disadvantages. If large
enough for wood it is too large for hard coal. The smoke flue for a
coal fire may also be smaller, the hotter fire causing the stronger
draught. Coal ashes, too, ought to be dropped through the hearth into
ash pits below, even from the fires of the upper rooms. To "take up the
ashes" of a wood fire is not so troublesome. These are some of the
reasons why it is necessary to determine the kind and number of your
fireplaces before the plans of the chimneys are drawn.'"
[Illustration: IN THE MIDDLE RANK.]
"Why not make an appropriation of fifty dollars apiece for each grate,
mantel and hearth, and have him do the best he can with it?"
"We can fix that as an average price, but shall want some better than
others, and must mark in each room whether we wish to provide for wood,
for coal, or for both. That is, whether we want 'set' grates or open
fireplaces with andirons or something of that kind."
"Oh, do have andirons. _Please_ have andirons," said Bessie. "You know
you can go out into the country and buy them for old brass of the
farmers who haven't the remotest idea of their value. They keep them up
in those dear old musty garrets covered with dust and spider webs."
"Certainly, we will have a few andirons and several spinning-wheels and
moony clocks and solid old carved oak chests that for generations have
been full of moths and food for worms. I never happened to come across
one of those old bonanza garrets, but I suppose there are plenty of
them lying around and just running over with these antique treasures.
Jim, can't I hire you to go out among the unesthetic heathens and buy
up a few loads of heirlooms and other relics of former greatness? We
shall want some old associations in the new house, and if we haven't
any of our own we must buy some."
"I don't think I know much about such things. Why don't you go to a
furniture store and get what you want first-hand? Second-hand furniture
always looks shabby and out of date. However, if Miss Bessie could go
with me to pick out things, I wouldn't mind taking a drive into the
country to see what we could find."
[Illustration: THE WORTH OF A COSY COTTAGE.]
"Now, really, wouldn't you mind it? How enchanting! It will be
delightful to be associated with the new house. I know we shall find
some _lovely_ things."
"All right. You shall have Bob and the express wagon to-morrow. What
next, Jill?"
"'I should be glad to know your feeling in regard to height of rooms,
but shall not promise fully to agree with you. My purpose is to make
the principal rooms of the first story ten and a-half or eleven feet
high.'"
"Oh, how dreadful! I don't know how high eleven feet is, but I'm sure
they ought not to be more than seven feet."
"I thought you were going to say not less than fourteen," said Jim.
"Oh, no, indeed! Low rooms are so deliciously quaint and cosy."
"But I should be all the time expecting to hit my head."
"You wouldn't think of that for a moment if you could only feel the
influence of Kitty Kane's library. It is a copy of an old English
bar-room, or something of that sort, I don't exactly remember what, but
it is in the Queen Anne style, and it's too lovely for anything. Please
have low rooms, Jill."
Jill continued reading: "For rooms of ordinary sizes and devoted to
ordinary domestic purposes, that is high enough for use, for comfort
and for any reasonable amount of decoration, either upon the walls
themselves or in the shape of pictures or other ornaments. You will
certainly think it enough when you are climbing the stairs to the rooms
of the second story. It may be practicable to reduce the height of some
of the smaller apartments, but it is usually much more convenient to
keep the ceilings of the main rooms of uniform height, even if this
does upset the 'correct proportion' which critics attempt in vain to
establish. To make ceilings very low seems an affectation of humility
or of antiquity not justified by common sense. In the polar regions,
where the sun never reaches an altitude above twenty-three degrees, low
rooms and short windows would be entirely satisfactory. In the torrid
zone, where it is not safe to build more than one story for fear of
earthquakes and tornadoes, where chambers would be useless, and where
the grand question is not how to keep warm but how to keep cool, the
higher the better. For houses in the temperate zones the medium height
is the safest, the best--and the most _artistic_. If any one dares to
say it is not, ask him to tell you the reason why."
"How perfectly _exasperating_," said Bessie in a tragic aside to Jim.
"No one ought to try to give reasons in art, in religion or in
politics. Intuitions are so much more satisfactory. Don't you _always_
rely on your intuitions, Mr. James?"
"Perhaps I should if I had them, but somehow I--I never seem to have
any."
"The meeting appears to be divided," said Jack. "Bessie says seven, Jim
says fourteen. Suppose we split the difference and call it ten and a
half."
"That is, we advise the architect to do as he pleases, then he will be
sure to follow our advice."
CHAPTER XI.
WHAT SHALL WE STAND UPON?
"Splitting the difference" is a convenient compromise, but it is not
always creditable to both parties, and Jill thought it would not be
safe with such advisers to assume that Wisdom's house is always built
between two extremes. She felt, too, that the architect's discussion of
details must be tiresome to her guests, and therefore resolved to take
up but one more of his queries, spending the remainder of the evening
in looking over plans and letters, of which she had an ample store
still unexplored, or in listening to Bessie's ardent description of the
treasures she hoped to find in the lofty recesses of the old garrets.
"I fear the next topic will not be deeply interesting, but it is the
last one to-night, and Jack _must_ give me his undivided attention if
he wishes to know what we are to stand upon in the new house."
"Is it about floors?" Bessie asked. "Do please have waxed floors. I
dote on waxed floors, don't you, Mr. James?"
"Not especially; but I'm pretty apt to slip on them. _Is_ it about
floors, Jill?"
"Yes, but chiefly about the best way to build them--their
construction."
[Illustration: A PROMISE OF SOCIAL SUCCESS.]
"I thought the architect was to settle questions of construction to
suit himself."
"He is, and this topic he writes 'concerns construction, cost, use and
design, and is, therefore, one on which we may properly take counsel
together.'"
"How condescending!"
[Illustration: A REASONABLE HOPE.]
"I suppose you would object to iron girders with brick arches between
them on account of their cost, but I hope to see rolled iron beams for
brick dwelling-houses so cheaply made that they will be commonly used
instead of wood. Such iron ribs, with the brick arches or other masonry
between them, might well form the finish of the ceilings, and if we
were accustomed to see them, our frail lath and plaster would seem
stale, flat and combustible in comparison. The usual mode of making
floors of thin joists set edgewise, from one to two feet apart, with
one or two thicknesses of inch boards on the top to walk upon, and
lathing underneath to hold the plastering, is perhaps the most
economical use of materials. A more satisfactory construction would be
to use larger beams two or three times as far apart, laying thicker
planks upon them and dispensing with plastering altogether, or perhaps
applying it between the timbers directly to the under-side of the
planks, leaving the beams themselves in sight. If the floor is double
the planks or boards lying directly upon the joists may be of common,
coarse stock, hemlock or spruce, upon which must be laid another
thickness of finished boards. It is for you to say whether the finished
upper floor shall be of common, cheap stock, to be always covered by
carpets, or of some harder wood carefully polished and not concealed at
all, except by occasional rugs.'"
"Oh, I do _hope_ she will have rugs!" Bessie's remarks were semi-asides
addressed chiefly to Jim. "There's nothing so lovely as these oriental
rugs. Kitty Kane had an _exquisite_ one among her wedding presents, and
when her house was built the parlor was made to fit the rug. It makes
it rather long and narrow, but the rug is _too_ lovely."
"'It is also for you to say whether the finished floor, if you have no
carpets, shall consist simply of plain narrow boards or be more
expensively laid in parquetry designs. In the latter case I shall claim
the privilege of choosing the pattern.'"
"Why should he trouble himself about the pattern of the wood floors any
more than he would about the style of the carpets?"
"He would probably say, because the floors are a part of the house for
which he is making the plans and will last as long as the house itself,
while the carpets are subject to changing fashions and will soon return
to their original dust. But he may attempt to dictate in regard to
carpets if we give him a chance."
[Illustration: FLOORS AS THEY ARE.]
[Illustration: FLOORS AS THEY MIGHT BE.]
"Undoubtedly--to the extent of pitching them out of the window."
"In laying double floors one simple matter must not be neglected. The
under, or lining boards, which are usually wide and imperfectly
seasoned, should be laid _diagonally_ upon the joists; otherwise in
their shrinking and swelling they will move the narrow finished boards
resting upon them and cause ugly cracks to appear, even though the
upper floor is most carefully laid and thoroughly seasoned. The liberal
use of nails is another obvious but often neglected duty of
floor-makers, who seem, at times to act upon the supposition that as a
floor has nothing to do but lie still and be trodden upon, it only
needs to be laid in place and let alone. This may be true of stone
flagging; it is far from being true of inch boards, that have an
incurable tendency to warp, twist, spring and shake. Lining floors,
especially, whatever their thickness, should be nailed--spiked is a
more forcible term--to every possible bearing and with generous
frequency; to be specific, say every three inches. The finished hoards
must also be secured by nails driven squarely through them. If you
object to the appearance of nail heads the boards may be secured by
nails driven through the edges in such way that they will be out of
sight when the floor is finished; but this should never be done except
by skillful and conscientious workmen. There is no excuse for this
"blind" nailing in floors that are to be covered by carpets, and it is
seldom desirable under any circumstances. All thorough nailing adds
greatly to the strength, and will alone prevent the creaking of the
boards, so annoying in a sick room and so discouraging to burglars.'"
"Whatever else we do we must make it all right for the burglars. Tell
him we will have floors that can be used either way, with rugs or
without, with matting, with carpets, or with nothing at all but their
own unadorned loveliness. Those in the chambers, where there is not
much wear and tear, may be of common clear pine, and we can paint or
stain a border around the edges. The others ought to be of harder wood,
and, as they will last as long as we shall need floors, we can afford
to have them cost rather more than a good carpet, perhaps thirty or
forty cents a square foot."
"I don't see the necessity for that," said Jill, who had a frugal
mind--at times. "I know they will outlast a great many carpets, but it
is considerable work to keep a bare floor in order--or rather to put it
in order--which must be taken into account; and, as for saving the
expense of carpets, we shall be likely to spend twice as much for rugs
as the carpets would cost. However, extravagance in rugs is not the
fault of the hard-wood floors and ought not to be charged against them.
We might have a few parquetry floors, but for most of the rooms plain
narrow strips, with a pretty border, will be good enough. What do you
think about it, Jim?"
While Jim was preparing to say that he didn't think he knew much about
such things, there came a crash on the floor above, followed by loud
and incoherent observations by the chambermaid. The chandelier began to
shake, as that substantial domestic fairy flew through the passage that
led to the back stairs, at the head of which she was distinctly heard
to exhort the cook in good set terms to "hurry up with the mop, for the
water-jug was upset and the mistress would be raving if the water came
through the ceiling."
The quartette below listened with conflicting emotions. Jill was
indignant, Bessie horrified--apparently, Jim greatly amused, and Jack
sublimely indifferent. "If there's anything I _despise_," said Jill,
"it is a house that makes a human being seem like an elephant, and
where I can't say my prayers or move a chair in my own room without
rousing the entire household."
"There's one good thing about it," said Jim pleasantly. "You can't help
knowing what is going on in your own house."
"Spoken like a man and a brother, James. You always go to the root of a
matter. I like to keep posted. No skeletons and gunpowder plots for me.
I had this house made so on purpose." Whereat they all laughed and
again took up the floor question, while the sound of hurrying feet and
the rattling of domestic implements went on overhead, and the
chandelier trembled with the jarring floors.
"I suppose forty dollars' worth of timber originally added to these
floors would have made them so firm that we might drive a caravan
across them without shaking the building. We will, at least, have solid
floors in the new house; but the architect informs us that 'effectual
deafening of the floors and partitions necessarily adds considerably to
their cost, since the walls and ceilings must be virtually double or
filled with some light porous material. The construction I have
described for making the house fireproof, or nearly so, would also make
it comparatively sound-proof. It would prevent the passage of any
reasonable in-door noises, though it might not withstand the stamping
of heavy steel-shod feet. Indeed, the question of bare, hard-wood
floors is, in one of its aspects, rather a question of boots. It is
most unreasonable to say the floors are noisy and slippery when the
fault lies rather in the hard, stiff, awkward receptacles in which our
feet are imprisoned. If we are ever clad from head to foot in the robes
of a perfect civilization, we shall doubtless find smooth bare floors
for general use more satisfactory than any kind of rugs, mats or
carpets.'
"And now," said Jill, "we will leave the rest of this interminable
letter for a more convenient season and see what our indefatigable aunt
has sent as the latest and best thing in domestic architecture. If you
will take the plans and follow the description, I will read the letter
straight through, though it will doubtless contain more or less advice
not strictly pertinent to house-building. Here it is:
"MY DEAR JILL: On further reflection I have concluded that the
little cottage plans which I sent last will not answer. I doubt
whether you and Jack have sufficient independence and
originality to make a success of living; even temporarily, in a
small, unpretending cottage. It requires unusual strength of
character'--
"Listen, Jack.
--to establish and maintain a high social standing with no
adventitious aids. You cannot at present afford a large
establishment, but you must have one that is striking and
elegant. I was first attracted to this house by its external
appearance--not especially the form, but the material, as we
often see a lady of inferior _physique_ whose rich and tasteful
attire makes her the observed of all observers."
[Illustration: BRICKS AND BOULDERS ON GRANITE UNDERPINNING.]
"Aunt Melville is inclined to be dumpy, and is immensely proud of her
taste in dress.
"'The walls near the ground--the underpinning, I suppose--is of
solid granite blocks, irregular in size, rough and rugged in
appearance. Indeed, the impression is of exceeding solidity and
strength, perhaps because the walls slope backward as they
rise. The first story is also of stones, but such peculiar
stones as I never expected to see in a dwelling house,
precisely like those used in the country for fences.'"
"How exquisite!" exclaimed Bessie, clapping her hands in ecstacy.
"'Some of them seemed to be covered with the gray lichens that
are found growing on rocks,--'
"How delicious!"
"'--but I very much fear these will be destroyed by the action
of the lime in the mortar. The stones vary in color, and at a
little distance the effect is like a rich mosaic. The corners
of the house and the sides of the windows are made of
peculiarly dark, rough-looking bricks that harmonize well with
the general tone of the stone walls. The second story is of
wood, covered with shingles that have not been painted, but
simply oiled, and they have turned a dark reddish-brown. I
found on inquiry that they are California red wood. The roof is
of red tiles, and the chromatic effect of the entire building
is very charming and aristocratic.'"
"That would suit _us_ perfectly," said Jack, "but I think our
aristocratic aunt is more tiresome than the architect. Jim is asleep
and Bessie is on the verge of slumber." But just at that moment Bessie
gave a piercing scream and bounded from the sofa in uncontrollable
affright, while an army of reckless June bugs came dashing in through
the open, unscreened windows.
CHAPTER XII.
FROM MATHEMATICS TO ANCIENT BRIC-A-BRAC.
Taking advantage of the incursion of the June bugs, Jim withdrew in
good order, and Bessie shortly after retired with her tin candlestick.
"Do you seriously intend to allow that pair of incompatibles to go off
to-morrow looking for old furniture and antiquated household
implements?" asked Jill.
