The Atlantic Monthly Part 8

NOVEMBER 3, 1864.

Calm priest of Nature, her maternal hand Led thee, a reverent child, To mountain-altars, by the lonely strand, And through the forest wild.

Haunting her temple, filled with love and awe, To thy responsive youth The harmonies of her benignant law Revealed consoling truth.

Thenceforth, when toiling in the grasp of Care Amid the eager throng, A votive seer, her greetings thou didst bear, Her oracles prolong.

The vagrant winds and the far heaving main Breathed in thy chastened rhyme, Their latent music to the soul again, Above the din of time.

The seasons, at thy call, renewed the spell That thrilled our better years, The primal wonder o'er our spirits fell, And woke the fount of tears.

And Faith's monition, like an organ's strain, Followed the sea-bird's flight, The river's bounteous flow, the ripening grain, And stars' unfathomed light.

In the dank woods and where the meadows gleam, The lowliest flower that smiled To wisdom's vigil or to fancy's dream Thy gentle thought beguiled.

They win fond glances in the prairie's sweep, And where the moss-clumps lie, A welcome find when through the mould they creep, A requiem when they die.

Unstained thy song with pa.s.sion's fitful hues Or pleasure's reckless breath, For Nature's beauty to thy virgin muse Was solemnized by death.

O'er life's majestic realm and dread repose, Entranced with holy calm, From the rapt soul of boyhood then uprose The memorable psalm.

And roaming lone beneath the woodland shades, Thy meditative prayer In the umbrageous aisles and choral glades We murmur unaware;

Or track the ages with prophetic cheer, Lured by thy chant sublime, Till bigotry and kingcraft disappear In Freedom's chosen clime,--

While on her ramparts with intrepid mien, O'er faction's angry sea, Thy voice proclaims, undaunted and serene, The watchwords of the free.

Not in vague tones or tricks of verbal art The plaint and paean rung: Thine the clear utterance of an earnest heart, The limpid Saxon tongue.

Our country's minstrel! in whose crystal verse With tranquil joy we trace Her native glories, and the tale rehea.r.s.e Of her primeval race,--

Blest are thy laurels, that unchallenged crown Worn brow and silver hair, For truth and manhood consecrate renown, And her pure triumph share!

HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS

BY CHRISTOPHER CROWFIELD.

X.

Our gallant Bob Stephens, into whose life-boat our Marianne has been received, has lately taken the mania of house-building into his head.

Bob is somewhat fastidious, difficult to please, fond of domesticities and individualities; and such a man never can fit himself into a house built by another, and accordingly house-building has always been his favorite mental recreation. During all his courts.h.i.+p as much time was taken up in planning a future house as if he had money to build one, and all Marianne's patterns, and the backs of half their letters, were scrawled with ground-plans and elevations. But latterly this chronic disposition has been quickened into an acute form by the falling-in of some few thousands to their domestic treasury,--left as the sole residuum of a painstaking old aunt, who took it into her head to make a will in Bob's favor, leaving, among other good things, a nice little bit of land in a rural district half an hour's railroad-ride from Boston.

So now ground-plans thicken, and my wife is being consulted morning, noon, and night, and I never come into the room without finding their heads close together over a paper, and hearing Bob expatiate on his favorite idea of a library. He appears to have got so far as this, that the ceiling is to be of carved oak, with ribs running to a boss overhead, and finished mediaevally with ultramarine blue and gilding,--and then away he goes sketching Gothic patterns of book-shelves which require only experienced carvers, and the wherewithal to pay them, to be the divinest things in the world.

Marianne is exercised about china-closets and pantries, and about a bed-room on the ground-door,--for, like all other women of our days, she expects not to have strength enough to run up-stairs oftener than once or twice a week; and my wife, who is a native genius in this line, and has planned in her time dozens of houses for acquaintances, wherein they are at this moment living happily, goes over every day with her pencil and ruler the work of rearranging the plans, according as the ideas of the young couple veer and vary.

One day Bob is importuned to give two feet off from his library for a closet in the bed-room,--but resists like a Trojan. The next morning, being mollified by private domestic supplications, Bob yields, and my wife rubs out the lines of yesterday, two feet come off the library, and a closet is constructed. But now the parlor proves too narrow,--the parlor-wall must be moved two feet into the hall. Bob declares this will spoil the symmetry of the latter, and if there is anything he wants, it is a wide, generous, ample hall to step into when you open the front-door.

"Well, then," says Marianne, "let's put two feet more into the width of the house."

