The 
 
 MFORTS 
 
 BY 
 
 RALPH BERGF.\r,RKN 
 
 ornia 
 
 al 
 
 7
 
 Southern Branch 
 of the 
 
 University of California 
 
 Los Angeles
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below 
 
 Form L-9-15m-8,'24
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME
 
 OTHER ATLANTIC BOOKS 
 
 ATLANTIC CLASSICS, First Series $1.25 
 ATLANTIC CLASSICS, Second Series $1.25 
 
 HEADQUARTERS NIGHTS. 
 
 By Vernon Kellogg $1.00 
 
 THE WAR AND THE SPIRIT OF YOUTH. 
 By Maurice Barres and Others $ i.oo 
 
 SHOCK AT THE FRONT. 
 
 By William Townsend Porter $1.25 
 
 PAN-GERMANY: THE DISEASE AND CURE 
 AND A PLAN FOR THE ALLIES. 
 
 By Andre Cheradame $ .35 
 
 ESSAYS AND ESSAY WRITING. 
 Edited by William M. Tanner $1.00 
 
 ATLANTIC NARRATIVES. 
 
 Edited by Charles Swain Thomas $1.00 
 
 THE PROFESSION OF JOURNALISM. 
 
 Edited by Willard G. Bleyer $1.00 
 
 THE ASSAULT ON HUMANISM. 
 
 By Paul Shorey $ .60 
 
 THE AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING. 
 By A. E. Newton (in preparation) 
 
 THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS 
 
 BOSTON
 
 7> 
 
 The 
 
 COMFORTS of HOME 
 
 BY 
 
 RALPH BERGENGREN 
 
 The Atlantic Monthly Press 
 Boston 
 
 1 8
 
 OTHER ATLANTIC BOOKS 
 
 ATLANTIC CLASSICS, First Series $1.25 
 ATLANTIC CLASSICS, Second Series $1.25 
 
 HEADQUARTERS NIGHTS. 
 
 By Vernon Kellogg $1.00 
 
 THE WAR AND THE SPIRIT OF YOUTH. 
 By Maurice Barres and Others $1.00 
 
 SHOCK AT THE FRONT. 
 
 By William Townsend Porter $1.25 
 
 PAN-GERMANY : THE DISEASE AND CURE 
 AND A PLAN FOR THE ALLIES. 
 By Andre Cheradame $ .35 
 
 ESSAYS AND ESSAY WRITING. 
 Edited by William M. Tanner $1.00 
 
 ATLANTIC NARRATIVES. 
 
 Edited by Charles Swain Thomas $1.00 
 
 THE PROFESSION OF JOURNALISM. 
 
 Edited by Willard G. Bleyer $1.00 
 
 THE ASSAULT ON HUMANISM. 
 
 By Paul Shorey $ .60 
 
 THE AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING. 
 By A. E. Newton (in preparation) 
 
 THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS 
 
 BOSTON
 
 .& 
 
 COMFORTS of HOME 
 
 BY 
 
 RALPH BERGENGREN 
 
 The Atlantic Monthly Press 
 Boston 
 
 18
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY 
 THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS, INC. 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
 
 ,3503 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Thoughts While Getting Settled . I 
 
