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 p.r.i.c.k 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 a.n.a.lyze characters,--give our views on all subjects, aesthetic, 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 subst.i.tute 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 armchair 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 aesthetic 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-b.u.t.t with twine, like a great harpsichord. A few weeks covered the twine with blossoming plants, which every morning were a ma.s.s 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 hasn"t mamma"s faculty with flowers. Flowers will grow for some people, and for some they won"t.

n.o.body 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 antic.i.p.ates 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 gla.s.s,--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 doesn"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. .h.i.t 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 a.n.a.lyzed," 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 traveling on a Western ca.n.a.l 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 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?"

"Oh 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.