"Most certainly I do. It will he the greatest fun in the world. I only
wish we could go as invisible spectators; but, on the whole, we shall
best enjoy imagining what they will say or do if left to their own
devices, knowing, as we should, that our presence would prevent some of
their wildest absurdities. I'm awfully sorry they are not going to
build and furnish a house somewhere in this vicinity, according to
their combined notions."
"And I am extremely sorry you cannot take your thoughts from Bessie
long enough at least to hear the conclusion of Aunt Melville's letter."
"My dear, like John Gilpin, 'of womankind I do admire but one.' I shall
listen with undivided attention to whatever you lay before my ears.
Pray go on."
"'I was fortunate enough to get a drawing of the interior of
the reception hall, which, while it is simple and inexpensive,
is also dignified and impressive. Houses often resemble
people, and you will easily recall among your friends certain
ones who, without being either wealthy or brilliant, are still
very impressive. The other rooms which we visited are ample for
your needs, as you will find it far more advantageous to
entertain but few people at a time, and those of the best
society, than to have larger and more indiscriminate
gatherings. The amount of room in the house is surprising; but
that, of course, is because it is so nearly square.'"
"That is feminine logic. A man would have said that the size of a house
determines the amount of room it contains."
"Undoubtedly he would; but it does not," said Jill, decidedly. "I can
show you houses that look large and _are_ large, that make great
pretensions in point of style, that cost a great deal of money, and yet
have no room in them. They have no place for the beds to stand, no room
for the doors to swing, no room for a piano, no room for a generous
sofa, no room for the book-cases, no room for easy stairs, no room for
fireplaces, no room for convenient attendance at the dining-table, no
room for wholesome cooking, no room for sick people, no room for fresh
air, no room for sunlight, no room for an unexpected guest. They have
plenty of rooms, apartments, cells--but no real, generous, comfortable
house room."
"I suppose Aunt Melville refers to the mathematical fact that a house
forty feet square contains more cubic feet than the same length of
walls would hold in a more elongated or irregular shape."
"By the same rule an octagon or circle would be better still, which is
absurd. No; her feminine logic is no worse than yours, and no better.
The amount of room a house contains depends neither upon its size
nor its shape. Her analogy, too, is at fault when she implies that the
outside of a house bears the same relation to the interior that
clothing bears to the person who wears it. The art of the tailor and
dressmaker has at present no other test of merit than fashion and
costliness, elements to which real art, architectural or otherwise, is
always and absolutely indifferent. The external aspect of the house
should be the natural spontaneous outgrowth of its legitimate use and
proper construction, as face, form and carriage express the character
of each individual."
[Illustration: NOT BRILLIANT BUT IMPRESSIVE.]
[Illustration: WOODEN RICHNESS.]
Jill spoke with unwonted seriousness and a wisdom beyond her years.
Even Jack was impressed for the moment, and expressed a wish to tear
down some of the ornamental appendages from his own house. "The
piazzas are well enough--that is, they would be if they were twice as
wide--but the observatory is good for nothing, because nobody can get
into it to observe, unless he crawls along the ridge-pole, and I never
did know what all that mess of wooden stuff under the eaves and about
the windows was for. I suppose it was intended to give the house a
richer look."
[Illustration: NO WASTE OF WOOD.]
"Yes, it enriches it just as countless rows of puffs, ruffles and
flounces, made of coarse cotton cloth with a sewing machine and piled
on without regard to grace or comfort, would 'enrich' a lady's dress."
"I thought you objected to the dress anology?"
"I do, positively, but it appears to have been the theory accepted by
modern architects almost universally. I don't see. Jack, that your
house is any worse than others in this respect, and I have no doubt it
will 'sell' all the better for the superfluous lumber attached to the
outside walls."
"Thank you, my dear! That is the first good word you have spoken for
it. Well, there is one comfort; I am convinced that you didn't commit
the reprehensible folly of marrying me for my house."
"No, indeed, Jack. It was pure devotion; a desperate case of elective
affinity."
"And yet we are happily married! _We_ shall never do for the hero and
heroine of a modern romance. There isn't a magazine editor or a book
publisher that would look at us for a moment."
"Let us be thankful--and finish our letter.
"'I am anxious, as you know, my dear niece, that you should,
begin life in a manner creditable to the family, and I trust
you will allow no romantic or utilitarian notions to prevent
your conforming to the requirements of good society. This
house, in all such respects, will be perfectly satisfactory. I
have bought the plans for you from the owner, and I hope you
will accept them with my best wishes.'
"And that is all, this time. Aunt Melville's notion of a house seems to
be a place for entertaining the 'best society.' Her zeal is certainly
getting the better of her conscience and judgment. She cannot honestly
buy the plans from the owner of the house, because he never owned them;
they belong to the architect, and she ought to know better than to
advise the use of material that would have to be brought at great
expense from a long distance. If cobble-stones and boulders were
indigenous in this region, and old stone fences could be had for the
asking, I should like to use them, but they are not. It is also evident
that she did not penetrate far into the interior of the house or she
would have discovered an unpardonable defect--the absence of 'back'
stairs. I do not think it very serious in such a plan, where the one
flight is near the centre of the house and is not very conspicuous,
but Aunt Melville would lie awake nights if she knew there were no back
stairs for the servants."
[Illustration: FIRST FLOOR OF THE PROMISE.]
The next morning Jim appeared with the express wagon, and Bessie
climbed upon the high seat beside him under the big brown umbrella, her
Gainsborough hat encircled with a garland of white daisies, huge
bunches of the same blossoms being attached somewhat indiscriminately
to her dress by way of imparting a rural air, and together they drove
off in search of old and forgotten household gods. Jill had suggested
sending them out to investigate, reporting what they found, and
purchasing afterward if thought best, but Jack urged that it would be
wiser to secure their treasures at once, lest the thrifty farmers,
finding their old heir-looms in demand, should mark up the prices while
they were deliberating--a view with which Bessie fully concurred.
[Illustration: SECOND FLOOR OF THE PROMISE.]
Beguiling the way with the duet that is always so delightful to the
performers, whatever the audience may think of it, they followed the
pleasant country roads for many miles without finding a castle that
seemed to promise desirable plunder. A worn-out horseshoe lying in the
road was their first prize. It presaged good luck, and was to be gilded
and hung above the library door. At length they came to a typical old
farm-house, gray and weather-beaten, but still dignified and well cared
for. The big barns stood modestly back from the highway, and the yard
about the front door, enclosed by a once white picket fence, was filled
with the fragrance of cinnamon roses and syringas. As they drove up at
the side of the house across the open lawn, the close cropping of which
showed that the cows were wont to take their final bite upon it as they
came to the yard at night, they encountered an elderly man carrying a
large jug in one hand and apparently just starting for the fields with
some refreshing drink for the workmen.
"Good morning, sir," said Jim, touching his hat. Bessie smiled and
asked, "Are you the farmer?"
"Wal, yes ma'am; I suppose I am. Leastways I own the farm and get my
living off from it as well as I can--same as my fathers did afore me."
"How lovely! Have you got any old--I mean, can you give us a drink of
water? We--we happen to be passing and we're very thirsty."
"Just as well as not. The well is right behind the house. You can jump
down and help yourselves."
"You don't mean jump down the well," said Jim, laughing.
"Not exactly. Will your horse stand?"
"Oh, yes."
When Bessie saw the old well-sweep, which for some unaccountable reason
had not been swept away by a modern pump, she exclaimed in a stage
whisper: "Wouldn't it be glorious if we could carry it home?"
Jim found the cool water most refreshing and thought he would rather
carry home the well.
"What an enormous wood pile," Bessie continued aloud, in a desperate
endeavor to lead up to andirons by an unsuspicious route. "Do you burn
wood?"
"Not so much as we used to. The women folks think they must have it to
cook with, but we use coal a good deal in the winter."
"Don't you have fireplaces?" was the next innocent question.
"Plenty of 'em in the house, but they're mostly bricked up. It takes
too big a wood pile to keep 'em going."
"So you use stoves instead; I suppose it is less trouble. Oh, and that
reminds me, have you any old andirons, anywhere around?"
"Shouldn't be surprised if there was. Yes, there's one now, hangin' on
the gate right behind you."
Bessie, as she afterwards declared, was almost ready to faint at this
announcement, but on turning to look she saw indeed, hanging by a chain
to keep the gate closed, a dumpy, rusty, cast-iron andiron.
"Should you be willing to sell it for old brass? Isn't there a mate to
it somewhere? They generally go in pairs, don't they?"
"No, I shouldn't want to sell it for old brass, because you see it's
iron. Most likely there was a pair of 'em once, but there's no tellin'
where t'other one is now. Maybe in the suller and maybe in the garret."
"Please could we go up in the garret and look for it? We will be very
careful."
The worthy man, considerably puzzled to know what sort of angels he was
entertaining unawares, obtained permission from the "women folks," sent
a boy off with the jug of drink and showed his callers to the topmost
floor of the house.
"Oh, oh! If there isn't a real spinning-wheel. This passes my wildest
anticipations," murmured Bessie to Jim; then, restraining her
enthusiasm for fear of spoiling a bargain, she inquired aloud: "Do any
of your family spin?"
"No, no; not now-a-days. My old mother vised to get the wheel out now
and then, when I was a youngster, but it's broke now and part of it is
lost."
"Would you sell it?"
"If it isn't all here--" Jim began, but Bessie checked him and eagerly
accepted the old wheel, which had lost its head and two or three
spokes, for the moderate sum of one dollar.
Rummaging among old barrels, Jim found the missing half of the pair of
andirons. One broken leg seemed to add to its value in Bessie's eyes
and she quickly closed a bargain for them at fifteen cents, which their
owner, after "hefting" them, "guessed" would be about their value for
old iron. One old chair, minus a back and extremely shaky as to its
legs, and another that had lost a rocker and never had any arms, were
secured for a nominal price, and Bessie's attention was then attracted
to a tall wooden vessel hooped like a barrel, but more slender, "big at
the bottom and small at the top," which proved to be an old churn. Jim
objected to this until his companion explained how it could be
transformed by a judicious application of old gold and crimson into a
most artistic umbrella stand, while the "dasher" would make a striking
ornament for the hall chimney-piece. As they were about to depart with
their treasures, the honest farmer invited them to look at a ponderous
machine five or six feet high and nearly as broad--a horrid monster,
misshapen and huge, that stood in the back chamber over the wood-shed.
It was a cheese-press. "How magnificent!" whispered Bessie, and then,
turning to their host, inquired--"Do you use it every day?"
"Oh, law, no! Hain't used it this twenty years. Make all the cheese at
the factory. It's kind of a queer old thing and I thought maybe you
would like to see it. 'Tain't likely you will ever see another just
like it."
"_Would_ you be willing to sell it?"
"Of course, I'd be willing enough, only it don't seem just right to
sell a thing that ain't good for anything but firewood. However, if you
really want it you may have it for a dollar and a-half, and I'll have
the hired men load it up for you."
"Now, really, Miss Bessie," said Jim, when the farmer had gone to call
the men, "don't you think it's rather a clumsy affair? We can hardly
get it into the express wagon, and I don't see where they can put it if
we carry it home."
"Clumsy! no, indeed, it's _massive_, it's _grand_! There will be plenty
of room in the new house. They will have one entire room for
bric-a-brac."
"But what can they _do_ with it? They won't make cheese."
"Can't you see what a _delicious_ cabinet it will make? These posts and
things can all be carved and decorated, and it will be perfectly
_unique_. There isn't such a cabinet in the whole city of New York. Oh,
I think our trip has been an _immense_ success already. I shall always
believe in horseshoes after this; but _isn't_ it a pity we can't carry
home the well-sweep?"
The huge machine had to be taken from the shed chamber in sections, but
was properly put together again in the wagon by the hired men, and made
the turnout look like a small traveling juggernaut. Just before
starting: Bessie espied, leaning against the fence, a hen-coop from
which the feathered family had departed, and explaining to Jim that if
the sides were painted red and the bars gilded it would be a charming
ornament for the front porch, persuaded him to add that to their
already imposing load. Then they departed, leaving the farmer and his
men in doubt whether to advertise a pair of escaped lunatics or accept
their visitors as "highly cultured" members of modern society.
When they reached home Jack had just come in from the office. He looked
out of the window as they drove up, felt his strength suddenly give
way, and rolled on the floor in convulsions.
"Less than five dollars for the whole lot, did you say, Jim? I wouldn't
have missed _seeing_ that load for fifty."
The next day was Sunday. Monday afternoon Bessie went home.
CHAPTER XIII.
ECONOMY, CLEANLINESS AND HEALTH.
"Dirt is matter out of place," quoted Uncle Harry, in one of his
erratic epistles which Jack and Jill always read with interest if not
profit. "When you find anything that seems unclean or offensive in any
part of your house, remember this: the fault is not in the thing
itself, but in your ignorant or thoughtless management. There isn't a
material thing in the universe, whatever its name or characteristic
qualities maybe; not a flaunting weed nor an unseen miasmatic vapor,
which is not created for some good and wise purpose. It is for us to
learn those purposes. The grand secret of safe and comfortable living
lies in keeping yourself and everything about you in the right place. I
hear much of the dangers and annoyances that arise from modern
plumbing. I am not surprised by them; on the contrary, I wonder they
are not more numerous and fatal, since nothing is more inconsistent
with the first principles of comfort and health than our relations to
these 'modern conveniences.' Instead of disposing of what are
incorrectly called waste materials according to nature's modes, we
persist in defying her examples and her laws, even after we fully
understand them, and, in the vain hope of adding to our own case,
bring upon ourselves untold calamities. 'Earth to earth' is a mandate
that cannot be disregarded with impunity. The infinite laboratories of
nature welcome to their crucibles all the strange and awful elements
which we fail to comprehend and against which we wage a futile warfare.
If all these miscalled 'wastes' that we find so hurtful and offensive
when out of place in and around our homes could be consigned to the
bosom of mother earth the moment they seem to us worthless, they would
be at once changed to life-giving forces, out of which forms of
freshness and beauty would arise to fill us with delight. They are
willing to serve us whenever we give them an opportunity. The one
direct and infallible mode of doing that is to put them in the ground
before they have a chance to work us injury. If we bury them, or,
rather, plant them, they will bring forth, some thirty, some sixty,
some an hundredfold.
[Illustration: NO PLACE FOR SECRET FOES.]
"It is my impression that sewers were originally invented by the Evil
one. He couldn't drag men down to his dominions fast enough, so he
moved a portion of his estate to this planet, and lest its true
character should be discovered, buried it under paved streets and
flowery parks. We might easily and quietly put these crude materials
into convenient receptacles, to be carried where they will bless the
world by making two ears of corn grow where one grew before. This we
could do, each one for ourselves, or more advantageously by cooperating
with one another. We are too wasteful, too indolent, too ignorant.
