The House Read online

  II

  OURSELVES AND OUR NEIGHBORS

  Everybody's house is better made by his neighbors. This philosophicalutterance occurs in one of those black-letter volumes which I purchasedwith the money left me by my Aunt Susan (of blessed memory!). Even ifAlice and I had not fully made up our minds, after nineteen years ofplanning and figuring, what kind of a house we wanted, we could havereferred the important matter to our neighbors in the confidentassurance that these amiable folk were much more intimately acquaintedwith our needs and our desires than we ourselves were. The utterdisinterestedness of a neighbor qualifies him to judge dispassionatelyof your requirements. When he tells you that you ought to do so and soor ought to have such and such a thing, his counsel should be heeded,because the probabilities are that he has made a careful study of youand he has unselfishly arrived at conclusions which intelligentlycontemplate your welfare. In planning for oneself one is too likely tobe directed by narrow prejudices and selfish considerations.

  Alice and I have always thought much of our neighbors. I suspect thatmy neighbors are my most salient weaknesses. I confess that I enjoynothing else more than an informal call upon the Baylors, the Tiltmans,the Rushes, the Denslows and the other good people who constitute thebest element in society in that part of the city where Alice and I andour interesting family have been living in rented quarters for the lastsix years. This informality of which I am so fond has often grievedand offended Alice. It is that gentle lady's opinion that a man at mytime of life should have too much dignity to make a practice of"bolting into people's houses" (I quote her words exactly) when I knowas well as I know anything that they are at dinner, and that a dessertin the shape of a rhubarb pie or a Strawberry shortcake is about to beserved.

  There was a time when Alice overlooked this idiosyncrasy upon my part;that was before I achieved what Alice terms a national reputation by mydiscovery of a satellite to the star Gamma in the tail of theconstellation Leo. Alice does not stop to consider that our neighborshave never read the royal octavo volume I wrote upon the subject ofthat discovery; Alice herself has never read that book. Alice simplyknows that I wrote that book and paid a printer one thousand onehundred dollars to print it; this is sufficient to give me a high andbroad status in her opinion, bless her loyal little heart!

  But what do our neighbors know or care about that book? What, for thatmatter, do they know or care about the constellation Leo, to saynothing of its tail and the satellites to the stellar component partsthereof? I thank God that my hospitable neighbor, Mrs. Baylor, hasnever suffered a passion for astronomical research to lead her into aneglect of the noble art of compounding rhubarb pies, and I am equallygrateful that no similar passion has stood in the way of good Mrs.Rush's enthusiastic and artistic construction of the most deliciousshortcake ever put into the human mouth.

  The Denslows, the Baylors, the Rushes, the Tiltmans and the rest havetaken a great interest in us, and they have shared the enthusiasm (Ihad almost said rapture) with which Alice and I discoursed of "thehouse" which we were going to have "sometime." They did not, however,agree with us, nor did they agree with one another, as to the kind ofhouse this particular house of ours ought to be. Each one had a housefor sale, and each one insisted that his or her house was particularlysuited to our requirements. The merits of each of these houses wereeloquently paraded by the owners thereof, and the demerits were aseloquently pointed out by others who had houses of their own to sell"on easy terms and at long time."

  It was not long, as you can well suppose, before Alice and I wereintimately acquainted with all the weak points in our neighbors'residences. We knew all about the Baylors' leaky roof, the Denslows'cracked plastering, the Tiltmans' back stairway, the Rushes' exposedwater pipes, the Bollingers' defective chimney, the Dobells' ricketyfoundation, and a thousand other scandalous details which had beendinged into us and which we treasured up to serve as a warning to uswhen we came to have a house--"_the_ house" which we had talked aboutso many years.

  I can readily understand that there were those who regarded our talkand our planning simply as so much effervescence. We had harped uponthe same old string so long--or at least Alice had--that, notunfrequently, even we smilingly asked ourselves whether it were likelythat our day-dreaming would ever be realized. I dimly recall that uponseveral occasions I went so far as to indulge in amiable sarcasms uponAlice's exuberant mania. I do not remember just what these witticismswere, but I daresay they were bright enough, for I never yet haveindulged in repartee without having bestowed much preliminary study andthought upon it.

