University of Virginia Library

48. CHAPTER XLVIII.
OUR HOUSE.

THERE are certain characteristic words which the
human heart loves to conjure with, and one of the
strongest among them is the phrase, “Our
house.” It is not my house, nor your house, nor their
house, but Our House. It is the inseparable we who own it,
and it is the we and the our that go a long way towards impregnating
it with the charm that makes it the symbol of
things most blessed and eternal.

Houses have their physiognomy, as much as persons.
There are common-place houses, suggestive houses, attractive
houses, mysterious houses, and fascinating houses, just
as there are all these classes of persons. There are houses
whose windows seem to yawn idly—to stare vacantly—there
are houses whose windows glower weirdly, and look at you
askance; there are houses, again, whose very doors and
windows seem wide open with frank cordiality, which seem
to stretch their arms to embrace you, and woo you kindly to
come and possess them.

My wife and I, as we put our key into the door and let
ourselves into the deserted dwelling, now all our own, said to
each other at once that it was a home-like house. It was built
in the old style, when they had solid timbers and low ceilings,
with great beams and large windows, with old-fashioned
small panes of glass, but there was about it a sort of homely
individuality, and suggestive of cosy comforts. The front
room had an ancient fire-place, with quaint Dutch tiles
around it. The Ferguses had introduced a furnace, gas,

and water, into it; but the fire-place in most of the rooms
still remained, suggestive of the old days in New York
when wood was plenty and cheap. One could almost fancy
that those days of roaring family hearths had so heartened
up the old chimneys that a portion of the ancient warmth
yet inhered in the house.

“There, Harry,” said my wife, exultantly pointing to the
fire-place, “see, this is the very thing that your mother's
brass andirons will fit into—how charmingly they will go
with it!”

And then those bright, sunny windows, and that bay-window
looking across upon those trees was perfectly lovely.
In fact, the leaves of the trees shimmering in October light,
cast reflections into the room suggestive of country life,
which, fresh from the country as we were, was an added
charm.

The rooms were very low studded, scarcely nine feet in
height—and, by the by, I believe that that feature in old
English and Dutch house-building is one that greatly conduces
to give an air of comfort. A low ceiling insures ease
in warming, and in our climate where one has to depend on
fires for nine months in the year, this is something worth
while. In general, I have noticed in rooms that the sense
of snugness and comfort dies out as the ceiling rises in
height—rooms twelve and fifteen feet high may be all very
grand and very fine, but they are never sociable, they never
seem to brood over you, soothe you, and take you to their
heart as the motherly low-browed room does.

My wife ran all over her new dominions—exploring and
planning, telling me volubly how she would arrange them.
The woman was Queen here; her foot was on her native
heath, and she saw capabilities and possibilities with the
eye of an artist.

Now, I desire it to be understood that I am not indifferent
to the charms of going to housekeeping full-handed. I do
not pretend to say that my wife and I should not have enjoyed
opening our family reign in a stone palace, overlooking

New York Central Park, with all the charms of city and
country life united, with all the upholsterers and furniture
shops in New York at our feet. All this was none too good
for our taste if we could have had it, but since we could not
have it, we took another kind of delight, and one quite as
vivid, in seeing how charmingly we could get on without it.
In fact, I think there is an exultation in the constant victory
over circumstances, in little inventions, substitutions,
and combinations, rendered necessary by limited means
which is wanting to those to whose hand everything comes
without an effort.

If, for example, the brisk pair of robins, who have built in
the elm tree opposite to our bay-window, had had a nest all
made, and lined, and provided for them to go into, what an
amount of tweedle and chipper, what a quantity of fluttering,
and soaring, and singing would have been wanting to
the commencement of their housekeeping! All those pretty
little conversations with the sticks and straw, all that brave
work in tugging at a bit of twine and thread, which finally
are carried off in triumph and wrought into the nest, would
be a loss in nature. How much adventure and enterprise,
how many little heart-beats of joy go into one robin's nest
simply because Mother Nature makes them work it out for
themselves!

We spent a cheerful morning merely in running over our
house, and telling each other what we could do with it, and
congratulating each other that it was “such a bargain,” for,
look, here is an outlook upon trees; and here is a little
back yard, considerably larger than a good sized pocket-handkerchief,
where Mrs. Fergus had raised mignonette,
heliotropes, and roses and geraniums enough to have a fresh
morning bouquet of them daily; and an ancient grape-vine
planted by some old Knickerbocker, which Jack Fergus
had trained in a sort of arbor over the dining-room window,
and which at this present moment was hanging with purple
clusters of grapes. We ate of them, and felt like Adam
and Eve in Paradise. What was it to us that this little

Eden of ours was in an unfashionable quarter, and that, as
Aunt Maria would say, there was not a creature living
within miles of us, it was still our mystical “garden which
the Lord God had planted eastward in Eden.” The purchase
of it, it is true, had absorbed all my wife's little fortune,
and laid a debt upon us—but we told each other that
it was, after all, our cheapest way of renting a foothold in
New York. “For, you see,” said my wife instructively,
“papa says it is a safe investment, as it is sure to rise in
value, so that even if we want to sell it we can get more
than we paid.”

“What a shrewd little trader you are getting to be!” I
said, admiring this profound financial view.

“Oh, indeed I am; and, now, Harry dear, don't let's go to
any expense about furniture till I've shown you what I intend
to do. I know devices for giving a room an air with so
little; for example, look at this recess. I shall fill this up
with a divan that I shall get up for nine or ten dollars.”

“You get it up!”

“Yes, I—with Mary to help me—you'll see in time. We'll
have all the comfort that could be got out of a sofa, for
which people pay eighty or ninety dollars, and the eighty or
ninety dollars will go to get other things, you see. And
then we must have a stuffed seat running round this bay-window.
I can get that up. I've seen at Stewart's such a
lovely piece of patch, with broad crimson stripes, and a
sort of mauresque figure interposed. I think we had better
get the whole of it, and that will do for one whole room.
Let's see. I shall make lambrequins for the windows, and
cover the window-seats, and then we shall have only to buy
two or three great stuffed chairs and cover them with the
same. Oh, you'll see what I'll do. I shall make this house
so comfortable and charming that people will wonder to see
it.”

“Well, darling, I give all that up to you, that is your dominion,
your reign.”

“To be sure, you have all your work up at the office

there, and your articles to write, and besides, dear, with all
your genius, and all that, you really don't know much about
this sort of thing, so give yourself no trouble, I'll attend to
it—it is my ground, you know. Now, I don't mean mother
or Aunt Maria shall come down here till we have got every
thing arranged. Alice is going to come and stay with me
and help, and when I want you I'll call on you, for, though
I am not a writing genius, I am a genius in these matters
as you'll see.”

“You are a veritable household fairy,” said I, “and this
house, henceforth, lies on the borders of the fairy land.
Troops of gay and joyous spirits are flocking to take possession
of it, and their little hands will carry forward what
you begin.”