Tempted by the invisible sewers we imprison these misplaced and
inharmonious elements for a time in lead or iron pipes, while they grow
more hostile, occasionally escaping by violence or stealth into our
chambers, and then with many nice contrivances and much perishable
machinery we try to wash them away with a bucket of water. Not to carry
them where they will do any good, not to put them out of existence, but
simply to hide them: to send them out of our immediate sight, and very
likely into some greater mischief. The system is radically wrong, and
while many of its existing evils may be averted, they cannot all be
removed till we make our attacks from a different base. Improving
sewers, like strengthening prison walls, is a good thing if the
institutions remain; to prevent the need of maintaining them would be
better still. Three-fourths of the solid wastes that proceed from
human dwellings--scraps of food, waste paper, worthless vegetables,
worn-out utensils, bones, weeds, old boots and shoes, whatever
unmanageable and unnamable rubbish appears--ought to be at once
consumed by fire, for which purpose a small cremating furnace should be
found in every house. A similar trial by fire would reduce a large part
of the liquids and semi-liquids to solid form to be also consumed, and
the rest, absorbed by dry earth or ashes, could easily be transported
to the barren fields that await the intelligence and power of man to
transform them into blooming gardens.
"Of the usual modes of bringing water to our houses to wash away these
things I know but little, because there is but little to be known.
Complications and mysteries are not to my taste. I find no satisfaction
in overthrowing a man of straw, and am comparatively indifferent to the
rival claims of patentees and manufacturers, except as they promise
good material, faithful workmanship and moderate prices.
"The one thing needful, if we adopt the hydraulic method of carrying
away these waste substances, is a smooth cast-iron pipe running from
the ground outside the house in through the lower part and up and out
through the roof. It should be open at both ends, and so free from
obstruction that a cat, a chimney-swallow or a summer breeze could pass
through it without difficulty. I would, however, put screens over the
open ends to keep out the cats and the swallows. The purifying breezes
should blow through in summer and winter without let or hindrance, and
to promote their circulation I would, if possible, place the pipe
beside a warm chimney. Yet if the air it contains should sometimes move
downward it will do no special harm; anything is better than
stagnation. Into this open pipe, which should be not only water-tight
but air-tight through its entire length, all waste-pipes from the house
should empty as turbid mountain torrents pour into the larger stream
that flows through the valley. (Fig. 1.) Now, unless the upward draught
through this large pipe is constant and strong, you will see at once
that the air contained in it (which we must treat as though it were
always poisonous) would be liable to come up through these branches
into the rooms, where they stand with open mouths ready to swallow
whatever is poured into them. It is necessary, therefore, to build
dams across them that will allow water to go down but prevent air from
going up. These dams are called 'traps.' They are intended to catch
only hurtful elements that might seek to intrude. It often happens that
those who set them get caught, for they are not infallible. Whatever
the form or patent assumed by these water-dams, they amount to a bend
in the pipe rilled with water. (Fig. 2.) Sometimes a ball or other form
of valve is used, but the water is the mainstay.
[Illustration: Fig. 1.]
[Illustration: Fig. 2.]
"Theoretically, this is the whole machinery of safe, 'sanitary'
plumbing: A large open pipe kept as clean and free as possible, into
which the smaller drains empty, these smaller drains or waste-pipes
having their mouths always full, and being able, so to speak, to
swallow in but one direction. Everything can go down; nothing can come
up. That all these pipes shall be of sound material, not liable to
corrosion; that the different pieces of which they are composed shall
be tightly joined; that they shall be so firmly supported that they
will not bend or break by their own weight, or through the changes of
temperature to which they are subject, and that they shall be, if not
always in plain sight, at most only hidden by some covering easily
removed, are points which the commonest kind of common sense would not
fail to observe.
"Practically, there are weak spots in the system, even if plumbers were
always as honest as George Washington---before he became a man, and as
wise as Solomon--before he became discouraged. A water barricade,
unless it is as wide as the English Channel, is not a safeguard against
dangerous invasion. A slight pressure of air, as every boy blowing soap
bubbles can show you, will force a way through a basin full, and the
same thing would happen if there should chance to be a backward current
of air through these pipes, with this difference, that while the soap
bubbles are harmless beauties, these may be filled with the germs of
direful diseases. Still another danger to which this light water-seal
is exposed is that a downward rush of water may cause a vacuum in the
small pipes, somewhat as the exhaust steam operates the air-brakes, and
empty the trap, leaving merely an open crooked pipe. Both these weak
points may be strengthened by a breathing hole in the highest part of
the small pipe below the trap. This must, of course, have a ventilating
pipe of its own, which, to be always effectual, should be as large as
the waste-pipe itself. (Fig. 3.)
[Illustration: Fig 3.]
[Illustration: Fig 4]
"Now, if the water that fills these traps and stops the open mouths of
the drains were always clean, there would be no further trouble from
this source. Unfortunately it is not; and although constant
watchfulness might keep it so, the safety that only comes from eternal
vigilance is an uncomfortable sort of safety--if we have too much of
it life becomes a burden. This particular ill might be remedied by some
contrivance whereby the upper ends of the waste-pipes should be
effectually corked--not simply covered, but _corked_ as tightly as a
bottle of beer--at all times except when in actual use. This would
doubtless be more troublesome, but indolence is at the bottom of most
of our woes: our labor-saving contrivances bring upon us our worst
calamities. Even this thorough closing of the outlet of washbasins and
bath-tubs, as they are usually made, would be of little avail, for they
are furnished with an 'overflow' (Fig. 4), through which exhalations
from the trap would rise, however tightly the outlet might be sealed.
It is also customary and doubtless wise, considering our habit of doing
things so imperfectly the first time that we have no confidence in
their stability, to place large basins of sheet-lead under all plumbing
articles, lest from some cause they should 'spring a leak' and damage
the floors or ceilings below them. One strong safeguard being better
than two weak ones, I would dispense with the 'overflow' and arrange so
that when anything ran over accidentally the lead basin or 'safe'
should catch the water and carry it through an ample waste-pipe of its
own to some inoffensive outlet. This would perhaps involve setting the
plumbing articles in the most simple and open fashion--which ought
always to be done. 'Cabinets,' cupboards, casings and wood finish, no
matter how full of conveniences, or how elegantly made, are worse than
useless in connection with plumbing fixtures, which, for all reasons,
should stand forth in absolute nakedness. They must be so strongly and
simply made that no concealment will be necessary.
"One more danger closes the list, so far as the system is concerned.
Even if the water in the traps is clean and inoffensive it will
evaporate quickly in warm weather, and then the prison door is open
again. This adds another vigil which we can never lay aside if we must
have plumbing and water traps. The burden may be somewhat
lightened--since we are prone to forgetfulness as stones to fall
downward--by using traps made of glass and leaving them in plain sight.
[Illustration: Fig. 5.]
"I conclusion, I wish to remind you that the lower end of the main
drain must be protected from the iniquity of the sewer or cesspool to
which it runs by another trap, or dam, just below the open pipe that
admits fresh air from outside the house (Fig. 5), and also, as I have
before remarked, that the system is wrong. The rising tide of
civilization will some time wash it all away."
"Uncle Harry's notion of reform," said Jack, after the long letter had
been read, "seems to be to blow the universe to pieces and then put it
together again on a new and improved plan. It strikes me we had better
fight it out on this line and try to straighten the evils we know
something about rather than invent new ones. If we had begun on that
track and tried to utilize the waste materials on strictly economical
principles, perhaps by this time our methods and machinery would have
been so far perfected that the real or imaginary evils of modern
plumbing would not have existed. It seems a pity to throw away all we
have accomplished and begin again."
"That is a part of the price paid for progress," said Jill. "Stage
coaches are useless when steam appears, and locomotives must go to the
junk shop when electricity is ready to be harnessed. But I'm afraid we
cannot afford to be pioneers, and I'm sure the neighbors are not ready
to co-operate. We must still 'go by water,' and the important question
is where to send the lower end of the main drain. There is no sewer in
the street, and a cesspool is an atrocity worthy of the darkest ages.
The only safe thing appears to be the sub-surface irrigation plan, for
which, fortunately, there is plenty of room on our lot. This comes very
near to Uncle Harry's notion of 'earth to earth' in the quickest time
possible. If we do it and accept the architect's suggestion in the plan
of the house we shall be reasonably safe from that most mysterious of
all modern foes--sewer-gas."
"I've forgotten the architect's suggestions; in fact, I don't believe
my head is quite equal to housebuilding with all the latest notions.
When _my_ house was built I just told the carpenter to get up something
stylish and good, about like Judge Gainsboro's. He showed me the plans,
I signed the contract, and that was the whole of it. I supposed a house
was a house. Now, before the new house is begun, I'm like Dick
Whittington in the days of his poverty--I've no peace by day or night."
"Poor fellow!"
"I shudder to think what it will he when the house is fairly under way.
I can see five hundred different things at once, but when each one has
five hundred sides and we get up into the hundred thousands, I begin to
feel dizzy. Uncle Harry has settled the plumbing question to his own
satisfaction, so far as first principles are concerned; but who will
tell us what kind of pipes and trimmings and bowls and basins and traps
and plugs and stops and pedals and pulls and cranks and pistons and
plungers and hooks and staples and couplings and brakes and chains and
pans and basins and tanks and floats and buoys and strainers and safes
and bibbs and tuckers we are to adopt? If I should consume midnight oil
during a full four years' course at a college for plumbers I should
still find myself just upon the threshold of the temple of knowledge."
CHAPTER XIV.
SAFE FLUES AND MORE LIGHT.
By a tender but vigorous application of the remedies usual in such
cases, Jack was speedily restored to his wonted equanimity, and Jill,
laying Uncle Harry aside, took up the architect's suggestions
concerning the plumbing, which referred rather to its relations to the
plan of the house than to the details of the work itself.
"A bath-room, with all the plumbing articles it usually contains, must
possess at least three special characteristics. It must be easily
warmed in cold weather, otherwise the annual bill for repairs will be
greater than the cost of coal for the whole house; its walls, floors
and ceilings must be impervious to sound. The music of murmuring brooks
is delightful to our ears, so is the patter of the soft rain on the
roof; but the splashing of water in a, bath-tub and the gurgling of
unseen water-pipes are not pleasant accompaniments to a dinner-table
conversation. Thirdly, it must be perfectly ventilated--not the
drainpipes merely,--but the room itself in summer and in winter. Two of
the above conditions can best be secured by arranging to have this
important room placed in a detached or semi-detached wing; and here
begin the compromises between convenience, cost and safety. It is
convenient to have a bath-room attached to every chamber, and there is
no doubt that this may be done with entire safety, provided you do not
regard the cost. In your plan I have adopted the middle course. There
is one bath-room for all the chambers of the second floor, not too
remote but somewhat retired, and having no communication with any other
room. It is ventilated by a large open flue carried up directly through
the roof; it has also an outside window and inlets for fresh air near
the floor. All the walls and partitions around it will be double and
filled with mineral wool, and the floors will be deafened. The 'house
side' of the water-closet traps will have three-inch iron pipes running
to the ventilating flue beside the kitchen-chimney, a flue that will
always be warm, and therefore certain to give a strong upward draught
at all times, which cannot be said of any other flue in the house, not
even of the main drain, or soil-pipe, which passes up through the roof.
It would be easy to keep other flues warmed in cold weather by
steam-pipes, but in summer you will have no steam for heating purposes.
A 'circulation-pipe' might be attached to a boiler on the kitchen range
for this purpose, but in the present case such a contrivance would cost
more than the iron pipe carried from the bath-room to the flue that is
warmed by the kitchen fire. A good way to build this ventilating flue
is to inclose the smoke-pipe from the range, which may be of iron or
glazed earthen pipe, in a larger brick flue or chamber (Fig. 1),
keeping it in place by bars of iron laid into the masonry. The rising
current of warm air around the heated smoke-pipe will be as constant
and reliable as the trade winds. It will be well, indeed, if all your
chimneys are made in a similar manner; that is, by enclosing
hard-burned glazed pipe in a thin wall of bricks. Such chimneys will
not only draw better than those made in the usual way, but there will
be less danger from 'defective flues.' A four-inch wall of bricks
between us and destruction by fire is a frail barrier, especially if
the work is carelessly done or the mortar has crumbled from the joints.
To build the chimneys with double or eight-inch walls makes them very
large, more expensive, and still not as good as when they contain the
smooth round flues. To leave an air-chamber beside or between them for
ventilating (Fig. 2), is better than to open directly into the
smoke-flue, because it will not impair the draught for the fire, and
there will be no danger of a sooty odor in the room when the
circulation happens to be downward, as it will be occasionally. The
outside chimney, if there is one, should have an extra air-chamber
between the very outer wall and the back of the fireplace to save heat
(Fig. 3), a precaution that removes to a great extent the common
objection to such chimneys. Whatever else you do, let these 'windpipes
of good hospitalitie' have all the room they need. I shall not
willingly carry them off by any devious way to be hidden in an obscure
corner or dark closet, nor yet to give them a more respectable and
well-balanced position on the roof. Like the wild forest trees they
shall grow straight up toward heaven from the spot where they are first
planted. If we happen to want a window where the chimney stands in an
outer wall we will make one between the flues, as one might build a hut
in the huge branches of a mighty oak. It isn't the best place for the
window or the hut, but circumstances may justify it; as, for instance,
when we must have the outlook in a certain direction, but cannot spare
the wall-space for a window beside the chimney. The jambs beside a
window so situated will be very wide, and you may, if you please,
extend the view of the landscape indefinitely by setting two mirrors
_vis-à-vis_ in the opening at either side. This will also send the
sunshine into the room after the sun has passed by the other windows
on the same side of the house. It is rather a pretty fancy, too, when
the outside view does not require a clear window, to set a picture in
colored glass above the mantel, and the same thins: may be arranged in
the sideboard, if it happens to stand against the outer wall. These are
_fancies_, however, which lose their beauty and fitness unless they
seem to have been spontaneously produced. There should be no apparent
striving for effect."
[Illustration: SAFE AND SAVING FLUES.]
[Illustration: SAFE AND SAVING FLUES.]
[Illustration: A PICTURE IN GLASS OVER THE FIREPLACE.]
"I like the idea of setting mirrors in the deep window-jambs, whether
they are in the chimney or out of it," said Jill. "If I was obliged to
live in a room where the sun never shone of its own accord, I would set
a trap for it baited with large mirrors fixed on some sort of a
windlass in a way to send the sunshine straight into my windows."
"Capital! You could do that easily, and if you wanted a green-house on
the north side it would only be necessary to set up a few
looking-glasses to pour a blazing sun upon it all day long. You might
need a little clockwork to keep them adjusted at the right angles, but
Yankee invention ought to be equal to that. I have no doubt we shall
see patent sunshine-distributors in the market very shortly if your
idea gets abroad; in fact, I shouldn't be surprised to hear that a
company proposed to set up mammoth reflectors to keep the sun from
setting at all until he drops into the Pacific Ocean."
[Illustration: GLASS OF MANY COLORS, SHAPES AND SIZES.]
