University of Virginia Library

5. V.
RAKING UP THE FIRE.

WE have a custom at our house which we call
raking up the fire. That is to say, the last
half-hour before bedtime, we draw in, shoulder to
shoulder, around the last brands and embers of our
hearth, which we prick up and brighten, and dispose
for a few farewell flickers and glimmers. This is a
grand time for discussion. Then we talk over parties,
if the young people have been out of an evening, — a
book, if we have been reading one; we discuss and
analyze characters, — give our views on all subjects,
æsthetic, theological, and scientific, in a way most
wonderful to hear; and, in fact, we sometimes get so
engaged in our discussions that every spark of the fire
burns out, and we begin to feel ourselves shivering
around the shoulders, before we can remember that
it is bedtime.

So, after the reading of my last article, we had a
“raking-up talk,” — to wit, Jenny, Marianne, and I,
with Bob Stephens; — my wife, still busy at her work-basket,
sat at the table a little behind us. Jenny, of

course, opened the ball in her usual incisive manner.

“But now, papa, after all you say in your piece
there, I cannot help feeling, that, if I had the taste
and the money too, it would be better than the taste
alone with no money. I like the nice arrangements
and the books and the drawings; but I think all these
would appear better still with really elegant furniture.”

“Who doubts that?” said I. “Give me a large
tub of gold coin to dip into, and the furnishing and
beautifying of a house is a simple affair. The same
taste that could make beauty out of cents and dimes
could make it more abundantly out of dollars and
eagles. But I have been speaking for those who have
not, and cannot get, riches, and who wish to have
agreeable houses; and I begin in the outset by saying
that beauty is a thing to be respected, reverenced, and
devoutly cared for, — and then I say that BEAUTY IS
CHEAP, nay, to put it so that the shrewdest Yankee
will understand it, BEAUTY IS THE CHEAPEST THING
YOU CAN HAVE, because in many ways it is a substitute
for expense. A few vases of flowers in a room, a
few blooming, well-kept plants, a few prints framed in
fanciful frames of cheap domestic fabric, a statuette,
a bracket, an engraving, a pencil-sketch, above all, a
few choice books, — all these arranged by a woman
who has the gift in her finger-ends often produce such

an illusion on the mind's eye that one goes away without
once having noticed that the cushion of the arm-chair
was worn out, and that some veneering had
fallen off the centre-table.

“I have a friend, a schoolmistress, who lives in
a poor little cottage enough, which, let alone of the
Graces, might seem mean and sordid, but a few flower-seeds
and a little weeding in the spring make it, all
summer, an object which everybody stops to look at.
Her æsthetic soul was at first greatly tried with the
water-barrel which stood under the eaves-spout, — a
most necessary evil, since only thus could her scanty
supply of soft water for domestic purposes be secured.
One of the Graces, however, suggested to her a happy
thought. She planted a row of morning-glories round
the bottom of her barrel, and drove a row of tacks
around the top, and strung her water-butt with twine,
like a great harpsichord. A few weeks covered the
twine with blossoming plants, which every morning
were a mass of many-colored airy blooms, waving in
graceful sprays, and looking at themselves in the water.
The water-barrel, in fact, became a celebrated stroke
of ornamental gardening, which the neighbors came to
look at.”

“Well, but,” said Jenny, “everybody has n't mamma's
faculty with flowers. Flowers will grow for some
people, and for some they won't. Nobody can see

what mamma does so very much, but her plants always
look fresh and thriving and healthy, — her things blossom
just when she wants them, and do anything else
she wishes them to; and there are other people that
fume and fuss and try, and their things won't do anything
at all. There 's Aunt Easygo has plant after
plant brought from the greenhouse, and hanging-baskets,
and all sorts of things; but her plants grow
yellow and drop their leaves, and her hanging-baskets
get dusty and poverty-stricken, while mamma's go on
flourishing as heart could desire.”

