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.”
“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.
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 portieres,
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.”
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?”
“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.”