University of Virginia Library

51. CHAPTER LI.
MY WIFE PROJECTS HOSPITALITIES.

MY dear,” said my wife to me at breakfast, “our
house is about done. To be sure there are
ever so many little niceties that I haven't got
at yet, but it's pretty enough now. So that I'm not at all
ashamed to show it to mamma or Aunt Maria, or any of
them.”

“Do you think,” said I, “that last-named respectable individual
could possibly think of countenancing us, when
we have only an ingrain carpet on our parlor and nothing
but mattings on the chambers, and live down here where
nobody lives?”

“Well, poor soul!” said Eva, “she'll have to accept it as
one of the trials of life, and have recourse to the consolations
of religion. Then, after all, Harry, I really am proud
of our parlor. Of course, we've had the good luck to have
a good many handsome ornaments given to us; so that,
though we haven't the regulation things that people generally
get, it does look very bright and pretty.”

“It's perfectly lovely,” said I. “Our house to me is a
perfect dream of loveliness. I think of it all day from
time to time when I'm at work in my office, and am always
wanting to come home and see it again, and have a little
curiosity to know what new thing you've accomplished.
So far, your career has been a daily succession of triumphs,
and the best of it is that it's all so much like you.”

“So,” said she, “that I can't be jealous at your loving the
house so much. I suppose you think it as much a part of
me as the shell on a turtle's back. Well, now, before
we invite mother and Aunt Maria, and all the folks down

here, I propose that we have just a nice little housewarming,
with our own little private particular set, who know
how to appreciate us.”

“Agreed!” said I; “Bolton, and Jim, and Alice, and you
and I will have a commemoration-dinner together. Our
fellows, you see, seem to feel as much interested in this
house as if it were their own.”

“I know it,” said she. “Isn't it really amusing to see the
grandfatherly concern that Bolton has for our cooking-stove?”

“Oh! Bolton has staked his character on that stove,” I
said. “It's success is quite a personal matter now.”

“Well, it does bake admirably,” said my wife, “and I
think our dinner will be a perfect success, so far as that is
concerned. And, do you know, I'm going to introduce that
new way of doing up cold chicken which I've invented.”

“Yes,” said I, “we shall christen it Chicken à la Eva.”

“And I've been talking with our Mary about it, and she's
quite in the spirit of the affair. You see, like all Irish
women, Mary perfectly worships the boys, and thinks there
never was anybody like Mr. Bolton, and Mr. Jim; and of
course it's quite a labor of love with her. Then I've been
giving her little cub there a series of lessons to enable her
to wait on table; and she is all exercised with the prospect.”

“Why,” said I, “the little flibberty-gibbet is hardly as
high as the table.”

“Oh, never say that before her. She feels very high
indeed in the world, and is impressed with the awful
gravity and responsibility of being eight years old. I have
made her a white apron with pockets, in which her soul
delights; and her mother has starched and ironed it till it
shines with whiteness. And she is learning to brush the
table-cloth, and change plates in the most charming way,
and with a gravity that is quite overcoming.”

“Capital!” said I. “And when shall it be?”

“To-morrow night.”

“Agreed! I'll tell the fellows this is to be a regular blow-out,
and we must do our very prettiest, which is very pretty
indeed,” said I, “thanks to the contributions of our numerous
friends. For my part, I think the fashion of wedding-presents
has proved a lucky thing for us.”

“Even if we have six pie-knives, and no pie to eat with
them,” said my wife, “as may happen in our establishment
pretty often.”

“Still,” said I, “among them all there are a sufficiency of
articles that give quite another aspect to our prudent little
house from what it would wear if we were obliged to buy
everything ourselves.”

“Yes,” said my wife, “and one such present as that set of
bronzes on the mantel-piece gives an air to a whole room.
A mantelpiece is like a lady's bonnet. It's the headpiece of
a room, and if that be pleasing the rest is a good deal taken
for granted. Then, you see, our parlor is all of a warm
color,—crimson carpet, crimson curtains,—everything warm
and glowing. And so long as you have the color it isn't a
bit of matter whether your carpet cost three dollars and a
half a yard or eighty-seven cents, and whether your curtains
are damask or Turkey red. Color is color, and will
produce its effects, no matter in what material.”

“And we men,” said I, “never know what the material is,
if only the effect is pleasant. I always look at a room as a
painting. It never occurs to me whether the articles in it
are cheap or dear, so that only the general effect is warm,
and social, and agreeable. And that is just what you have
made these rooms. I think the general effect of the rooms,
either by daylight, or lamp-light, or firelight, would be to
make a person like to stay in them, and when he had left
them want to come back.”

“Yes,” said my wife, “I flatter myself our rooms have
the air of belonging to people that are having nice times,
and enjoying themselves, as we are. And, for my own
part, I feel like sitting right down in them. All that round
of party-going, and calling, and visiting, that I used to

have to keep up, seems to me really wearisome. I want
you to understand, Harry, that it's not the slightest sacrifice
in the world for me to give it up. I'm just happy to
be out of it.”

“You see,” said I, “we can sit down here and make our
own world. Those that we really like very much and who
like us very much will come to us. My ideal of good
society is of a few congenial persons who can know each
other very thoroughly, so as to feel perfectly acquainted
and at home with one another. That was the secret of those
reunions that went on so many years around Madame Récamier.
It made no difference whether she lived in a palace,
or a little obscure street; her friends were real friends,
and followed her everywhere. The French have made a
science of the cultivation of friendship, which is worth
study.”

Thus my wife and I chatted, and felicitated each other,
in those first happy home making days. There was never
any end to our subjects of mutual conversation. Every
little change in our arrangements was fruitful in conversation.
We hung our pictures here at first, and liked them
well, but our maturer second-thoughts received bright
inspirations to take them down and hang them there; and
then we liked them better. I must say, by the by, that I
had committed one of those extravagances which lovers do
commit when they shut their eyes and go it blind. I had
bought back the pictures of Eva's little boudoir from Goupil's.
The fact was that there was a considerable sympathy
felt for Mr. Van Arsdel, and one of the members of the
concern was a nice fellow, with whom I had some pleasant
personal acquaintance. So that the redemption of the pictures
was placed at a figure which made it possible for me
to accomplish it. And the pictures themselves were an untold
store of blessedness to us. I believe we took them all
down and hung them over four times, on four successive
days, before we were satisfied that we had come to ultimate
perfection.