“I can tell you what your mother puts into her
plants,” said I, — “just what she has put into her
children, and all her other home-things, — her heart.
She loves them; she lives in them; she has in herself
a plant-life and a plant-sympathy. She feels for them
as if she herself were a plant; she anticipates their
wants, — always remembers them without an effort,
and so the care flows to them daily and hourly. She
hardly knows when she does the things that make
them grow, — but she gives them a minute a hundred
times a day. She moves this nearer the glass, — draws
that back, — detects some thief of a worm on one, —
digs at the root of another, to see why it droops, —
washes these leaves, and sprinkles those, — waters,
and refrains from watering, all with the habitual care
of love. Your mother herself does n't know why her

plants grow; it takes a philosopher and a writer for
the `Atlantic' to tell her what the cause is.”

Here I saw my wife laughing over her work-basket
as she answered, —

“Girls, one of these days, I will write an article for
the `Atlantic,' that your papa need not have all the
say to himself: however, I believe he has hit the nail
on the head this time.”

“Of course he has,” said Marianne. “But, mamma,
I am afraid to begin to depend much on plants
for the beauty of my rooms, for fear I should not have
your gift, — and of all forlorn and hopeless things in
a room, ill-kept plants are the most so.”

“I would not recommend,” said I, “a young housekeeper,
just beginning, to rest much for her home
ornament on plant-keeping, unless she has an experience
of her own love and talent in this line, which
makes her sure of success; for plants will not thrive,
if they are forgotten or overlooked, and only tended
in occasional intervals; and, as Marianne says, neglected
plants are the most forlorn of all things.”

“But, papa,” said Marianne, anxiously, “there, in
those patent parlors of John's that you wrote of,
flowers acted a great part.”

“The charm of those parlors of John's may be
chemically analyzed,” I said. “In the first place,
there is sunshine, a thing that always affects the human

nerves of happiness. Why else is it that people
are always so glad to see the sun after a long storm?
why are bright days matters of such congratulation?
Sunshine fills a house with a thousand beautiful and
fanciful effects of light and shade, — with soft, luminous,
reflected radiances, that give picturesque effects
to the pictures, books, statuettes of an interior. John,
happily, had no money to buy brocatelle curtains, —
and besides this, he loved sunshine too much to buy
them, if he could. He had been enough with artists
to know that heavy damask curtains darken precisely
that part of the window where the light proper for
pictures and statuary should come in, namely, the upper
part. The fashionable system of curtains lights
only the legs of the chairs and the carpets, and leaves
all the upper portion of the room in shadow. John's
windows have shades which can at pleasure be drawn
down from the top or up from the bottom, so that the
best light to be had may always be arranged for his
little interior.”

“Well, papa,” said Marianne, “in your chemical
analysis of John's rooms, what is the next thing to
the sunshine?”

“The next,” said I, “is harmony of color. The
wall-paper, the furniture, the carpets, are of tints that
harmonize with one another. This is a grace in
rooms always, and one often neglected. The French

have an expressive phrase with reference to articles
which are out of accord, — they say that they swear
at each other. I have been in rooms where I seemed
to hear the wall-paper swearing at the carpet, and the
carpet swearing back at the wall-paper, and each article
of furniture swearing at the rest. These appointments
may all of them be of the most expensive kind,
but with such dis-harmony no arrangement can ever
produce anything but a vulgar and disagreeable effect.
On the other hand, I have been in rooms where all
the material was cheap, and the furniture poor, but
where, from some instinctive knowledge of the reciprocal
effect of colors, everything was harmonious, and
produced a sense of elegance.

“I recollect once travelling on a Western canal
through a long stretch of wilderness, and stopping to
spend the night at an obscure settlement of a dozen
houses. We were directed to lodgings in a common
frame-house at a little distance, where, it seemed, the
only hotel was kept. When we entered the parlor,
we were struck with utter amazement at its prettiness,
which affected us before we began to ask ourselves
how it came to be pretty. It was, in fact, only one
of the miracles of harmonious color working with
very simple materials. Some woman had been busy
there, who had both eyes and fingers. The sofa, the
common wooden rocking-chairs, and some ottomans,

probably made of old soap-boxes, were all covered
with American nankeen of a soft yellowish-brown,
with a bordering of blue print. The window-shades,
the table-cover, and the piano-cloth, all repeated the
same colors, in the same cheap material. A simple
straw matting was laid over the floor, and, with a few
books, a vase of flowers, and one or two prints, the
room had a home-like, and even elegant air, that
struck us all the more forcibly from its contrast with
the usual tawdry, slovenly style of such parlors.