  I have mentioned our youngest son, Erasmus; he was born to us while wewere members of Plymouth Church, and we gave him that name inconsideration of the wishes of our beloved pastor, who was deeplylearned in and a profound admirer of the philosophical works of Erasmusthe original. Both Alice and I hoped that our son would incline tofollow in the footsteps of the mighty genius whose name he bore. Butfrom his very infancy he developed traits widely different from thoseof the stern philosopher whom we had set up before him as the paragonof human excellence. I have always suspected that little Erasmusinherited his frivolous disposition from his uncle (his mother'sbrother), Lemuel Fothergill, who at the early age of nineteen ran awayfrom the farm in Maine to travel with a thrashing machine, and whosubsequently achieved somewhat of a local reputation as a singer ofcomic songs in the Barnabee Concert Troupe on the Connecticut rivercircuit.

  Erasmus' sense of humor is hampered by no sentiment of reverence. Forthe last five years he has caused his mother and me much humiliation byhis ribald treatment of the subject that is nearest and dearest to ourhearts. In fact, we have come to be ashamed of speaking of "the house"in Erasmus' hearing, for that would give the child a chance to indulgein humor at the expense of a matter which he seems to regard asvisionary as the merest fairy tale. Now Galileo and Herschel are verydifferent boys; they are making famous progress at the manual trainingschool. Galileo has already invented a churn of exceptional merit, andHerschel is so deft at carpentering that I have determined to let himbuild the observatory which I am going to have on the roof of the newhouse one of these days. Galileo and Herschel are unusually proper,steady boys. And our daughters--ah! that reminds me.

  Fanny is our oldest girl. She is going on fifteen now. She favors theBakers in appearance, but her character is more like her mother's sideof the family. If I do say it myself, Fanny is a beautiful girl. If Icould have _my_ way Fanny would be less given to the social amenitiesof life, but the truth is that the dear creature naturally loves gayetyand is bound to have it at all times and under all conditions. Hermerry disposition makes her a favorite with all, and particularly withher schoolmates.

  Now that I think of it, Willie Sears has been to see Fanny everyevening for the last week. I wonder whether Alice has noticed it; Ithink I shall have to speak to her about it. Yet the probability isthat Alice will resent the suggestion which my mention of the matterwill convey. Alice has been saying all along that one particularreason why our new house should be a large one is that there would thenbe a room where Fanny could receive her company without being mortifiedalmost to death by Erasmus' horrid intrusion and still more horridremarks. At such times I forgive and adore Erasmus. It seems onlyyesterday that I bought her a bisque doll at the World's Fair, a bisquedoll with pink eyes and blue hair, and now--oh, Fanny, are you nolonger our little girl?

  Still, we have Josephine, and I am sure she will honor us; for she wasborn six years ago under the conjunction of Jupiter and Venus, andwhile Mars was at perihelion. Moreover, she is the seventh daughter ofa seventh daughter, and there are those who believe that there isespecial virtue in that. I named her after the French empress, notbecause I am a particular admirer of that remarkable but unfortunatewoman's character, but for the reason that upon one occasion shesecured a pension of eight hundred francs for the astronomer LeBanc,who had already added to the sum of human happiness by locating anasteroid near the left limb of the sun, and
who subsequently discovereda greenish yellow spot on the outer ring of the planet Saturn. I neverhear my dear little girl's voice or see her sweet face that I do notthink of the planet Saturn; and never in the solemn stillness of nightdo I contemplate the scintillating glories of the ringed orb withoutbeing reminded of the fair, innocent babe asleep in her little whiteiron bedstead downstairs.

  This sentimental association of objects widely separated in space hasserved to convince me that there is nothing, either in the heavensabove or in the earth beneath, that has not its use, both profitableand pleasant.