"Well, you may laugh at my invention; I shall surely try it when I am
obliged to live in a house that does not get sunlight in the regular
way. As for the stained glass picture over the chimney-piece, I should
like it for the bright color and because the lamps would make it so
charming from the street outside. I shall also want colored glass in
the upper part of the bay windows. The architect says we can have it
and still keep the lower panes clear and large. He sends some sketches
by way of suggestion, and thinks we may use it in the lower part of
some of the windows to conceal a window-seat or other furniture. I
should prefer screens of some other kind in such places, keeping the
stained glass up where it would show against the sky. He says this
colored glass is not necessarily expensive; that it may be set in
common wood-sash or in lead-sash, as we please, and that it will not
affect the usual opening and closing of the windows. He advises
plate-glass for the larger lights, if we can afford it, not because it
gives the house a more elegant appearance, though that is not a wholly
unworthy motive, but because a beautiful landscape is so much more
beautiful when it can be plainly seen. The instinct that prompts us to
throw the window wide open in order to get a more satisfactory view is
an unanswerable argument in favor of large, clear lights of glass for
windows intended for outlooks."
"And here is an illustration right before us," said Jack. "I am
impelled by a powerful impulse to open the window and see if I can
recognize the lady driving up the street. It wouldn't be good manners,
but I wish the window was plate-glass."
To Jack's astonishment, however, Jill threw open the window and waved
her handkerchief in cordial salutation as Aunt Jerusha drove slowly up
to the house. "Doing her own work" for half a century had not rendered
her incapable of taking and enjoying a carriage ride of fifteen miles
alone to visit her niece.
Like all wise people who are able to give advice, Aunt Jerusha offered
none until it was asked, and then gave only in small doses. She had
never seen the house that Jack built, but had heard much of it from the
friends and relatives who had never underrated Jill's obstinacy in
refusing to accept it as a permanent home.
"I almost wonder at you, Jill, for being so set against it. I'm sure
it's a fine house and cost a good deal of money. There must be some
drawback that doesn't show. I hope It isn't haunted."
"That's it, Aunt Jerusha; it's haunted. Several uncomfortable demons
have taken possession of it and Jill isn't able to exorcise them. It
was a great grief to me at first, and I made a bargain with Jill to
keep still about them, but it is an open secret now and she may tell
you everything."
[Illustration: SHELVES IN THE MIDDLE, CUPBOARDS ABOVE AND BELOW.]
"Very well. I can easily explain the mystery. The mischief began with
the evil spirits of Ignorance and Incompetence. The carpenter who
planned the house knew nothing about our tastes or needs, and the
builder was unable to make a comfortable flight of stairs, safe
chimneys, smooth floors or tight windows. After these two came another
pair, worse than the first--Ostentation and Avarice. They tried to make
a grand display and at the same time a large profit on the job. How
can I exorcise such demons as these except by tearing down the house?"
"Couldn't you sell it, dear? What seem demons to you might appear like
angels of light to some one else," said Aunt Jerusha.
"You are an angel of light to me, Aunt Jerusha," said Jack. "But I
might have known you would stand up for my house."
"Aunt Jerusha, there isn't a closet in the whole establishment," said
Jill, solemnly, knowing that defect to be an architectural sin which
even her aunt's broad charity would fail to cover.
"Oh, Jill! where have you laid your conscience? I can't stay to hear my
house abused. Please show Aunt Jerusha the pantry and the china-closet
and I will flee to the office."
"Why, yes, to be sure you have a very nice buttery and china-cupboard."
"I meant good, generous closets for the chambers. Of course there's a
pantry, but I don't think the arrangement of shelves, drawers and
cupboards is very convenient."
"It seems very liberal."
"Yes, but would you advise me to have the pantry in the new house like
it?"
"Well, no, dear; since you asked me, I wouldn't. It is possible to have
too many conveniences even in a pantry. It is a good plan to have a few
cupboards to keep some things from the dust and others from the light,
but most of our raw materials now-a-days come in tight boxes or cans,
and I find them more handy standing on the shelves than shut up in
drawers. I don't suppose it would be so in your case, dear, but a
drawer sometimes hides very slovenly habits. It is so easy to drop an
untidy thing into a drawer and shove it out of sight. These large
wooden boxes, all built in with their covers and handles, look nice and
handy, but it's hard to clean them out. I would rather have good wide
shelves and light movable tin boxes like those used in the groceries.
You could buy them, I suppose, but I had mine made at the tin-shop to
fit the shelves. I can take them out and wash them any time, and they
never get musty, as wooden boxes will, even with the best of care. But
you mustn't be biased by my old-fashioned notions."
"I think they are very good notions if they are old-fashioned. If we
have cupboards inside the pantry, drawers inside the cupboards, and
boxes and cases inside the drawers, finding the spices is like opening
a nest of. Chinese puzzles. A mechanic would never hide the tools in
his workshop in that way."
"How do you reach the upper shelves?"
"I never reach them, and all that room is wasted. It is worse than
wasted. It is a reservoir for dust and cobwebs."
"Wouldn't it be well, dear, if all the upper part was made into
cupboards for things seldom used?"
"Indeed it would. I think I will have the new pantry made something
like this: low cupboards next to the floor, for things that; need to be
shut up and yet must be handy; on the top of these, which will be not
quite three feet high, a very wide shelf; over this several open
shelves, as high as I can easily reach; and above the shelves, filling
the space to the ceiling, short cupboards entirely around the room for
cracked dishes that are too good to throw away, but are never used: for
ice-cream freezers in the winter, and a great many more things that
belong to the same category--a sort of hospital for disabled or retired
culinary utensils. Now we will look at the china closet, but we shall
need the gas in order to see it in all its glory, and you can tell Jack
it is lovely with a clear conscience."
"I never speak without a clear conscience," said Aunt Jerusha mildly.
CHAPTER XV.
A DANGEROUS RIVAL.
"Dear me," said Aunt Jerusha, as Jill, after displaying the kitchen
pantry, showed her the windowless china closet, elegant with varnished
walnut, plate-glass and silver-plated plumbing, "dear me, this is as
fine as a parlor. It seems a real pity to keep it all out of sight."
"The pity is that it was made so fine. I should not object to polished
walnut in a light room, although cherry, birch or some other
fine-grained, hard, light-colored wood is preferable; but all this
ornamental work, these mouldings, cornices and carved handles are worse
than useless--they are ugly and troublesome. If I can have my own
way--I'm glad Jack isn't here to make comments--I shall have every part
of the new pantries as plain and smooth as a marble slab, with not a
groove or a moulding to hold dust, and never a crack nor a crevice in
which the tiniest spider can hide. The shelves will be thin, light and
strong; some wide and some narrow; a wineglass doesn't need as much
room as a soup tureen; the cupboard doors shall be as plain as doors
can be made, and shall _not_ be hung like these, to swing out against
each other at the constant risk of breaking the glass and of pushing
something from the narrow shelf in front of them. They ought to slide,
one before another, and the front shelf should be wide enough to hold
_lots_ of things when they are handed down from the upper part of the
cupboards."
"I'm sure the little sink must be handy," said Aunt Jerusha, amiably
looking for merits where Jill saw only defects.
"It might be if there was room enough at each side for drainers and for
dishes to stand before and after washing. I don't wonder that Jack's
china is 'nicked' till the edges look like saw teeth; glass and fine
crockery can't be piled up into pyramids even by the most experienced
builders without serious damage to the edges. There ought to be four
times as much space at each side."
"I suppose there wasn't quite room enough."
"There was _always_ room enough. There's enough now outside, and would
have been inside, if the house had been well planned," said Jill rather
sharply.
"These are proper, nice, large drawers."
"They are too nice and too large. Even when they are but half full I
have to tumble their contents all over to find any particular thing,
unless it lies on top. Some drawers ought to be large and some small,
but I don't believe there ever was a man," said Jill vehemently, "who
knew enough to arrange the small comforts and conveniences for
housekeeping. Every day I am exasperated by something which Jack never
so much as noticed. When I explain it he laughs and says it is
fortunate we have so good an opportunity for learning what to avoid,
and all the time I am certain he thinks there will be a great many more
faults in the new house. If there are I shall be sorry it is
fire-proof."
[Illustration: "THE OAKS."]
"Why, Jill, my dear, don't be rash! That doesn't sound like you. You
mustn't set your heart on having things exactly to suit you in this
world. I've lived a great many years, and a good many times I find it
easier to bring my mind to things as they are than it is to make
everything come just to my mind. I've seen plenty of women wear
themselves out for want of things to do with, and I've seen other women
break down from having too many; trying to keep up with all the modern
fashions and conveniences, and to manage their houses with the same
kind of regularity--'system' they call it--that men use in carrying on
a manufacturing business."
"Well, why shouldn't they, Aunt 'Rusha?"
"I'll tell you why, my dear. A business man has a certain, single,
definite thing to do or to make. Every day's work is very much like
that of the day before. He may try to improve gradually, but, in the
main, it is the same thing over and over again. Our home life ought not
to be like that. A man ought not to be merely an engine or a cash-book;
a woman ought to be something more than a dummy or a fashion-plate; our
children should not be like so many spools of thread or suits of
clothes, turned in the same lathe, spun to the same yarn, and cut
according to the same pattern and rule. I'm sure I could never have
done my work and brought up six children without some sort of a
system, or if your uncle had been a bad provider. But I never could
have got on as well as I have if I had given all my mind to keeping
things in order and learning how to use new-fashioned labor-saving
contrivances. There's nothing more honorable for womankind," said Aunt
Jerusha, as she rolled up her knitting and prepared to set out on her
homeward ride, "than housework, but it ain't the chief end of woman,
and unless your house is something more than a workshop or a showcase,
it will always be a good deal less than a home."
Jill hardly needed this parting admonition, but listened to it and to
much more good advice with the respect due to one who, for nearly half
a century, had looked well to the ways of her household, whose helping
hands were always outstretched to the poor and needy, whose children
rose up and called her blessed, and whose husband had never ceased to
praise her. After her departure her niece indulged in a short season of
solemn reflection, striving faithfully to attain to that wisdom which
always knows when to protest against existing circumstances and when to
accept them with equanimity. Ultimately she reached the conclusion
that, while the house that Jack built might indeed be a thoroughly
comfortable home to one who had a contented mind, it was really her
duty in her probationary housekeeping to be as critical as possible.
Among other things the doors came in for a share of her usually amiable
denunciation. She declared they were huge and heavy enough in
appearance for prison cells, yet so loosely put together that their
prolonged existence seemed to be a question of glue. They were swollen
in the damp, warm weather till they refused to _be_ shut, and would
doubtless shrink so much under the influence of furnace heat in the
winter that they would refuse to _stay_ shut. The closet doors swung
against the windows, excluding instead of admitting the light. The
doors of the chambers opened squarely upon the beds, and there seemed
to have been no thought of convenient wall spaces for pictures and
furniture.
[Illustration: OUTSIDE BARRIERS.]
The architect's theory of doors, as expounded in one of his letters,
was simple enough: "Outside doors are barricades; they should be solid
and strong in fact and in appearance. Inner doors, from room to room,
require no special strength; they should turn whichever way gives the
freest passage and throws them most out of the way when they are open.
Seclusion for the inmates is the chief service of chamber doors, and
they should be placed and hung so as _not_ to give a direct glimpse
across the bed or into the room the moment they are set even slightly
ajar. Closet doors are screens simply, and ought to hide the interior
of the closet when they are partially open, as well as when they are
closed. They may be as light as it is possible to make them. In many
houses one-half the doors might wisely be sent to the auction-room and
the proceeds invested in portières, which are often far more suitable
and convenient than solid doors, especially for chamber closets, for
dressing-rooms, or other apartments communicating in suites, and not
infrequently a heavy curtain is an ample barrier between the principal
rooms. It may be well to supplement them, with light sliding doors, to
be used in an emergency, but which being rarely seen, may be
exceedingly simple and inexpensive, having no resemblance to the rest
of the finish in the room. For that matter such conformity is not
required of any of the doors, though it is reckoned by builders as one
of the cardinal points in hard-wood finish that veneered doors must
'match' the finish of the rooms in which they show. This is absurd.
Doors are under no such obligations. They may be of any sort of wood,
metal or fabric. They may be veneered, carved, gilded, ebonized,
painted, stained or 'decorated.' To finish and furnish a room entirely
with one kind of wood, making the wainscot, architraves, cornices,
doors and mantels, the chairs, tables, piano, bookcase, or sideboard,
all of mahogany, oak, or whatever may be chosen--the floors, too,
perhaps, and the picture frames--is strictly orthodox and eminently
respectable; but like the invariable use of 'low tones' in decorating
walls and ceilings, it betrays a sort of helplessness and lack of
courage. Discords in sound, color and form are, indeed, always hateful,
and they are sure to be produced when ignorance or accident strikes the
keys. Yet, on the other hand, neutrality and monotone are desperately
tedious, and it is better to strive and fail than to be hopelessly
commonplace."
[Illustration: INSIDE BARRIERS.]
[Illustration: COMMON UGLINESS.]
[Illustration: SIMPLE GRACE.]
This advice concerned not the doors alone, but referred to other
queries that had been raised as to the interior finish generally.
One evening Jack came home and found Jill "in the dumps," or as near as
she ever came to that unhappy state of mind, the consequence, as it
appeared, of Aunt Melville's zeal in her behalf.
"Why should these plans worry you?" said Jack. "I thought common sense
was your armor and decision your shield against Aunt Melville's erratic
arrows of advice."
"My armor is intact, but, for a moment, I have lowered my shield and it
has cost me an effort to raise it again, I supposed my mind was fixed
beyond the possibility of change, but this is a wonderfully taking
plan. At first I felt that if our lot had not been bought and the
foundation actually begun we would certainly begin anew and have a
house something like these plans. Then it occurred to me that in
building a house that is to be our home as long as we live, perhaps,
it would be the height of absurdity to tie ourselves down to one little
spot on the broad face of this great, beautiful world and live in a
house that will never be satisfactory, just because we happen to have
this bit of land in our possession and have spent upon it a few hundred
dollars."
"Sensible, as usual. What next?"
"Well, this last and best discovery of Aunt Melville's was undoubtedly
made like our own plan to fit a particular site, and it seems beginning
at the wrong end to arrange the house first and then try to find a lot
to suit it."
"I don't see it in that light," said Jack. "I know the architect has
been preaching the importance of adapting the plan to the lot, but if
two thousand dollars are going into the land and eight thousand into
the house, I should say the house is entitled to the first choice."
"Certainly, if it was a city lot, with no character of its own, a mere
rectangular piece of land shut in upon three sides and open at one. But
ours has certain strong points not to be found in any other unoccupied
lot in town. Besides, there are other reasons why it would not answer
for us; but _if_ our lot was right for it, and _if_ we wanted so large
a house, _how_ I should enjoy building it!"
"I don't see anything so very remarkable about the plan," said Jack,
taking up the drawings.
"My dear, short-sighted husband," said Jill with the utmost
impressiveness of tone and manner, "it is a _one-story house_. 'There
shall be no more stairs' sounds almost as delightful as the scriptural
promise of no more sea. And look at the plan itself: The great square
vestibule, or reception-room, with the office at one side--wouldn't
you enjoy that, Jack?--then a few steps higher the big keeping-room,
with a huge fireplace confronting you, and room enough for--anything.