 Praise of Open Fires . . . . 16 
 
 Furnace and I 29 
 
 No Stairs No Attic . . . .41 
 
 Concerning Kitchens .... 56 
 
 The Plumber Appreciated ... 68 
 
 The Home of the Porcelain Tub . 81 
 
 At Home in the Guest Chamber . 95
 
 THOUGHTS WHILE GETTING 
 SETTLED 
 
 PROPERLY speaking, the new 
 house was old. A hundred years 
 and more had gone over its chimney, 
 down which, as we were to discover 
 later, a hundred flies and more would 
 come when the open fires had warmed 
 it, and within doors it would have 
 charmed any amateur of the Colonial 
 by the antiquity of its furnishings. 
 Temporarily it belonged to me, my 
 executors, administrators, and assigns. 
 But there were limits to our possession. 
 None of us might ' permit any hole to be 
 drilled or made in the stone or brick 
 work of said building'; no 'sign or pla 
 card ' might we place upon it; we might 
 not 'over-load, damage, or deface' it; 
 nor might we 'carry on any unlawful, 
 I
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 improper, noisy, or offensive trade' in it. 
 We had admitted that the glass was 
 whole and in good order, and bound 
 ourselves to keep it good, unless broken 
 by fire, with glass of the same kind and 
 quality. In case I became bankrupt I 
 had agreed that the owner, the owner's 
 executors, the owner's administrators, 
 and the owner's assigns should treat me 
 with every form of ignominy that the 
 law has yet invented to make bank 
 ruptcy more distressing. Nor could I 
 hold them responsible if our guests fell 
 down the cellar stairs; although there I 
 think they would be morally respon- 
 
 % 
 
 sible, for a steeper flight of cellar stairs 
 I simply cannot imagine. 
 
 Of all documents there is hardly an 
 other so common as a lease, or more 
 suspicious. Observe the lessor - - a 
 benevolent, dignified, but cautious per 
 son! Observe the lessee - - a worm
 
 GETTING SETTLED 
 
 with criminal tendencies! Perhaps he 
 is a decent sort of worm, but the lessor 
 had better look out for him. Very 
 likely he will commit murders in the 
 dining-room, read the Contes Drola- 
 tiques in the library, play bass-drum 
 solos in the parlor, and start a piggery 
 in the cellar. One suspects that possi 
 bly the great army of hoboes is partly 
 recruited from among supersensitive 
 men who read their leases before sign 
 ing them and preferred vagabondage to 
 insult. But some of us control our sen 
 sitiveness. I, for example, read my 
 lease; and when, having agreed men 
 tally to post no placard myself, I dis 
 covered a clause allowing the lessor to 
 decorate my residence with the informa 
 tion that it was 
 
 FOR SALE 
 / crossed that clause out! 
 Observe the worm turning! 
 
 3
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 It was the dining-room that had won 
 us, formerly the kitchen and still com 
 plete with the brick oven ; the crane ; 
 the fat, three-legged pots and spider; a 
 thing that, after much debate, we think 
 must have been a bread-toaster; and a 
 kind of overgrown curry-comb with 
 which, so we imagine, the original dwell 
 ers were wont to rake the hot ashes 
 from the brick oven. Also a warming- 
 pan. And although these objects 
 charm me, and I delight to live with 
 them, I cannot but wonder whether a 
 hundred years from now there may not 
 be persons to furnish their dining-rooms 
 with just such a stove as stands at pres 
 ent in my real kitchen; and perhaps to 
 suspend beside it one of those quaint 
 contraptions with which the jolly old 
 chaps in the early twentieth century 
 used to kill flies. I hear in imagination 
 the host of that period explaining the 
 
 4
 
 GETTING SETTLED 
 
 implement to his wondering guests, 
 being expert in such matters, he will 
 produce the technical term 'swat' with 
 an air of easy familiarity, and see 
 him hanging it reverently up again 
 beside the dear old stove and right 
 over the picturesque old coal-hod. Per 
 haps, too, he will point out the beauti 
 ful, sturdy lines of the coal-hod. 
 
 Now in due time, or, to be exact, 
 some hours later, strong men came to 
 this house with a motor truck; and, 
 working with concentrated fury, they 
 put into it all our own furniture, our 
 trunks, our books, our clothes, and every 
 thing that was ours. It had been our 
 purpose to direct these men: to say, 
 'This goes here, kind sirs,' and, 'That 
 goes there, gentlemen ' ; or, ' Believe me, 
 this is the place for that, ' or, ' Thank 
 you, sir, but that is the place for this.' 
 When they had come and gone, and the 
 
 5
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 empty truck had rumbled away in the 
 early autumn twilight, everything was 
 to be just where we had planned in 
 advance; 'getting settled' would be a 
 light but satisfying pleasure; organiza 
 tion, 'efficiency in business,' for we had 
 been reading an article in a magazine, 
 would have made changing our home as 
 easy as changing our clothes. But 
 these men were beyond mortal control. 
 They came late and their mood was to 
 depart early. Movers always come 
 late, for two reasons : first, because they 
 like to feel that you are glad to see 
 them, and, second, because they do not 
 like to place each object just where it 
 belongs. They prefer concentrated 
 fury. Children of nature, they inherit 
 their mother's abhorrence of a vacuum ; 
 unable, as they saw at a glance, to stuff 
 the whole house from floors to ceilings, 
 they devoted their attention, brushing 
 6
 