“The means used for getting up this effect were
the most inexpensive possible, — simply the following-out,
in cheap material, a law of uniformity and harmony,
which always will produce beauty. In the
same manner, I have seen a room furnished, whose
effect was really gorgeous in color, where the only
materials used were Turkey-red cotton and a simple
ingrain carpet of corresponding color.

“Now, you girls have been busy lately in schemes
for buying a velvet carpet for the new parlor that is to
be, and the only points that have seemed to weigh in
the council were that it was velvet, that it was cheaper
than velvets usually are, and that it was a genteel
pattern.”

“Now, papa,” said Jenny, “what ears you have!
We thought you were reading all the time!”

“I see what you are going to say,” said Marianne.

“You think that we have not once mentioned the
consideration which should determine the carpet, —
whether it will harmonize with our other things. But,
you see, papa, we don't really know what our other
things are to be.”

“Yes,” said Jenny, “and Aunt Easygo said it was
an unusually good chance to get a velvet carpet.”

“Yet, good as the chance is, it costs just twice as
much as an ingrain.”

“Yes, papa, it does.”

“And you are not sure that the effect of it, after
you get it down, will be as good as a well-chosen ingrain
one.”

“That 's true,” said Marianne, reflectively.

“But, then, papa,” said Jenny, “Aunt Easygo said
she never heard of such a bargain; only think, two
dollars a yard for a velvet!”

“And why is it two dollars a yard? Is the man a
personal friend, that he wishes to make you a present
of a dollar on the yard? or is there some reason why
it is undesirable?” said I.

“Well, you know, papa, he said those large patterns
were not so salable.”

“To tell the truth,” said Marianne, “I never did
like the pattern exactly; as to uniformity of tint, it
might match with anything, for there 's every color of
the rainbow in it.”

“You see, papa, it 's a gorgeous flower-pattern,”
said Jenny.

“Well, Marianne, how many yards of this wonderfully
cheap carpet do you want?”

“We want sixty yards for both rooms,” said Jenny,
always primed with statistics.

“That will be a hundred and twenty dollars,” I
said.

“Yes,” said Jenny; “and we went over the figures
together, and thought we could make it out by economizing
in other things. Aunt Easygo said that the
carpet was half the battle, — that it gave the air to
everything else.”

“Well, Marianne, if you want a man's advice in the
case, mine is at your service.”

“That is just what I want, papa.”

“Well, then, my dear, choose your wall-papers and
borderings, and, when they are up, choose an ingrain
carpet to harmonize with them, and adapt your furniture
to the same idea. The sixty dollars that you
save on your carpet spend on engravings, chromo-lithographs,
or photographs of some really good works
of Art, to adorn your walls.”

“Papa, I 'll do it,” said Marianne.

“My little dear,” said I, “your papa may seem
to be a sleepy old book-worm, yet he has his eyes
open. Do you think I don't know why my girls

have the credit of being the best-dressed girls on
the street?”

“O papa!” cried out both girls in a breath.

“Fact, that!” said Bob, with energy, pulling at his
mustache. “Everybody talks about your dress, and
wonders how you make it out.”

“Well,” said I, “I presume you do not go into a
shop and buy a yard of ribbon because it is selling at
half-price, and put it on without considering complexion,
eyes, hair, and shade of the dress, do you?”

“Of course we don't!” chimed in the duo, with
energy.

“Of course you don't. Have n't I seen you mincing
down-stairs, with all your colors harmonized,
even to your gloves and gaiters? Now, a room must
be dressed as carefully as a lady.”

“Well, I 'm convinced,” said Jenny, “that papa
knows how to make rooms prettier than Aunt Easygo;
but then she said this was cheap, because it would out-last
two common carpets.”