For games, for dancing, for a billiard table, for a grand piano, for a
hammock--or--"
"Say a sewing machine, a spinning-wheel or something useful."
"Anything you like, a studio or a picture gallery, for it is twice as
high as the other rooms, and lighted from the roof. At the right of
this, and with such a great wide door between them that they seem like
two parts of the same room, is the sitting-room, with another great
fireplace in the corner, bay window and a conservatory fronting the
wide entrance to the dining-room, at the farther end of which there is
still another grand fireplace, with a stained-glass window above it.
These three rooms--four, if we count the conservatory--are just as near
perfection as possible. Then see the long line of chambers, closets and
dressing-rooms running around the south and east sides, every one with
a southern window, and all communicating with the corridor that leads
from the keeping-room, yet sufficiently united to form a complete
family suite. The first floor--I mean the _one_ floor--is five or six
feet from the ground, so there can be no dampness in the rooms--and
just think what a cellar! Altogether too much for us."
"Indeed, there isn't. I'd have a bowling alley, a skating rink, a
machine shop, a tennis court, and--a rifle range. Yes, it _is_ a taking
plan, but there are two things that I don't understand. How can you
cover such a big box, and where is the cooking to be done?"
[Illustration: FIRST FLOOR PLAN OF "THE OAKS."]
"The old rule of two negatives applies. Even a one-story house must
have a roof, and the breadth of this makes a roof large enough to hold
not only the kitchen but the servants' room on the same upper level."
"A kitchen up stairs!" exclaimed Jack, for once startled into
solemnity.
"Aunt Melville considers this the crowning glory of the plan. Owing to
this elevation of the cooking range there is no back door, no back
yard, no chance for an uncouth or an unsightly precinct at either side
of the house."
"That would be something worth living for. I think, Jill, we had better
examine these plans a little farther."
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XVI.
A NEW WAY OF GETTING UP STAIRS AND A NEW MISSIONARY FIELD.
"The question of getting up stairs," said Jack, as they continued the
study of the one-story plan, "is at least an interesting one. It seems
to be accepted as a foregone conclusion that modern dwelling houses,
even in the country, where the cost of the land actually covered by the
house is of no consequence, must be two stories at least above the
basement; but I doubt whether this principle in the evolution of
domestic habitations is well established. Between the aboriginal
wigwam, whose first and only floor is the bare earth itself, and the
'high-basement-four-story-and-French-roof' style, there is somewhere
the happy medium which our blessed posterity--blessed in having had
such wise ancestors--will universally adopt as the fittest survivor of
our uncounted fashions. I fancy it will be much nearer to this
one-story house, with the high basement and big attic, than to the
seven-story mansard with sub-cellar for fuel and furnace. Still the
tendency during the last fifty years has been upward. Our grandfathers
preferred to sleep on the ground floor; _we_ should expect to be
carried off by burglars or malaria if we ventured to close our eyes
within ten feet of the ground. Our city cousins like to be two or
three times as high. Under these circumstances building a one-story
house would be likely to prove a flying-not in the face of Providence,
but, what is reckoned more dangerous and discreditable--flying in the
face of custom. Humility isn't popular in the matter of
house-building."
"I am not afraid of custom, and have no objection to a reasonable
humility," said Jill, "but I never once thought of burglars. If a house
has but one floor I think it should be so for from the ground as to be
practically a 'second' floor. The main point is to have all the family
rooms on one level."
"That is, a 'flat.'"
"Yes, one flat; not a pile of flats one above another, as they are
built in cities, but one large flat raised high enough to be entirely
removed from the moisture of the ground, to give a pleasant sense of
security from outside intrusion and to afford convenient outlooks from
the windows. One or two guest rooms, that are not often used, might be
on a second floor, under the roof, if there was space enough."
"But this plan has the servants' chambers, the kitchen and the store
closets all in the roof. Isn't that rather overdoing the matter?"
"Better in the attic than in the basement. It is light, dry and 'airy.'
There is no danger that the odors of cooking will come down, and as for
the extra trouble, a well-arranged elevator will take supplies from the
basement up twenty feet to the level of the kitchen, store-rooms and
pantries as easily as they could be taken the usual distances
horizontally. In brief, a kitchen above the dining-room is at worst no
more 'inconvenient' than below it. Of course, there must be stairs even
in a one-story house, but they would not be in constant use. Instead of
living edgewise, so to speak, we should be spread out flatwise. We
could climb when we chose, but should not of necessity be forever
climbing. Yes, I like this plan exceedingly, not alone for its one
principal floor, but I have always had a fancy for the 'rotunda'
arrangement--one large central apartment for any and all purposes, out
of which the rooms for more special and private uses should open.
Indeed, I don't see how a very large house can be built in any other
way without leaving a considerable part of the interior as useless for
domestic as Central Africa is for political purposes. With _this_
arrangement the central keeping-room, lighted from above, may be as
large as a circus tent, and all the surrounding cells will be amply
supplied with light and air from the outside walls.
[Illustration: LOOKING TOWARD SUNSET.]
[Illustration: NEAR THE TURNING-POINT.]
"According to Aunt Melville's enthusiastic account, the construction of
the house is but little less than marvelous. 'The high walls of the
basement are built of those native, weather-stained and lichen-covered
boulders, the walls above being of a material hitherto unknown to
builders. You will scarcely believe it when I tell you they are nothing
else than the waste rubbish from brickyards, the rejected accumulations
of years--not by any means the unburned, but the overburned, the hard,
flinty, molten, misshapen and highly-colored masses of burned clay
which indeed refused to be consumed, but have been twisted into
shapeless blocks by the fervent heat. Of course, with such
unconventional materials for the main walls it would be a silly
affectation to embellish the exterior of the house with elaborate
mouldings or ornamental wood-work, and the visible details are
therefore plain to the verge of poverty. But as men of great genius can
disregard the trifling formalities of society, so there are no
architectural rules which this house is obliged to respect.'"
[Illustration: A CHOICE OF BALUSTERS.]
"That suits me perfectly," said Jack; "but I am amazed at Aunt
Melville. Never before did she make such a concession even to great
genius. Never before have I felt inclined to agree with her; but the
conviction has grown upon me of late that the new house is in danger of
being too much like other houses. If a fellow is really going in for
reform, I like to have him go the whole figure. What do you say to
beginning anew and building such a house as no mortal ever built
before--something to make everybody wonder what manner of people they
are who live in such a habitation--something to convince our neighbors
that we are no weak-minded time-servers, but are able to be an
architectural as well as domestic law unto ourselves--something to make
them stop and stare--a sort of local Greenwich from which the community
will reckon their longitude--'so many miles from the house that Jill
built'?"
"My dear, did it ever occur to you that you cannot be too thankful for
a wife who is not blown about by every wind of new doctrine? I _do_
like the plan of 'The Oaks' exceedingly, not only for itself, but for
the spirit of it, for its breadth and freedom. It seems to me a
charming illustration of the true gospel of home architecture. There is
no thoughtless imitation of something else that suits another place and
another family. Neither does it appear that the owner tried to make a
vain display for the sake of 'astonishing the natives.' He knew what he
wanted, and built the house to suit his wants, using the simplest, the
cheapest and the most durable materials at hand in the most direct and
unaffected manner. Did you notice in the sketch of the keeping-room
fireplace the little gallery passing across the end of the room above
the entrance to the sitting-room? Probably you thought that was built
for purely ornamental purposes, but it isn't. It is simply the walk
from the kitchen to another part of the attic, which can be most
conveniently reached by this interior bridge. Of course it adds to the
interest and beauty of the room, but it was not made for that purpose,
and, as I understand the matter, it is all the more beautiful because
it was first made to be useful. There is another thing in this
house--the elevator--which, queerly enough, we do not often find in
houses of more aspiring habit, where it would he of even greater value.
It is amazing to me that housekeepers will go on tugging trunks,
coal-hods and heavy merchandise of all kinds up stairways, day after
day and year after year, when a simple mechanical contrivance, moved by
water, or weights and pulleys, would save us from all these heavy
burdens. Think of the bruised knuckles, the trembling limbs that
stagger along with the upper end of a Saratoga 'cottage,' the broken
plastering at the sides, the paper patched with bright new pieces that
look 'almost worse' than the uncovered rents, and the ugly marks of
perspiring fingers."
[Illustration: THE BIG FIREPLACE IN THE KEEPING ROOM.]
[Illustration: ONE WAY TO BEGIN.]
"All of which I have seen and a part of which I have been," said Jack.
"I intended to have a lift in this house, but somehow it was left out."
"Our architect." Jill continued, "must be instructed to arrange not
only an easy staircase, but there must be a paneled wainscot at the
side. We will dispense with elegance in any other quarter, if need be,
in order to have the stairs ample, strong and well protected. I am not
over-anxious to have them ornate, although handsome stairs are very
charming if well placed; like many other beautiful things, they become
incurably ugly when too obtrusive. The architect has sent several
designs of balustrades from which we are to choose, and gives this
advice about the dimensions: 'As you have plenty of room, the staircase
should be four or four and a-half feet wide, so that two people can
easily walk over it abreast, I have arranged to make the steps twelve
inches wide, besides the projection that forms the finish--the
"nosing"--and six inches high; that is, six inches "rise" and twelve
inches "run." Some climbers think this too flat, and perhaps it is in
certain situations; but for homes, for easy, leisurely ascent by
children and old folks. I think it better than a steeper pitch. All
large dwelling-houses, and some small ones, ought to be supplied with
"passenger elevators," at least from the first to the second story.
Those who take the rooms still higher are usually able to make the
ascent in the common way. Such an elevator can undoubtedly be made that
will be safe and economical, especially where there is an ample water
supply.'"
[Illustration: A BROADSIDE OF AN EASY ASCENT.]
"The safety is the most troublesome part of the problem," said Jack;
"and I can think of no way to overcome the danger of walking off the
precipice, when the platform happens to be at the bottom, but by having
the car run up an inclined plane. There would be no more danger of
falling down this than down a common stairway, and the car might be
fixed so it couldn't move up or down faster than a walk or a slow
trot."
"Would you like to experiment in the new house? You may do so--at your
own expense--if you will promise not to spoil the plan. Among the
designs for the stairs there is one that will be of no service to
us--the screen at the foot of the stairs; our 'reception' hall will be
separated from the staircase hall by the chimney and the curtains at
the sides."
"I have an idea," exclaimed Jack, "a truly philanthropic one. You know
we are accumulating a large stock of plans, to say nothing of general
information on architectural subjects, which we cannot possibly use
ourselves, but which ought not to be wasted. Now you know Bessie is
pining for a mission.".
"Bessie has gone home."
"I know, but she will come back if we send for her and tell her that
she and Jim are to be sent out in the express wagon on a benevolent
expedition to the heathens--the uncultured domestic heathens. We can
have some of the architect's letters printed in tract form for them to
distribute, and they can take along these superfluous plans to be
applied where they will be most effective. Take, for instance, this
hall screen, or whatever it may be, with the square staircase behind
it. This would be just the thing for one of those old-fashioned square
houses with the hall running through the middle and the long staircase
splitting the hall in two lengthwise. If Bessie could persuade the
owner of a single one of these old houses to take out the straight and
narrow stairs, move them back, and, by introducing this semblance of a
separation, make a reception hall of the front part, she would feel
that she had not lived in vain. If she could at the same time cause
cashmere shawls and rag carpets to be hung as portières in place of
doors to the front rooms she would be ready for translation."
Jill laughed. "I'm not sure," said she, "but this is a good field for
people of missionary proclivities. Some of these old-fashioned houses
have far more real, artistic excellence than those of the later,
transition periods, and need but slight alterations to be most
satisfactory types of architectural beauty as well as models of comfort
and convenience. Broad, easy stairs, wide doorways and generous
windows, with ample porches and piazzas outside, would transform them
and make them not merely as good as new, but vastly better. Reopening
fireplaces that have been ignominiously bricked up would be another
promising field."
"Oh! I tell you my idea is a capital one. I'll send for Bess this very
day. They shall have Bob and the express wagon a week if they want it.
They shall dispense an esthetic gospel and accumulate ancient
bric-a-brac to their hearts' content. Bessie will be in ecstacies, and
Jim will be in a helpless state of amazement and admiration."
[Illustration: A DIVIDING SCREEN AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS.]
"How perfectly absurd, Jack! I wouldn't allow those children to go off
on such an excursion for all the old houses in America. One would
think you were determined to have an esthetic sister-in-law at all
hazards."
"Never thought of such a thing! But now that you suggest it--"
"I haven't suggested it," said Jill indignantly.
"Well, you put it into my head at all events, and really now it
wouldn't be such a bad idea. Jim is behind the times, artistically
speaking, and needs to be waked up; and as for Bess, she would very
soon learn to be careful how she expressed a longing for the
unattainable, for Jim is a practical fellow, and whatever she wanted he
would go for in a twinkling. Honestly, Jill, it strikes me as a
first-class notion, and I'm glad you suggested it."
"I _didn't_ suggest it, and I think it would be a _dreadful_ thing--I
mean to send them off on another excursion. I am not sure, however, but
we might found an A.B.C.A.M. with the materials and implements in our
possession."
CHAPTER XVII.
THE RIGHT SIDE OF PAINT; A PROTEST AND A PROMISE.
Jack's benevolent ambition to distribute their superfluous plans among
those in need of such aids was strengthened by the receipt of another
roll of drawings, showing designs for the interior work, wainscots,
cornices, architraves, paneled ceilings and such wood finishings as are
commonly found in houses that are built in conventional fashion, with
lathed and plastered walls, trimmed at all corners and openings with
wood more or less elaborately wrought. Of course, it was a large
condescension in the architect to offer such a variety, and contrary to
his avowed determination to decide without appeal all questions of
construction and design, but he appreciated his clients and knew when
to break his own rules and when to insist upon their observance. If
Jill, had required an assortment he would doubtless have suggested that
certain "practical" builders could furnish a full line of ready-made
"artistic" patterns for little more than the cost of the paper on which
they were printed; from these he would have advised her to select her
own designs, as she might have chosen from a medicine chest
sweet-smelling drops or sugar-coated pills of varying hue and
form--the result would doubtless he as satisfactory in one case as in
the other. Since she had not demanded it as an inalienable right he
gave her an opportunity to criticise and select, which she accepted by
no means unwillingly. As a rule, the designs were, in her opinion, too
elaborate and obtrusive. There were too many mouldings, there was too
much carving, and too evident a purpose to provide a finish that should
challenge attention by its extent or elegance. It would require too
much labor to keep it in order, and--it would cost too much. If she
could not have work that was truly artistic, and therefore enduringly
beautiful, whatever changes of fashion might occur, it was her wish to
keep all the essential part of the building and finish modestly in the
background, not attempting to make it ornamental, but relying upon the
furniture for whatever conspicuous ornament or decoration might be
desired. Nothing annoyed her more than an elegantly-finished house
scantily provided with shabby, incongruous and misapplied furniture.