 GETTING SETTLED 
 
 us aside like annoying insects that they 
 lacked time for killing, to stuffing such 
 rooms as they instantly decided could 
 be stuffed the tightest. If there was 
 anything that we might presumably 
 need at once, they put it at the bottom 
 and buried it under the heaviest avail 
 able furniture. It was wonderful to see 
 them. In the end they actually took 
 money for what they had done and 
 went away hastily. Organization and 
 'efficiency in business' had accom 
 plished something: the trunks were up 
 stairs, and two barrels had reached their 
 predestined place in the cellar. 
 
 There appears in many business of 
 fices, although it is not, so far as I know, 
 the official slogan of ' efficiency in busi 
 ness,' a card with the motto, 'Do It 
 Now.' I looked into that room which 
 was destined to be the library: formerly 
 it had been a bedroom, and the four- 
 
 7
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 poster bed and noble mahogany bureau 
 were to have vanished upstairs before 
 my arrival. But now, peering past and 
 above and under the debris that the 
 avalanche had left there, I recognized 
 the noble mahogany bureau in the far 
 corner, mourning presumably for its de 
 parted companion, the four-poster. I 
 beheld it with a misgiving which I tried 
 to put from me, but which came back 
 from moment to moment and whispered 
 in whichever ear was nearer. 
 
 'Just suppose,' whispered Misgiving, 
 'that the man who was hired to take 
 that bureau upstairs found that it 
 would n't go up ! ! ! ! ' 
 
 And I thought of that stairway, that 
 went up furtively from the dining-room 
 which had once been the kitchen, a 
 delightful stairway (especially when one 
 realized what a discouraging time a bur 
 glar would have in finding it, and how
 
 GETTING SETTLED 
 
 he would probably find the cellar stairs 
 instead and die of a broken neck at 
 the bottom), but narrow, narrow; and 
 with a right angle just where a right 
 angle was least desirable. It had been 
 as much as they could do to get up 
 the trunks. 
 
 'You will very likely have to leave 
 the bureau in the library,' whispered 
 Misgiving, 'and that will be inconven 
 ient won't it? when you have 
 company. Company will have to dress 
 in the library or else gather up its 
 clothes and run.'- 'Library!' said 
 Misgiving. 'Who ever heard of a bu 
 reau in a library? People will think 
 the library table is a folding bed. You 
 can't disguise a noble old bureau like 
 that by putting books on it,' said Mis 
 giving. 'Once a bureau always a bu 
 reau. What will your wife say,' asked 
 Misgiving, 'when she learns that the 
 
 9
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 spare-room bureau has to stay down 
 stairs in the library?' 
 
 People who, having something to do, 
 'do it now,' live in the present. I 
 seized the nearest object, a chair, and 
 dragged it into the next room; I seized 
 the next object, a box, and carried it to 
 the cellar; I risked my life on the cellar 
 stairs; I became concentrated fury my 
 self. In getting settled, whether you 
 are a pioneer or a householder, the first 
 thing is to make a clearing. No matter 
 where things go, provided only that 
 they go somewhere else. No matter 
 what happened, no matter if bureaus re 
 mained forever in libraries, no matter if 
 the awful puzzle that the strong men of 
 the moving van had left me remained 
 forever insoluble this was my home 
 and I had to live in it for the term of 
 one year. I took off my coat, hung it 
 up somewhere and found it again 
 10
 
 GETTING SETTLED 
 
 two days afterward. I attacked boxes, 
 chairs, tables, boxes, books, bric-a-brac, 
 more boxes, chairs, tables. I ran here 
 and there, carrying things. I excelled 
 the bee. I made a clearing, which grew 
 larger and larger. I gained self-confi 
 dence. Elsewhere I knew that other 
 hands were unpacking trunks; that an 
 other mind was directing those mys 
 teries which out of chaos would evolve 
 dinner; now and then, in my death-de 
 fying feat of going down cellar, I caught 
 a glimpse of the furnace, fat-bellied 
 monster whom I must later feed like a 
 coal-eating baby. 
 