“But, as you pay double price,” said I, “I don't
see that. Besides, I would rather, in the course of
twenty years, have two nice, fresh ingrain carpets, of
just the color and pattern that suited my rooms, than
labor along with one ill-chosen velvet that harmonized
with nothing.”

“I give it up,” said Jenny; “I give it up.”

“Now, understand me,” said I; “I am not traducing
velvet or Brussels or Axminster. I admit that
more beautiful effects can be found in those goods than
in the humbler fabrics of the carpet-rooms. Nothing
would delight me more than to put an unlimited credit
to Marianne's account, and let her work out the problems
of harmonious color in velvet and damask. All
I have to say is, that certain unities of color, certain
general arrangements, will secure very nearly as good
general effects in either material. A library with a
neat, mossy green carpet on the floor, harmonizing
with wall-paper and furniture, looks generally as well,
whether the mossy green is made in Brussels or in
ingrain. In the carpet-stores, these two materials
stand side by side in the very same pattern, and one
is often as good for the purpose as the other. A lady
of my acquaintance, some years since, employed an
artist to decorate her parlors. The walls being frescoed
and tinted to suit his ideal, he immediately
issued his decree that her splendid velvet carpets
must be sent to auction, and others bought of certain
colors, harmonizing with the walls. Unable to find
exactly the color and pattern he wanted, he at last
had the carpets woven in a neighboring factory, where,
as yet, they had only the art of weaving ingrains.
Thus was the material sacrificed at once to the harmony.”

I remarked, in passing, that this was before Bigelow's
mechanical genius had unlocked for America the
higher secrets of carpet-weaving, and made it possible
to have one's desires accomplished in Brussels or velvet.
In those days, English carpet-weavers did not
send to America for their looms, as they now do.

“But now to return to my analysis of John's rooms.

“Another thing which goes a great way towards
giving them their agreeable air is the books in them.
Some people are fond of treating books as others do
children. One room in the house is selected, and
every book driven into it and kept there. Yet nothing
makes a room so home-like, so companionable, and
gives it such an air of refinement, as the presence of
books. They change the aspect of a parlor from that
of a mere reception-room, where visitors perch for a
transient call, and give it the air of a room where one
feels like taking off one's things to stay. It gives the
appearance of permanence and repose and quiet fellowship;
and next to pictures on the walls, the many-colored
bindings and gildings of books are the most
agreeable adornment of a room.”

“Then, Marianne,” said Bob, “we have something
to start with, at all events. There are my English
Classics and English Poets, and my uniform editions
of Scott and Thackeray and Macaulay and Prescott
and Irving and Longfellow and Lowell and Hawthorne

and Holmes and a host more. We really have something
pretty there.”

“You are a lucky girl,” I said, “to have so much
secured. A girl brought up in a house full of books,
always able to turn to this or that author and look for
any passage or poem when she thinks of it, does n't
know what a blank a house without books might be.”

“Well,” said Marianne, “mamma and I were counting
over my treasures the other day. Do you know, I
have one really fine old engraving, that Bob says is
quite a genuine thing; and then there is that pencil-sketch
that poor Schöne made for me the month
before he died, — it is truly artistic.”

“And I have a couple of capital things of Landseer's,”
said Bob.

“There 's no danger that your rooms will not be
pretty,” said I, “now you are fairly on the right track.”

“But, papa,” said Marianne, “I am troubled about
one thing. My love of beauty runs into everything.
I want pretty things for my table, — and yet, as you
say, servants are so careless, one cannot use such
things freely without great waste.”

“For my part,” said my wife, “I believe in best
china, to be kept carefully on an upper-shelf, and taken
down for high-days and holidays; it may be a superstition,
but I believe in it. It must never be taken
out except when the mistress herself can see that it is

safely cared for. My mother always washed her china
herself; and it was a very pretty social ceremony,
after tea was over, while she sat among us washing
her pretty cups, and wiping them on a fine damask
towel.”

“With all my heart,” said I; “have your best china,
and venerate it, — it is one of the loveliest of domestic
superstitions; only do not make it a bar to hospitality,
and shrink from having a friend to tea with you, unless
you feel equal to getting up to the high shelf where
you keep it, getting it down, washing, and putting it
up again.