The amiable concession of the architect came near causing a fatal
quarrel, as amiable concessions are apt to do, for he found it almost
impossible to satisfy Jill's taste in the direction of simplicity; he
seemed to feel that he was neglecting his duty if he gave her plain,
narrow bands of wood absolutely devoid of all design beyond a
designation of their width and thickness. Any carpenter's boy could
make such plans. "It would be worse," he wrote, "than prescribing bread
pills and 'herb drink' for a sick man." To which Jill replied in
substance that the needs of the patient are more important than
professional rules.
[Illustration: BITS OF CORNICES.]
Over the first great question, regarding the visible wood work of the
interior, Jack and Jill had held many protracted discussions: should
any of it be painted, or should all the wood be left to show its
natural graining and color? To the argument that unpainted wood is not
only "natural" but strictly genuine and more interesting than paint,
Jack replied that "natural" things are not always beautiful; that
paint, which makes no pretense of being anything but paint, is as
genuine as shellac or varnish, and that if the object is to be
interesting, the bark, the knots, the worm-holes, and, if possible, the
worms themselves should be displayed. "Besides," said he, "if we decide
on hard wood, who shall choose the kinds? There's beech, birch and
maple; cherry, whitewood and ebony; ash and brown ash and white ash and
black ash; ditto oak, drawn and quartered; there's rosewood, redwood,
gopherwood and wormwood; mahogany, laurel, holly and mistletoe; cedar
of Lebanon and pine of Georgia, not to mention chestnut, walnut,
butternut, cocoanut and peanut, all of which are popular and available
woods for finishing modern dwellings. If we choose from this list,
which may be indefinitely extended, the few kinds for which we can find
room in our house, we shall be tormented with regret as long as we both
do live because we didn't choose something else. Now if we paint,
behold how simple a thing it is! We buy a lot of white pine boards, put
them up where they belong and paint them in whatever unnamable hues the
prevailing fashion may chance to dictate. Our boards need not even be
of the best quality; an occasional piece of sound sap, a few hard
knots, or now and then a 'snoodledog'--as they say in Nantucket--would
do no harm. A prudent application of shellac and putty before painting
will make everything right. Then if the fashions change, or if we
should be refined beyond our present tastes and wish to go up higher,
all we should need to lift the house to the same elevated plane
is--another coat of paint. On the other hand, if we had a room finished
in old English oak, growing blacker and blacker every year; in mahogany
or in cheap and mournful black walnut, what could we do if the
imperious mistress of the world should decree light colors? With rare,
pale, faded tints on the walls our strong, bold, heavy hard-wood finish
would be painful in the extreme. We couldn't change the wood and we
couldn't change the fashion."
"If you were not my own husband, Jack, I should say you were dreadfully
obtuse. Concerning _fashions_ in house-building and furnishing I feel
very much as Martin Luther felt about certain, formal religious dogmas.
If we are asked to respect them as a matter of amiable compliance, if
we find them convenient, agreeable and at the same time harmless, then
let us quietly accept them; but, if we are commanded to obey them as
vital, if they are set before us as solemn obligations to be reverenced
as we reverence the everlasting truth, then, for Heaven's sake, let us
tear them in pieces and trample them under our feet, lest we lose our
power to distinguish the substance from the shadow. The moment any
particular style of building, finishing or furnishing becomes a
recognized fashion, that moment I feel inclined to turn against it with
all my might."
"If you were not my own idolized wife, I should say that was 'pure
cussedness.'"
[Illustration: MOULDINGS FAIR TO SEE, BUT HARD TO KEEP CLEAN.]
"On the contrary, it is high moral principle; that is, moral principle
applied to art. It is a simple, outright impossibility for human
beings to have any true perception of art while a shadow of a thought
of fashion remains. It is, indeed, possible that fashion may, for a
moment, follow the straight and narrow road that leads to artistic
excellence, as the fitful breath of a cyclone may, at a certain point
in its giddy whirl, run parallel with the ceaseless sweep of the mighty
trade-winds, but whoever tries to keep constantly in its track is sure
to be hopelessly astray."
"My dear, indignant, despiser of fashion, you know you wouldn't wear a
two-year-old bonnet to church, on a pleasant Sunday morning, for the
price of a pew in the broad aisle."
"Certainly not; that would be both mercenary and irreverent; moreover,
my bonnet has nothing to do with artistic rules. It is not a work of
art or of science, of nature or of grace. It is a conventional signal
by which I announce a friendly disposition toward the follies of my
fellow-creatures--a sort of flag of truce, a badge of my conformity in
little things. I wear it voluntarily and could lay it aside if I
chose."
"Undoubtedly, _if_ you chose. Now, let us resume the original
discussion. I had given one powerful argument in favor of paint when I
was rashly interrupted: here is another--it is much cheaper."
"That would depend," said Jill. "Ash, butternut, cherry and various
other woods cost little, if any more, than the best pine, and the pine
itself is very pretty for chambers."
"Ah, but you forget the labor question. It is one thing to join two
pieces of wood so closely as to leave no visible crack between them,
and quite another to bring them into the same neighborhood, fill the
chasm with putty and hide the whole under a coat of paint. The
difference between these two kinds of joints is the difference between
one stroke and two, between one day's work and five days, between one
thousand dollars and five thousand. My third argument you will surely
appreciate. Paint is more artistic." Here Jack paused to give his
words effect; then proceeded like one walking on stilts. "Pure tones
symphoniously gradated from contralto shadows to the tender brightness
of the upper registers and harmoniously blended with the prevailing
quality--"
[Illustration: FRAGMENTS OF ARCHITRAVES.]
"Oh, Jack! _Don't_ go any farther, you are already beyond your depth.
When you attempt to quote Bessie's sentiments you should have her
letter before you. Perhaps I have a dim perception of the principle
that underlies your thirdly. If so, this room is a pertinent
illustration of it. Instead of all this white paint, if the wood work
had been colored to match the predominant tint in the background of the
paper, or a trifle darker, this being also the general 'tone' of the
carpet, it is easy to see how the coloring of the room would have been
simple and pleasing, instead of glaring and ugly. Yes, your plea for
paint is not without value. I think, however, it would be entirely
possible to stain the unpainted wood to produce any desired symphony,
fugue or discord. It might be unnatural, especially if we wished to
look blue, but it would not conceal the marking and shading of the
grain of the wood which is so much prettier than any moulding or
carving, and vastly easier to keep in order. Your economical arguments
are always worth considering. I think the happy compromise for us will
be to use hard wood in the first story and painted pine in the
chambers, with various combinations and exceptions. The bath-rooms,
halls and dressing-rooms of the second story should of course be
without paint, and we may relieve the solid monotony of the hardwood
finish with occasional fillets or bands of color, painted panels or
any other irregularities we choose to invent. But this is invading the
mighty and troublous realm of 'interior decoration,' from which I had
resolved to keep at a respectful distance until the house is at least
definitely planned in all its details."
[Illustration: A CHOICE OF WAINSCOTS.]
A wise decision, for although what we call in a general way "interior
decoration" is closely allied to essential construction--not
infrequently seems to be a part of it--there is still a sharp though
often unseen line between them that cannot be crossed with impunity.
Artistic construction is at best only second cousin to decoration, and
while we may in building arrange to accommodate a certain style of
furniture or ornament, as Bessie's friend built her parlor to suit the
rug, the result of such contriving is apt to be discouraging if not
disastrous.
"Two things we must surely have," said Jill, "which the architect has
not sent; one, an old fashion, the other, a new one. We must have
'chair rails,' in every room down stairs that has not a solid wainscot,
if I have to make the plans and put them up myself. We must also have
another band of wood higher up entirely around every room in both
stories, to which the pictures can be hung."
"Perhaps the architect will object to this as interfering with his
plans."
"He cannot, for they belong to our side of the house; they are matters
of use, not of design. He may put them where he pleases, within
reasonable limits, and make them of any pattern, with due regard to
cost. He may treat one as part of the dado, the other as a member of
the cornice, if he chooses, but we _must_ have them--they are
indispensable."
"They are also dangerous, because they are fashionable."
"Yes, an illustration of the temporary agreement of fashion and common
sense. But things of real worth do not go out of fashion; fashion goes
out of them; henceforth they live by their own merit and no one
questions their right to be."
"Have you written to Bessie?"
"Written to Bessie? What for?"
"Why, to come and get ready to start on her mission."
"No, indeed; I supposed you had forgotten that absurd notion."
"Not at all absurd. I mentioned it to Jim, and he was delighted.
Offered to go up and escort her down. He said they could go out in a
different direction every day and do a great deal of good in the course
of a week."
"Jack, I am ashamed of you! Don't mention the subject to me again."
"What shall I say to Jim?"
[Illustration: WOOD PANELS FOR WALLS AND CEILINGS, WITH IRREGULARITIES
IN LEATHER, PAINT AND PAPER.]
"You needn't say anything to Jim. Tell him I am going to invite Bessie
to visit us in the new house, and if he is in this part of the world I
will send for him at the same time."
"And that will be a full year, for the house is hardly begun."
"Yes, a full year."
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE HOUSE FINISHED AND THE HOME BEGUN.
It was indeed a full year for Jill before Bessie received the promised
invitation. Not merely full as to its complement of days, but full of
new cares, interests and activities. It is needless to say it was also
a happy year. Building a house for a home is a healthful experience, a
liberal education to one who can give personal attention to it; who has
some knowledge of plans with enough imagination to have a fair
conception of what they will be when executed; who is content to
receive a reasonable return for a given outlay, not anxious to get the
best end of every bargain, nor over-fearful of being cheated; who cares
more for home comfort than for a fine display, and whose soul is never
vexed by the comments of Mrs. Grundy, nor tormented by the decrees of
fashion.
The question was raised, whether the house should be built by contract
or by "day's work." The worldly-wise friends advised the former.
Otherwise they affirmed the cost of the house would exceed the
appropriation by fifty, if not a hundred, per cent., since it would be
for the interest of both architect and builders to make the house as
costly and the job as long as possible. And, while it was doubtless
true that "day work" is likely to be better than "job work," still, if
the plans and specifications were clearly drawn and the contract made
as strong as the pains and penalties of the law could make it, the
contractor might be compelled to keep his agreement and furnish
"first-class" work.
Jill's father settled this point at once. "It is true," said he, "that
the plans and specifications should be clearly drawn, that you may see
the end from the beginning, and it will be well to carefully estimate
the cost, lest, having begun to build, you should be unable to finish.
But I am neither willing to hold any man to an agreement, however
legal it may be, that requires him to give me more than I have paid
for, nor, on the other hand, do I wish to pay him more than a fair
value for his work and material. You cannot avoid doing one of these
two things in contracting such work as your house, for it is
impossible to estimate its cost with perfect accuracy, and no
specifications, however binding, can draw a well-defined line between
'first' and 'second'-class work. A general contract may be the least
of a choice of evils in some cases; it is not so in yours. If you know
just what you want, the right mode of securing it is to hire honest,
competent workmen and pay them righteous wages. If, before the work is
completed, you find the cost has been underestimated, stop when your
money is spent. It may be mortifying and inconvenient to live in an
unfinished house; it is far more so to be burdened with debt or an
uneasy conscience. There is another thing to be remembered: We hear
loud lamentations over the dearth of skillful, trusty laborers. There
is no way of promoting intelligent, productive industry--which is
the basis of all prosperity--but by employing artisans in such a way
that the personal skill and fidelity of each one shall have their
legitimate reward. The contract system, as usually practiced, acts in
precisely an opposite direction. Your house must be built 'by the day'
Jill, or I shall recall my gift." _That_ question was settled. The
good and wise man had previously decided as peremptorily an early
query relating to the plans. When it was known that a new house was to
be built, several architects, with more conceit than self-respect,
proposed to offer plans "in open competition"--not to be paid for
unless accepted--concerning which Jill had asked her father's advice.
[Illustration: THE HOUSE THAT JILL BUILT.]
"What should you think of a physician," said he, "who, on hearing that
you were ill, should hasten to present himself with a prescription and
a bottle of medicine, begging you to read the one, test the other, and,
if they made a favorable impression, give him the job of curing you?
There are such who call themselves physicians; other people call them
quacks, and there is one place for their gratuitous offerings--the
fire. I shall burn any plans that are presented in this way. Choose
your architect at the outset, and give him all possible aid in carrying
out your wishes, but do not employ one of those who must charge a
double price for their actual work in order to work for nothing half
the time. In any other business such a practice would be condemned at
once."
"Isn't it the same thing as offering samples of goods?"
"No, it is offering the goods themselves--the top of the barrel at
that."
Of course this did not apply to the contributions that were prompted by
personal friendship, of which Jill, as we have seen, received her full
share, none of them, excepting the one-story plan, proving in the least
tempting.
As the race of competent, industrious mechanics is not yet extinct,
whatever the croakers may say such were found to build the house, which
was well closed in before winter. The walls and roof were completed and
the plastering dried while the windows could be left open without
danger of freezing, a most important thing, because although mortar may
be kept from freezing by artificial heat, the moisture it contains,
unless expelled from the house, will greatly retard the "seasoning" of
the frame and the walls of the building. After it has all been blown
out of the windows, if the house is kept warm and dry the fine
wood-finishing will "keep its place" best if put up in winter rather
than in summer. For the most carefully seasoned and kiln-dried lumber
will absorb moisture so rapidly in the hot, steaming days of June and
in the damp dog-day weather that no joiner's skill can prevent cracks
from appearing when the dry furnace heat has drawn the moisture from
its pores.
One year is a reasonable length of time for building a common
dwelling-house. Twelve months from the day the workmen appeared to dig
the foundation trenches the last pile of builder's rubbish was taken
away and the new, clean, bright, naked, empty house stood ready for the
first load of furniture. If the social and domestic tastes of Jack and
Jill have been even slightly indicated, it is unnecessary to say that
this first load did not consist of the brightest and best products of
the most fashionable manufacturers. Aunt Melville had sent a few
ornaments and two or three elegant trifles in the way of furniture, a
chair or two in which no one could sit without danger of mutual broken
limbs, and a table that, like many another frail beauty, might enjoy
being supported but could never bear any heavier burden than a
card-basket, and was liable to be upset by the vigorous use of
dust-brush or broom. "They will help to furnish your rooms," said the
generous aunt, "and will give a certain style that cannot be attained
with furniture that is simply useful."
[Illustration: THE FIRST FLOOR OF THE HOUSE THAT JILL BUILT.]
The ornaments that were ornamental and nothing more Jill accepted
gratefully. The furniture that must be protected to preserve its
beauty, and generally avoided lest it should be broken, she returned,
begging her aunt to give it to some one having a larger house.
On one of those perfect days that are so rare, even in June, Bessie
appeared in all the glory of the lilies. To Jill's surprise, her first
remark after the customary effusive greeting was, "How _lovely_ it is
to have a home of your own. I shouldn't care if it was made of slabs
and shaped like a wigwam. Of course, _this_ house is exquisite. I knew
it would be, but it is ten times as large as I should want. It will be
_so_ much work to take care of it."