 It is a question parenthetically 
 whether it is truly sportsmanlike to live 
 in a quaint old colonial cottage with a 
 furnace and electric lights. I have 
 heard amateurs of the Colonial declare 
 that they would willingly die before 
 they would live in an electrically lighted 
 ii
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 colonial cottage. The anachronism 
 horrifies them: they would have death 
 or candles. Probably they feel the 
 same way about a furnace and a bath 
 room. Yet I have no doubt that the 
 builders of this colonial cottage would 
 have opened their hearts to all these in 
 ventions; and I am not sure that they 
 would have regarded as anything but 
 funny the idea that their own kitchen 
 paraphernalia would some day be used 
 to decorate my dining-room. I go fur 
 ther. Granting that electric lights, a 
 furnace, and a bathroom are anachro 
 nisms in this quaint old colonial cottage 
 - what am I but an anachronism my 
 self? We must stand together, the fur 
 nace, the electric metre, the porcelain 
 bathtub, and I, and keep each other in 
 countenance. 
 
 ' H-m-m-m-m ! ' whispered Misgiving. 
 'How about a bureau in the library? 
 
 12
 
 GETTING SETTLED 
 
 That is n't an anachronism ; it's an ab 
 surdity.' 
 
 Making a clearing is a long step for 
 ward in getting settled; after that it is 
 a matter of days, a slow dawn of order 
 liness. In a quaint old colonial cottage 
 are many closets, few if any of them 
 located according to modern notions of 
 convenience. The clothes closet that 
 ought to be in the spare room upstairs 
 is downstairs in the library with the 
 spare-room bureau ; the upstairs closets 
 are under the eaves of the sloping roof 
 - the way to utilize them to the best 
 advantage is to enter on your hands and 
 knees, carrying an electric torch be 
 tween your teeth. Inside the closet you 
 turn on your back, illuminate the pen 
 dant garments with your torch, drag 
 whatever you select down from the 
 hook, grasp it firmly with your teeth, 
 and so out again on your hands and 
 13
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 knees, rolling the electric torch gently 
 before you. We see now why in those 
 good old days chests of drawers were 
 popular fortunately we have one of 
 our own that somehow has got up the 
 stairway; and we see also, as we begin 
 to settle into it, what is perhaps the se 
 cret of this humbler colonial architec 
 ture. The Colonial Jack who built this 
 house wanted some rooms round a 
 chimney and a roof that the snow would 
 slide off; and so he built it; and where- 
 ever he found a space he made a closet 
 or a cupboard; and because he had no 
 other kind, he put in small-paned win 
 dows ; and all he did was substantial and 
 honest and beautiful, in its humble 
 \vay, by accident. 
 
 But about that bureau? 
 
 Two strong, skillful men, engaged for 
 the purpose, juggled with it, this way 
 and that, muttering words of equally
 
 GETTING SETTLED 
 
 great strength and it went upstairs. 
 Had it been a quarter of an inch wider, 
 they said afterward, the feat would 
 have been impossible. It was a small 
 margin, but it will save the company 
 from having to knock timidly on the 
 library door when it wishes to dress for 
 dinner.
 
 PRAISE OF OPEN FIRES 
 
 I HAVE read and heard much praise 
 of open fires, but I recall no praise 
 of bringing in the wood. There is, to be 
 sure, the good old song : 
 
 Come bring with a noise, 
 
 My merrie, merrie boys, 
 
 The Christmas log to the firing; 
 
 While my good dame, she 
 
 Bids ye all make free, 
 
 And drink to your heart's desiring. 
 