"Can't, on account of the expense, you see," says Bob. "You see, every additional foot of outside wall necessitates so many more bricks, so much more flooring, so much more roofing, etc."

And my wife, with thoughtful brow, looks over the plans, and considers how two feet more are to be got into the parlor without moving any of the walls.

"I say," says Bob, bending over her shoulder, "here, take your two feet in the parlor, and put two more feet on to the other side of the hall-stairs"; and he dashes heavily with his pencil.

"Oh, Bob!" exclaims Marianne, "there are the kitchen-pantries! you ruin them,--and no place for the cellar-stairs!"

"Hang the pantries and cellar-stairs!" says Bob, "Mother must find a place for them somewhere else. I say the house must be roomy and cheerful, and pantries and those things may take care of themselves; they can be put _somewhere_ well enough. No fear but you will find a place for them somewhere. What do you women always want such a great enormous kitchen for?"

"It is not any larger than is necessary," said my wife, thoughtfully; "nothing is gained by taking off from it."

"What if you should put it all down into a bas.e.m.e.nt," suggests Bob, "and so get it all out of sight together?"

"Never, if it can be helped," said my wife. "Bas.e.m.e.nt-kitchens are necessary evils, only to be tolerated in cities where land is too dear to afford any other."

So goes the discussion till the trio agree to sleep over it. The next morning an inspiration visits my wife's pillow. She is up and seizes plans and paper, and before six o'clock has enlarged the parlor very cleverly, by throwing out a bow-window. So waxes and wanes the prospective house, innocently battered down and rebuilt with India-rubber and black-lead. Doors are cut out to-night, and walled up to-morrow,--windows knocked out here and put in there, as some observer suggests possibilities of too much or too little draught. Now all seems finished, when, lo, a discovery! There is no fireplace nor stove-flue in my lady's bed-room, and can be none without moving the bathing-room.

Pencil and India-rubber are busy again, and for a while the whole house seems to threaten to fall to pieces with the confusion of the moving; the bath-room wanders like a ghost, now invading a closet, now threatening the tranquillity of the parlor, till at last it is laid by some unheard-of calculations of my wife's, and sinks to rest in a place so much better that everybody wonders it never was thought of before.

"Papa," said Jennie, "it appears to me people don't exactly know what they want when they build; why don't you write a paper on house-building?"

"I have thought of it," said I, with the air of a man called to settle some great reform. "It must be entirely because Christopher has not written that our young people and mamma are tangling themselves daily in webs which are untangled the next day."

"You see," said Jennie, "they have only just so much money, and they want everything they can think of under the sun. There's Bob been studying architectural antiquities, and n.o.body knows what, and sketching all sorts of curly-whorlies; and Marianne has her notions about a parlor and boudoir and china-closets and bedroom-closets; and Bob wants a baronial hall; and mamma stands out for linen-closets and bathing-rooms and all that; and so among them all it will just end in getting them head over ears in debt."

The thing struck me as not improbable.

"I don't know, Jennie, whether my writing an article is going to prevent all this; but as my time in the 'Atlantic' is coming round, I may as well write on what I am obliged to think of, and so I will give a paper on the subject to enliven our next evening's session."

So that evening, when Bob and Marianne had dropped in as usual, and while the customary work of drawing and rubbing-out was going on at Mrs.

Crowfield's sofa, I produced my paper and read as follows:--

OUR HOUSE.

There is a place called "Our House," which everybody knows of. The sailor talks of it in his dreams at sea. The wounded soldier, turning in his uneasy hospital-bed, brightens at the word,--it is like the dropping of cool water in the desert, like the touch of cool fingers on a burning brow. "Our house," he says feebly, and the light comes back into his dim eyes,--for all homely charities, all fond thoughts, all purities, all that man loves on earth or hopes for in heaven, rise with the word.

"Our house" may be in any style of architecture, low or high. It may be the brown old farm-house, with its tall well-sweep, or the one-story gambrel-roofed cottage, or the large, square, white house, with green blinds, under the wind-swung elms of a century, or it may be the log-cabin of the wilderness, with its one room,--still there is a spell in the memory of it beyond all conjurations. Its stone and brick and mortar are like no other; its very clapboards and s.h.i.+ngles are dear to us, powerful to bring back the memories of early days, and all that is sacred in home-love.

"Papa is getting quite sentimental," whispered Jennie, loud enough for me to hear. I shook my head at her impressively, and went on undaunted.