The Secret of a Happy Home (1896)

brought up in New York City;

l station as if they had belonged to differen

d in suffering as if they had been twin si

ing deportment, bland in manner and ornate in language. As riches increased he set his heart upon them and upon the good things

of art and peril to dust them every day. He developed a taste for entertaining as time went on and honors thickened upon him, and he mistook, like most of his guild, ostentation for hospitality. Every

re were twenty-five rooms in the palatial house, giving to each servant five to be kept in the spick-and-span array demanded by the master's position and taste. As a matter of course something was neglected in every depa

nd the wild flowers were all Doras to a bud." No snail ever carried her abode upon her back more constantly than our poor rich woman the satin-lined, hot-aired and plate-windowed stone pile, with he

nd House

ng with plated harness, or repaired in the season to seashore or mountain, she wa

crashed down upon and all around her, and everythi

ousekeeper, a butler, a nursery governess and an extra Abigail took her place and did half her work in the satin-lined shell out

r making such homes part and parcel and

ouse that needed none of her care-taking. Upon the low green thatch lies heavily the shadow of a mi

ad traveled but once, and that on her wedding journey. She came back from the brief

nary tubs had not been heard of, and the washing was wrung by hand. The stalwart farmer "calculated to hire" in haying, harvesting, planting, plowing, threshing and killing times. Whatever might have been the wife's calculations,

twice a day to lend a hand, or Mrs. Gamp was engaged for a fortnight. It was not an unusual occurrence for the

er end of the log." He tolerated no wastefulness, and expected to be well fed and comfortable; and comfort with this Yankee mother's so

at one window and polished one pane with her apron, a plait like a trench between her puckered brows, her mouth pursed into an ang

labor than that of housewifery. Eagerness to break up housekeeping and try boarding for a while, in order "to get rested out," is not confine

to low, keep house too har

to do her own housework as a bride and as a matron of years. Unless her husband prospers rapidly she is accounted "shiftless" should she hire a washerwoman, while to "keep a girl" is extravagance, or a significant stride toward gentility. The wife of the English j

vering body and spirit to run the unrighteous race, the goal of which is to seem richer than we are, and make "smartness" (American smartness)

f living as her neighbors do, takes the conventional step toward asserting himself and gratifying her aspirations by moving into a bigger

out as vulgar the homely cheerfulness of the middle-class Englishman's single "parlor" where the table is spread and the family receives visitors. Having saddled himself with a house too big for his family, and stocked the showrooms with plenishings so fine that the family are afraid to use them unless when there is company, the prudent citizen satisfies the economic side of him by making menials of wife and daughters without thought of the opposing circumstance that he has practically endorsed their intentio

ation. Notwithstanding all these drawbacks, she who will not risk them should not live in suc

are petty and low. The web of our daily living is not round and even-*threaded. The homes which are constructed upon the foundations of deranged, dying and dead women, are a mockery of the holy name. Our houses sh