“But in serving a table, I say, as I said of a house,
beauty is a necessity, and beauty is cheap. Because
you cannot afford beauty in one form, it does not follow
that you cannot have it in another. Because one
cannot afford to keep up a perennial supply of delicate
china and crystal, subject to the accidents of raw,
untrained servants, it does not follow that the every-day
table need present a sordid assortment of articles
chosen simply for cheapness, while the whole capacity
of the purse is given to the set forever locked away
for state-occasions.

“A table-service, all of simple white, of graceful
forms, even though not of china, if arranged with care,
with snowy, well-kept table-linen, clear glasses, and
bright American plate in place of solid silver, may be

made to look inviting; add a glass of flowers every
day, and your table may look pretty; — and it is far
more important that it should look pretty for the
family every day than for company once in two
weeks.”

“I tell my girls,” said my wife, “as the result of
my experience, you may have your pretty china and
your lovely fanciful articles for the table only so long
as you can take all the care of them yourselves. As
soon as you get tired of doing this, and put them into
the hands of the trustiest servants, some good, well-meaning
creature is sure to break her heart and your
own and your very pet darling china pitcher all in one
and the same minute; and then her frantic despair
leaves you not even the relief of scolding.”

“I have become perfectly sure,” said I, “that there
are spiteful little brownies, intent on seducing good
women to sin, who mount guard over the special idols
of the china-closet. If you hear a crash, and a loud
Irish wail from the inner depths, you never think
of its being a yellow pie-plate, or that dreadful one-handled
tureen that you have been wishing were
broken these five years; no, indeed, — it is sure to
be the lovely painted china bowl, wreathed with morning-glories
and sweet-peas, or the engraved glass goblet,
with quaint old-English initials. China sacrificed
must be a great means of saintship to women. Pope,

I think, puts it as the crowning grace of his perfect
woman, that she is

“I ought to be a saint by this time, then,” said
mamma; “for in the course of my days I have lost
so many idols by breakage, and peculiar accidents that
seemed by a special fatality to befall my prettiest and
most irreplaceable things, that in fact it has come to
be a superstitious feeling now with which I regard
anything particularly pretty of a breakable nature.”

“Well,” said Marianne, “unless one has a great
deal of money, it seems to me that the investment in
these pretty fragilities is rather a poor one.”

“Yet,” said I, “the principle of beauty is never so
captivating as when it presides over the hour of daily
meals. I would have the room where they are served
one of the pleasantest and sunniest in the house. I
would have its coloring cheerful, and there should be
companionable pictures and engravings on the walls.
Of all things, I dislike a room that seems to be kept
like a restaurant, merely to eat in. I like to see in a
dining-room something that betokens a pleasant sitting-room
at other hours. I like there some books, a
comfortable sofa or lounge, and all that should make
it cosey and inviting. The custom in some families,
of adoping for the daily meals one of the two parlors

which a city-house furnishes has often seemed to me
a particularly happy one. You take your meals, then,
in an agreeable place, surrounded by the little pleasant
arrangements of your daily sitting-room; and after
the meal, if the lady of the house does the honors of
her own pretty china herself, the office may be a pleasant
and social one.

“But in regard to your table-service I have my
advice at hand. Invest in pretty table-linen, in delicate
napkins, have your vase of flowers, and be guided
by the eye of taste in the choice and arrangement of
even the every-day table-articles, and have no ugly
things when you can have pretty ones by taking a
little thought. If you are sore tempted with lovely
china and crystal, too fragile to last, too expensive to
be renewed, turn away to a print-shop and comfort
yourself by hanging around the walls of your dining-room
beauty that will not break or fade, that will meet
your eye from year to year, though plates, tumblers,
and tea-sets successively vanish. There is my advice
for you, Marianne.”