"I don't expect to take care of it alone."
"I know you don't, but I should want to take care of my own house, if I
had one, every bit of it. Oh, you needn't look so amazed. I know what I
am saying. I have learned to cook, and dust, and sweep, and kindle
fires, and polish, silver, and--and black stoves!"
No wonder Jill was dumb while Bessie went on at a breathless rate.
"And do you know, Jill dear, I wouldn't take this house if you would
give it to me. There! I would a thousand times rather have a little bit
of a cottage, just large enough for--for two people, and everything in
it just as cosy and simple as it could be. Then we--then I could learn
to paint and decorate--I've learned a little already--and embroider and
such things, and slowly, very slowly, you know, I would fill the house
with pretty things that would belong to it and be a part of it, and a
part of me, too, because I made them."
"Wouldn't it be much cheaper and better to hire some skillful artist to
do these things?" said Jill, taking refuge in matter-of-fact.
[Illustration: THE SECOND FLOOR OF THE HOUSE THAT JILL BUILT.]
"If I hired any one of course it would be an artist, but our homes are
not dear to us because they are beautiful, it is because they are
_ours_, because we have worked for them and in them until they are a
part of ourselves. I love artistic things as well as I ever did, but
there are some things that are ten thousand times lovelier."
Before Jill had recovered from her astonishment at Bessie's transformed
sentiments or imagined their cause, who should drive up but Aunt
Jerusha. She and Bessie had never met before, but the mysterious laws
of affinity, that pay no regard to outward circumstances or
expectations, brought them at once into the warmest sympathy. Jill had
provided extremely pretty china for her table, and for Bessie's sake
had brought out certain rare pieces not intended for every-day use. It
was contrary to her rule to make any difference between "every-day" and
"company days." "Nothing is too good for Jack," was the basis of her
argument. The one exception was china. But Bessie was absolutely
indifferent to the frail and costly pottery. She was intent on learning
domestic wisdom from Aunt Jerusha, and insisted upon writing in her
note-book the recipes for everything she ate and recording the rules
for carrying on whatever household matters chanced to be mentioned,
from waxing floors to canning tomatoes. Jack strove to enliven the
conversation by throwing in elaborate remarks upon the true sphere of
women, the uncertainty of matrimonial ventures and the deceitfulness of
mankind in general. Jill meanwhile preserved her equanimity upon all
points relating to her house. She admitted the force of Aunt
Jerusha's suggestion that a portion of the long serving-table in the
kitchen should be movable and a door made from kitchen to china-closet,
to be kept locked, as a rule, but available in an emergency, when one
or both servants were sick or discharged; she appreciated her advice to
form the habit of washing the silver and fine glasses with her own
hands before leaving the table; she was able to repeat her favorite
recipes correctly; she carved gracefully, as a lady ought, and gave due
attention to her guests. Beyond these duties she was in a state of
bewilderment. What had happened to Bessie, and what new mischief Jack
was incubating were puzzles she could neither solve nor dismiss.
[Illustration: THE EAST END OF JILL'S DINING-ROOM.]
By one of those coincidences, not half as rare as they seem, at four
o'clock the same day Aunt and Uncle Melville appeared upon the scene.
They were spending a short time at a summer hotel in the vicinity, and
Jill persuaded them to stay for tea, sending their carriage back for
Cousin George and his wife, who were at the same place. She also
invited her father and mother to improve the opportunity to make a
small family gathering. "I suppose you know Jim is coming over this
evening," said Jack. "Don't you think he had better bring Uncle Harry
along?"
"I _didn't_ know Jim was coming, but he is always welcome, and Uncle
Harry too. Your father and mother, of course, if they are able to come
out this evening."
"Oh, _they_ are coming, anyway," Jack began and stopped suddenly. "That
is, I mean, certainly they will be delighted, if you send for them."
Jill was more puzzled than ever, but they all came.
"Now, you will please consider yourselves a 'board of visitors,'" said
she, as they sat at the table after tea, "authorized to inspect this
institution and report your impressions."
"Remembering that Jill is the warden and I am the prisoner," said Jack.
"But you must conduct us to the cells," said her father, rising, "and
tell us what to admire."
Jill accordingly began at the beginning. She showed them the light
vestibule, with a closet at one side for umbrellas and overshoes, and a
seat at the other; the central hall that would be used as a common
reception-room, and on such occasions as the present, would become a
part of one large apartment--the entire first floor of the main house;
the staircase with the stained-glass windows climbing the side; the
toilet-room from the garden entrance and the elevator reaching from the
basement to the attic. She showed them the family suite of rooms; her
own in the southeast corner, with the dressing-room and adjoining
chamber toward the west, and Jack's room over the front hall, with the
large guest-room above the dining-room. She urged them to count the
closets and notice their ample size; referred with pride to the
servants' rooms, and explained how there was space in the roof for two
chambers and a billiard-room, if they should ever want them. With true
housekeeper's pride she declared the beauties and wonders of the
kitchen arrangements, a theme that had been often rehearsed, and from
the kitchen they descended to the basement, which contained the
well-lighted laundry, the servants' bath-room and store-rooms without
name or number; some warm and sunny, others cool and dark, but all dry
and well ventilated.
Then they returned to the drawing-room to make their reports.
"It's too large," said Bessie.
"It isn't small enough," said Jim.
"The third floor is not the proper place for a billiard-table,"
remarked Uncle Melville, sententiously. "It is too remote for such a
social pastime; too difficult of access; too--too--er--"
"The house looks smaller than it is," said Aunt Melville, "which I
consider a serious defect. It ought to look larger; it should have a
tower, and the front door should be toward the street."
"Your chambers are excellent," said Uncle Harry. "The personality of
human beings should be respected. The chief object of home is to give
to each individual a chance for unfettered development. Every soul is a
genius at times and feels the necessity of isolation. Especially do we
need to be alone in sleep, and to this end every person in a house is
entitled to a separate apartment. I commend the family suite."
"A nobby house," said Cousin George.
"I like our own better," said his wife, _sotto voce_, which was a
worthy sentiment and should have been openly expressed. Fondness for
our own is the chief of domestic virtues.
"Is it paid for?" inquired Jack's father. To which Jack replied:
"It is: and the house that I built is sold to the most stylish people
you ever saw. They paid me more than this cost, but I wouldn't swap
with them for a thousand dollars to boot."
"No; neither would they change with us for two thousand."
Just as the clock struck nine the door-bell rang and the rector and his
wife were announced. Before Jill could realize what was taking place
she found herself an amazed and helpless spectator in her own house,
for Jim and Bessie stood side by side under the curtains leading to the
library, and the rector was reading the solemn marriage service. By way
of calming her excitement Jack found a chance to whisper to Jill,
"They have been engaged six months."
"You unnatural husband! Why didn't you tell me?"
"Didn't know it myself till this afternoon."
There was no time for further explanations, for the good rector was
saying: "I am sure you will agree with me that building and cherishing
a consecrated home is the noblest work we can do on earth. From such
homes spring all public and private excellence, all patriotic virtues,
all noble charities and philanthropies, all worthy service of God and
man. Whether high or low, rich or poor, in all times and in all places,
domestic life, in its purity and strength, is the safeguard of
individuals and the bulwark of nations. And when, in after years,
other solemn sacraments shall be performed beneath this roof, may it
still be found a sacred temple of peace and love!"
Bessie and Jim kept house in two chambers until a cottage of four
rooms, with an attic and wood-shed, was finished, which happened before
cold weather. Her wedding present from Jack was an express wagon full
of obsolete household utensils. She had learned to make the fire in the
kitchen, and nothing was more acceptable than such a load of dry
kindling wood.
The house that Jill built cost ten thousand dollars. Jim's cost less
than one thousand. Bessie declares that the smaller the house the
greater the happiness it contains. She may be right, but Jill denies
it, and it is never safe to draw general conclusions from special
cases.
CHAPTER XIX.
TEN YEARS AFTER.
Jack, Jr., and his sister Bessie, were building block houses on the
piazza. Jack was pretending to read the evening paper, in reality
watching the builders; and Jill was making no pretense of doing
anything else.
"Really Jack, I think Bessie shows more skill in building than her
brother. Her houses look like realities, and they have more grace and
dignity than his."
"Of course. Haven't I always said that women would make the best
architects if they had a fair chance? Didn't you make the plans of this
house? Hasn't it been all our fancy painted and a great deal more?
There isn't a stick nor a stone, a brick nor a shingle that I would
have changed if we were to build it again."
"And haven't I always said that men were more conservative than women?
_I_ would be glad to change everything there is in the house to build
it all over again, and build it differently."
"Oh the inconstancy of women! Even the moon is more constant, for her
changes are only superficial and temporary."
"When I say; 'I have changed my mind,' it is only another way of
saying, 'I am wiser to-day than I was yesterday.'"
"I understand; what a Jacob's ladder of wisdom you must be! All right;
change your mind every day, grow wiser and wiser; I will try to keep
the hem of your garments in sight."
"Have you selected a lot?"
"What for?"
"For a new house."
"Bless you, my dear husband, I wouldn't build another house, still less
live in it, for all the wealth of the treasury vaults. Isn't this our
own? Hasn't it always been perfectly suited to our wants? What upon
earth are you thinking of?"
"Oh, nothing in particular. I never think if I can help it. I have
heard that a man ought always to build two houses, one to learn how,
the second to correct the mistakes of the first. I thought perhaps it
was the same way with women."
"This house was exactly right when it was built, it could not have been
improved, but that was ten years ago, and a great many things have
happened in the last ten years; but, then, a great many more will
happen in the next ten, and ten years hence there will be just as many
things to change in the houses that are built this year as there are
now in those that are of the same age as ours."
"But how would you change this house if it could be done by a magic
wand or by the exercise of faith, and without raising a speck of dust
or upsetting the housekeeping affairs for a single minute?"
"I would make it larger for one thing. Our rooms are too small. The
number of rooms a house contains should depend on the number of people
there are to live in it, including all the children, the guests and the
servants, with a certain allowance for contingencies."
"Depending on the hospitality of the family."
"Yes; and whatever the number of rooms, they should be large enough,
not merely to hold the occupants when the doors are shut, but for
comfortable living and moving about. There is nothing in which all men
and women are more conservative than in the planning of their houses;
there seems to be something hereditary about it, as difficult to change
as a tendency to bald heads and awkward locomotion. Americans are
special sufferers in this respect. The primitive Anglo-American home
was only a step removed from the wigwams of the aboriginal savages, in
size, shape and general accommodations. Even our English ancestors,
from whom we derived some of our domestic notions, were not accustomed
to anything magnificent in the way of dwellings. The climate was
against them, and they were not sufficiently luxurious in their tastes.
Their houses were primarily places for shelter and refuge. In summer
they lived out of doors, and in winter they crept into close quarters
and waited for warm weather. With plenty of land and building materials
to be had for the taking, our colonial grandfathers should have had the
most generous homes in the world."
"Yes; and to judge by some of the old colonial mansions which have
escaped the 'making-over' vandals we have been going backwards in that
respect during the last fifty or a hundred years."
"Yes; and we ought to have been going the other way, for the size of
rooms should increase as the cost of furniture diminishes. Take for
instance, a parlor or sitting room fifteen feet square, which is, I
believe, about the orthodox size for a modern house. Give such a room a
dozen straight-backed and straight-legged chairs ranged along the
sides, a table in the center of the room with a green cover and four
books on it, two or three unhappy-looking family portraits on the
walls, a pair of brass candlesticks on the high, wooden mantel, a pair
of bellows, a shovel and tongs, with, perhaps, in the way of luxury, a
haircloth sofa. Now compare the room furnished in that way, which was
by no means uncommon in the days of our grandfathers with a room of the
same size, in which are stored half a dozen chairs, no two alike, and
some of them as large as small lounges, a center table piled with books
and magazines and photographs, till like a heap of jack straws, it is
impossible to remove one without disturbing the whole pile; a lounge
with a back, a divan or something without a back, an upright piano, two
or three bookcases, several small stools and piles of Turkish cushions
to catch the unwary, huge Japanese vases beside the fireplace, a
leopard skin with a solid head in front of the table, and a sprinkling
of Persian rugs spilt over the floor; a cabinet of bric-a-brac in the
northeast corner, a 'whatnot' with a big jardiniere bearing a
three-foot palm on the top story in the northwest, a carved bracket
with a sheaf of Florida grasses in the southeast, and a tall wooden
clock that won't go in the southwest; a brass tea kettle hanging from a
wrought iron frame beside a fragile stand that carries a half dozen of
still more fragile 'hand-painted' teacups and saucers; lambrequins and
heavy curtains at all the windows and most of the doors, a big
combination gas and electric chandelier suspended from the center of
the ceiling, bedangled with jumping jacks, Christmas cards, straw
ornaments and other artistic 'curious'; one or two small tables
scattered 'promiscous like' about the room; a music stand and a banjo;
with photographs, chromos, oil paintings, water colors and etchings,
from one to three feet square, in gilt, enameled and wooden frames of
all styles and degrees of fitness on the walls of the room,--take a
room furnished in this way or a great deal more so, and compare it
with another of the same actual dimensions furnished in the
old-fashioned way and see which is the larger. The modern furnishing
may be 'cozy,' oppressively cozy when there are half a dozen people
trying to move gracefully around and between it without upsetting or
destroying anything, but what sort of hospitality can we offer our
guests if they must be always afraid of breaking something valuable if
they stir?"
"Why not have a bonfire and liquidate some of this superfluous stock?"
"It is not superfluous; all these things, if they are good add to the
enjoyment of living, if we have room for them and are able to take good
care of them without neglecting weightier matters. Our own rooms are
not large enough. However, if we cannot enlarge them we can build new
ones for special purposes. For one, we must have a children's workroom.
If Jack is going to be an artist, and you know he shows decided talent,
and Bessie an architect, there's no doubt of her having real genius in
that direction, they should have one room immediately, and two by and
by, for their own exclusive use. A room where they could keep all their
books, and tools and toys, and where they could work in their own
spontaneous, untrammeled way."
"You mean a nursery."
"No, I do _not_ mean a nursery, but a workshop, study, gymnasium, call
it anything you please. The floor should be smooth and hard, and the
walls should be wainscoted with smooth, hard wood. There should be
blackboards and shelves at the sides, and the children should be
allowed to drive nails wherever they please. I am not sure but I would
have a sink and a water faucet."
"Not unless the room is in the cellar or has a floor tight enough for a
swimming tank. Well, what next?"
"We must have a hospital."
"For inebriates or the insane?"
"A room similar to the private wards in a hospital. You know our own
and the children's sleeping rooms are very simply furnished, but a sick
room should be still more severe. The children have both had the
measles, thank goodness, and I hope they never will have smallpox,
scarlet fever, or diphtheria, but if they should it would be necessary
to send them away from home or run the risk of their exposing one
another."