At the same time, let me say, in parenthesis, that
my wife, whose weakness is china, informed me that
night, when we were by ourselves, that she was ordering
secretly a tea-set as a bridal gift for Marianne,
every cup of which was to be exquisitely painted with
the wild-flowers of America, from designs of her own,

— a thing, by the by, that can now be very nicely executed
in our country, as one may find by looking in at
our friend Briggs's on School Street. “It will last her
all her life,” she said, “and always be such a pleasure
to look at, — and a pretty tea-table is such a pretty
sight!” So spoke Mrs. Crowfield, “unweaned from
china by a thousand falls.” She spoke even with tears
in her eyes. Verily, these women are harps of a thousand
strings!

But to return to my subject.

“Finally and lastly,” I said, “in my analysis and
explication of the agreeableness of those same parlors,
comes the crowning grace, — their homeliness. By
homeliness I mean not ugliness, as the word is apt to
be used, but the air that is given to a room by being
really at home in it. Not the most skilful arrangement
can impart this charm.

“It is said that a king of France once remarked, —
`My son, you must seem to love your people.'

“`Father, how shall I seem to love them?'

“`My son, you must love them.'

“So to make rooms seem home-like you must be at
home in them. Human light and warmth are so wanting
in some rooms, it is so evident that they are never
used, that you can never be at ease there. In vain
the house-maid is taught to wheel the sofa and turn
chair towards chair; in vain it is attempted to imitate
a negligent arrangement of the centre-table.

“Books that have really been read and laid down,
chairs that have really been moved here and there in
the animation of social contact, have a sort of human
vitality in them; and a room in which people really
live and enjoy is as different from a shut-up apartment
as a live woman from a wax image.

“Even rooms furnished without taste often become
charming from this one grace, that they seem to let
you into the home-life and home-current. You seem
to understand in a moment that you are taken into
the family, and are moving in its inner circles, and
not revolving at a distance in some outer court of the
gentiles.

“How many people do we call on from year to year
and know no more of their feelings, habits, tastes,
family ideas and ways, than if they lived in Kamtschatka!
And why? Because the room which they call a
front-parlor is made expressly so that you never shall
know. They sit in a back-room, — work, talk, read,
perhaps. After the servant has let you in and opened
a crack of the shutters, and while you sit waiting for
them to change their dress and come in, you speculate
as to what they may be doing. From some distant
region, the laugh of a child, the song of a canary-bird,
reaches you, and then a door claps hastily to. Do
they love plants? Do they write letters, sew, embroider,
crochet? Do they ever romp and frolic?

What books do they read? Do they sketch or paint?
Of all these possibilities the mute and muffled room
says nothing. A sofa and six chairs, two ottomans
fresh from the upholsterer's, a Brussels carpet, a centre-table
with four gilt Books of Beauty on it, a mantel-clock
from Paris, and two bronze vases, — all these
tell you only in frigid tones, `This is the best room,'
— only that, and nothing more, — and soon she trips
in in her best clothes, and apologizes for keeping you
waiting, asks how your mother is, and you remark that
it is a pleasant day, — and thus the acquaintance progresses
from year to year. One hour in the little back-room,
where the plants and canary-bird and children
are, might have made you fast friends for life; but as
it is, you care no more for them than for the gilt clock
on the mantel.

“And now, girls,” said I, pulling a paper out of my
pocket, “you must know that your father is getting
to be famous by means of these `House and Home
Papers.' Here is a letter I have just received: —

“That 's a good letter,” said Jenny.

“To be sure it is,” said I.

“And shall you answer it, papa?”

“In the very next `Atlantic,' you may be sure I
shall. The class that do their own work are the
strongest, the most numerous, and, taking one thing
with another, quite as well cultivated a class as any
other. They are the anomaly of our country, — the

distinctive feature of the new society that we are
building up here; and if we are to accomplish our
national destiny, that class must increase rather than
diminish. I shall certainly do my best to answer the
very sensible and pregnant questions of that letter.”

Here Marianne shivered and drew up a shawl, and
Jenny gaped; my wife folded up the garment in
which she had set the last stitch, and the clock
struck twelve.

Bob gave a low whistle. “Who knew it was so
late?”

“We have talked the fire fairly out,” said Jenny.