"You might as well include every other ill that flesh is heir to. If we
have got to fight germs day and night in order to live, the cleaner and
more open we can keep the battle ground the better. It strikes me that
it might be a good thing to have the whole house sort of clean and
wholesome."
"Of course. But none of us would like to have the living rooms as
absolutely bare of all superfluous furnishing as a hospital ward. We
should not be willing to give up our rugs, take down the curtains,
throw away the cushions and sit in hard wooden chairs."
"No, and I wouldn't like to burn my books, although there is nothing
quite so 'germy' as my musty old books that were made in Italy in
plague times and smell like the 16th century every time they are
opened. So I suppose we must have a hospital for the children to be
sick in, a workshop for them to work in, and what would you say to a
small chapel and penitentiary, with a dungeon or two? While we are
about it, let's have a market and cold storage annex."
"Precisely what I was going to suggest. It would be the easiest thing
in the world to attach a small room to the cellar or the kitchen, where
a low temperature can be kept at all times, either by ice or by the
artificial refrigeration that will soon be distributed and sold in the
same way that gas, water, steam, electric light and power are now
furnished in many cities."
"I never thought of it before, but why shouldn't milk and beer and
other medicinal drinks be distributed in the same way as water and
gas?"
"Please don't interrupt me. These are really serious considerations.
Why, Jack, we haven't begun to guess at the wonderful changes that are
to be made in all our housekeeping affairs, as well as in everything
else by electricity. In a few years we shall find our present cooking
arrangements as much out of date as the old turnspit and tin ovens and
the great wood fires on the hearth. And light! Our houses will be as
light as day all the time, unless we choose darkness in order to sleep
more comfortably."
"Or because our deeds be evil, or for the better accommodation of
burglars. No self-respecting burglar would think of 'burgling' without
a dark lantern."
"And heat; do you remember how something more than twenty-five years
ago a French scientist proposed to supply all the heat needed for human
comfort in cold climates directly from the sun's rays?"
"I can't say that I do remember that particular philosopher, but I have
a notion that the sun was considered a fair sort of furnace a good many
years before the first Frenchman was born."
"Yes, yes; but he was going to gather the sun's heat into such shape
that it would warm our houses in winter, do all the cooking, take the
place of all the steam boilers and furnaces. I never heard that his
theories were reduced to practice, but we have found another source of
light and heat that is already under our control. There is no more
doubt that all the warmth, illumination and mechanical power that we
can use are within our reach, when we have learned how to take
possession of them, than there is of gravitation. It is all waiting at
the door, we have only to clap our hands and the potent spirit is ready
to do our bidding."
"Without money and without price?"
"No, not quite that, there are too many incorporated monopolies in the
way. But it is coming nearer and nearer, and with the unlimited power
of wind and waves and waterfalls, all these things will soon be as
cheap as anything really worth having ought to be."
"Say, Jill, do you suppose we shall live to see all our necessities
supplied, gratis, and have nothing to work for except the luxuries?"
"We have lived long enough to find that for most people in our day and
generation, even for those who think they have to work very hard 'just
to get a living,' their most serious toil is to provide, what might be
called, not the 'bare' necessities of life, but the well-dressed
necessities. But it is time for those children to be in bed."
CHAPTER XX.
A DOUBLE CONCLUSION.
"Now Jill," this was half an hour later, the children were asleep and
the gas was lighted, "let us by way of amusement draw plans of a castle
in Spain. Let us forget all the houses that ever were built and fancy
ourselves, not Adam and Eve, with the responsibility of setting the
housekeeping pace for the rest of the human family nor Robinson Crusoe,
whose domestic arrangements were somewhat handicapped, but a wise pair
of semi-Bourbons, at the end of the 19th century, who forget nothing
old but are willing to learn and adopt anything new, provided it is
good."
"All right; go ahead."
"In the first place our castle will not be destructible by fire or
water. All the walls will be of masonry and the floor beams will be of
steel. There will be nothing to invite moth or rust."
"Nor burglars; not so much as a silver spoon or a candlestick."
"I have always been sorry that the roof of this house was not
fireproof, but I suppose it would have cost too much, though the
architect said it might have been made like the floors if we would
consent to have it flat."
"Moral: if you want a roof of the mountainous variety you must either
pay for it or run the risk of being burned out on top. But what do
castles in Spain care for the cost? We can have fireproof roofs in
miniature copy of Alpine peaks or we can use them for billiard tables
and croquet grounds."
"Really," Jill continued, "there is no good reason for steep roofs.
Snow is more troublesome on the ground around the house than on top of
it, if it will stay there, and a very slight slope will carry off the
rain. I fancy steep roofs must have been invented when builders used
such clumsy materials for covering that they were obliged to lay them
on a steep pitch in order to keep out the water. Shingles of course
last longer the steeper the roof."
"If that's the case they ought to last forever on the second story
walls of our house, where they are straight up and down. When you come
to think of it, high roofs must be built now-a-days mainly for show,
incidentally they cover the house. First beautiful, then useful. How
large will it be?"
"What, the roof?"
"No, the whole thing; how many rooms will it have?"
"That will depend on the size of the family. Not less than ten nor more
than forty. Ten rooms will answer for two people, and more than forty
complicates the housekeeping."
"Do you count closets?"
"Oh, no. Closets and dressing rooms, storerooms, bath rooms, cupboards
and things of that sort, are mere adjuncts. They are to the real rooms
what the pockets are to a suit of clothes."
"Excellent. I'm glad we haven't got to count the closet or the expense.
Probably ten rooms are not too many for two young people, but a pair of
childless octogenarians ought to get along with eight or nine; the
other way you are all right, only I would say four hundred. While we
are about it, let's have a comfortable, good sized, 'roomy' house. But
how do you propose to put even forty rooms with their various pockets
under one roof and give them all plenty of sunlight and fresh air? Will
you pile them up one above another or set them in a row on the ground?
In either case it would need a trolly car and a telephone to connect
the two ends of the line."
"It mustn't be more than two stories high, and I'm not sure but one
would be better."
"That means twenty rooms on each floor. The rooms will average twenty
feet long, and that will make the entire length of our castle four or
five hundred feet. Won't it look like an institution or a row of
tenements if it is strung out in a line?"
"It will not be."
"Cut up into wings and things?"
"No, it will be in the form of a hollow square. There may be a wing or
two on one side or another, and wherever a projecting bay or oriel will
add to the comfort or charm of the interior we shall have one, but its
general form will be a great square with an open court in the center."
"Oh, I see. An imitation Pompeian, or Florentine palace."
"No, nothing of the kind. Not an imitation of anything. It will be a
simple, straightforward, common-sense, American home, with room for a
good-sized family, several rooms for extra occasions, and some that
will not be finished at all but held in reserve for future
contingencies. It sometimes costs no more to enclose a certain space in
building than to leave it outside, and there is the same satisfaction
in knowing we have space to spare inside the house that there is in
owning the land that joins us even when we don't expect to sell or use
it."
"What shall we do with the big hole in the center? It will be too small
for golf or tennis, and too big for a conservatory. We might keep
hens."
"It will not be too large for a garden, with fountains for hot weather
and flowers for cold. It will be its own excuse for being, for it will
give light and air to all the rooms, and if it has a glass roof the
problem of comfortable living in cold weather will be solved. There
will always be the temperate zone at one side of the house,--that is
inside the court,--however high the drifts may be piled outside. Of
course the entire building will be warmed in winter and cooled in
summer by spicy breezes driven by electric fans, and we shall only have
to decide what temperature we prefer on different days of the week, set
the gauge, and there will be no more watching of the thermometer, the
registers, the weather reports or the wood pile."
"But I thought it was wrong to live in a river of warm air. Uncle John
compares that to taking a perpetual warm bath."
"It is wrong; but, my dear Jack, life is a succession of compromises,
especially domestic life, and considering the practical difficulties in
the way of open hickory fires in all the forty or more rooms, we must
be content with the artificially warmed air for every day use and
consider radiated heat from wood fires, coal grates, or sunshine, as
luxuries."
"Certainly; it would be a pity to make all luxuries impossible just
because we happen to own a castle in Spain. Aren't you afraid our court
will be dreadfully hot in summer, shut in by four brick walls?"
"By no means; it will be particularly cool. If we like we can have a
great awning to draw over it in the hottest weather, and wide halls
will allow a perfect circulation of air throughout the whole structure.
In addition to this, on the highest part of the roof there will be a
space fitted for an outdoor sitting room, sheltered when necessary by
awnings and screens, but most delightful on hot summer evenings."
"Oh, yes, I see. A sort of copy of the old Egyptian houses."
"No, not a sort of a copy of anything, but a simple application of
common sense. In the evening when there is a breeze from any direction,
the highest part of the house will be the coolest."
"I thought it was to be a two-story house. How can one part be higher
than the rest?"
"I didn't say it was to be all of the same height. Some rooms will be
much higher than others because they will be larger. If a room is to be
of agreeable proportions, the height must be determined by the size. It
may be best to make the north side three stories high and the south
only one; that would give more sunlight on the north wall of the court
and make the average two stories."
"Nothing like keeping up the average. But aren't forty rooms with all
the closets and storerooms, and stairways and halls, and bays and
oriels and dungeons going to make a large house for one family? Can't
we work the same idea on a smaller scale?"
"Of course, but that is not too large for a comfortable home for a
family of moderate size. Count your fingers and try it. To begin at
that end of the establishment, we want a scullery, a kitchen, and a
servants' dining room; we want a breakfast room, and a large dining
room for the family, and the dining room, by the way, should be one of
the largest rooms in the house, say twenty-one or two feet by thirty
six or forty; we want a parlor, a drawing room, a library, a
billiard room and a picture gallery; a music room and ball room, these
being, of course, in one, but as large as two ordinary rooms; then we
want a nursery, a workroom for the children, a sick room and a sewing
room, an office and a smoking room, and one or two extra sitting or
reception rooms. Each member of the family should have a private
sitting room and bedroom, with dressing room and bath for each suite.
That, you see, would just about suit a family of ten people without
counting the servants."
[Illustration: A CASTLE IN SPAIN.]
"Have you made any calculation Jill, dear, as to how many people there
are at present in the United States who could manage to scrape along
with thirty-nine rooms instead of forty?"
"Why should I? This is a castle in Spain. We have plenty of money,
plenty of room, plenty of time. Our only anxiety is lest there should
be a lack of brains to make good use of our room and time and money."
"And what shall we build it of, jasper, sapphire and chalcedony?"
"No, burned clay and granite, steel, copper and glass. It shall be
defiant of fire and flood; it shall neither burn up nor rot down."
"One thing more, Jill, when we come to make our wills to which one of
the children shall we bequeath the castle?"
Before Jill could answer the door was hurriedly opened and Bessie
appeared upon the threshold.
"I've just run away from Jim," she began rapidly. "We haven't had a
family quarrel exactly, but we've argued it over and over, and we come
out just as far apart as ever. Finally I told him I would leave it to
you."
"I haven't any idea what it is all about, but did Jim agree to that?"
"I didn't give him a chance to differ. He always agrees to everything
Jill says about building houses But don't interrupt me. The baby may
wake up at any minute and then Jim will be helpless. The truth is he is
dissatisfied with our home."
"Jim, dissatisfied; impossible!"
"Yes, he thinks it's too small."
"He wants more servants, I suppose; several additional children, a lot
more poor relations, and all the various items that go to make up a
well-ordered household."
"No, no; it is the house that is too small."
"Excuse me, you said the home. The house is a very different affair."
"You remember," Bessie continued, "that when it was built ten years ago
Jim thought it was not large enough. Now he is determined to sell it
and build a new one. There are five good rooms besides the closets, and
as there is nobody but Jim and me and the four children and one
servant, we have all the room we need. We have always been perfectly
comfortable, and I can't bear the thought of selling our home."
Here Bessie began to show symptoms of dissolution, but swallowing her
emotion she continued, "If we could build on a room or two as we need
them I wouldn't mind it. But if you advise us to sell this house for
the sake of having another, I'll"--
"We shan't advise any such thing," said Jack, "but it's perfectly
natural for Jim to think you ought to have a larger, more modern
house."
"But I don't want a more modern house," Bessie protested, "if there is
any created thing that I despise it is a 'modern' house, made up of bay
windows and crooked turrets, and shingled balconies, and peaked roofs,
and grotesque little fandangoes of wood and copper and terra cotta,
that have no more dignity or repose, or beauty or homelike appearance,
than a crazy quilt or a Chinese puzzle. They are simply outrageous,
abominable. I would sooner have the children brought up in a reform
school or a house of correction."
"How would you like a colonial house?"
Bessie's indignation had spent itself, and she resumed her ordinary,
but sometimes misleading manner.
"Isn't it a pity we were not all born a hundred years ago, then we
might have had colonial houses. But why should I want to live in an
uncomfortable old curiosity shop when I like my house just as it is?
Our trouble is that Jim wants the house twice as large as it is now and
I want only one more room."
"Bessie," said Jack, in his most fatherly manner, "I am surprised that
two sensible people like you and Jim should fall into such a
distressing controversy over nothing, absolutely nothing. You are
already in perfect accord. Jim says the house is only half large
enough. You say you want one more room. The house is now just
thirty-three feet long and thirty-three feet wide; add a new room
thirty-three feet square; you will have the one extra room, and Jim
will have the house doubled in size. Isn't that right?"
"Yes," said Jill; "It is exactly what I should have suggested if you
had given me a chance. Do you remember the charming room in the old
Florentine palace, where we spent the winter, and how we enjoyed it,
and finally measured it for the benefit of some other Americans who
intended to build a new house as soon as they got home? That was just
thirty-three feet square and eighteen feet high. There was a grand
piano in one corner, in another a group of chairs with bookcases, in
another sofas and chairs and tables scattered about, so that in effect
it was equal to several small rooms. Indeed one of our party described
it in a home letter as a magnificent apartment one hundred feet each
way. It would accommodate several callers, with their different groups
of friends, and it was of course a capital place for music and dancing.
In your new room you will have one corner for the children and another
for yourselves. The Dorcas society can meet at one side while your
little Jack and his friends are playing games at the other. It won't be
many years before Bessie will claim a large section, including one of
the bay windows, for her own use."
"I think I hear the baby crying. Thank you, I'll talk it over with Jim.
Good night."
"Do you think they will do it?" Jack inquired.
"Of course they will; it is by far the most sensible thing. As a family
they are always together and always will be, and one large room will
suit them better than several small ones. Perhaps it will be the best
thing for us, until we can build our castle in Spain. It certainly will
not cost as much as making over and enlarging the rooms we have."
"That is true, and it is my impression that the wisest way to enlarge
an old house is to nail up the windows, seal up the doors and go ahead
with the additions without taking out the nails or breaking the seals
till it is all done; that would save time, money and patience."
"Yes, and more than that," said Jill, "it would preserve the charm of
the old house which grows stronger every year until the loss of the
familiar rooms and their hallowed associations seems like parting with
a dear old friend."
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure" ***
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