 But this refers to a particular log, the 
 Yule log (or clog, as they used to call it) 
 which was brought in only once a year, 
 and, even so, the singer evidently is not 
 bringing it in himself. He is looking on. 
 The merrie, merrie boys, he thinks, 
 need encouragement. After they have 
 got the log in, and the good dame has 
 produced the rewarding jug, bowl, or 
 bottle, everybody will feel better. Dry 
 16
 
 PRAISE OF OPEN FIRES 
 
 without and wet within; how oft, in 
 deed, has praise of open fire kept com 
 pany with praise of open bottle! For 
 ests uncounted have been cut down, - 
 the hillside beech, from where the owl 
 ets meet and screech ; the crackling pine, 
 the cedar sweet, the knotted oak, with 
 fragrant peat, and burned up, stick 
 by stick; so that, as the poet explains, 
 the bright flames, dancing, winking, 
 shall light us at our drinking. 
 
 Others than inebriates have sung the 
 praise of open fires; but the most high 
 ly respectable, emulating the bright 
 flames, have usually winked at drink 
 ing. But never one of them, so far as 
 I remember, has praised the honest, 
 wholesome, temperate exercise of bring 
 ing in the wood. 
 
 And there is the Song That Has 
 Never Been Sung nor ever will be, 
 so the tune is immaterial : 
 17
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 How jolly it is, of a cold winter morning, 
 To pop out of bed just a bit before dawning, 
 And, thinking the while of your jolly cold bath, 
 To kindle a flame on your jolly cold hearth ! 
 
 Ah me, it is merry! 
 
 Sing derry-down-derry ! 
 Where now is the lark? I am up before him. 
 I chuckle with glee at this quaint little whim. 
 I make up the fire pray Heaven it catches ! 
 But what in the world have they done with the 
 matches? 
 
 Ah me, it is merry! 
 
 Sing derry-down-derry! 
 
 And so forth, and so forth. 
 
 I invented that song myself, in Jan 
 uary, 1918, when circumstances led me 
 
 - so to speak, by the nape of the neck 
 
 - to heat my home with wood because 
 nowhere could I buy coal. But I felt no 
 inpulse to sing it simply a deeper, 
 kindlier sympathy for forefather in the 
 good old days before stoves and fur 
 naces. I do not blame him for not tak 
 ing a cold bath. I wish in vain that he 
 had had the thing that I call a match. 
 
 18
 
 PRAISE OF OPEN FIRES 
 
 An archaeological authority tells me 
 how forefather managed without it: 
 
 'Holding between the thumb and 
 forefinger of the right hand a piece of 
 imported gun-flint (long quarried at 
 Brandon in Suffolk, England), strike it 
 diagonally against a circlet of properly 
 tempered steel held in the left hand, so 
 that the spark flies downward on a dry, 
 scorched linen rag lying in a tin cup 
 (the tinder-box). When the spark in 
 stantly catches the rag, blow or touch 
 it into flame against the sulphur-tipped 
 end of a match, which will not other 
 wise ignite. Then with the burning 
 match, light a candle socketed in the 
 lid of the tinder-box, and smother the 
 smouldering rag with an inner tin lid 
 dropped upon it. Thus you were mas 
 ter of the house of a winter's morning 
 when the fires were out.' 
 
 But I would n't believe that archaeo- 
 19
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 logical authority if he had added, 'sing 
 ing at your task.' Singeing at it seems 
 more plausible. 
 
 To many of us plain bread-and- 
 butter persons, praise of open fires some 
 times seems a little too warm and com 
 fortable too smugly contemplative. 
 We like open fires. We would have 
 them in every room in the house except 
 the kitchen and bathroom and per 
 haps in the bathroom, where we could 
 hang our towels from the mantelpiece 
 (as gallant practical gentlemen, now 
 some centuries dead, named it by hang 
 ing up their wet mantles), and let them 
 warm while we were taking our baths. 
 We go as far as any in regarding the 
 open fire as a welcoming host in the hall, 
 an undisturbing companion in the li 
 brary, an encourager of digestion in the 
 dining-room, an enlivener in the living- 
 room, and a good-night thought of 
 20
 
 PRAISE OF OPEN FIRES 
 
 hospitality in the guest-chamber. But 
 we cannot follow the essayist who speaks 
 scornfully of hot-water pipes. 'From 
 the security of ambush,' says he, 'they 
 merely heat, and heat whose source is 
 invisible is not to be coveted at all.' 
 
 Oh, merely heat! The blithe gentle 
 man betrays himself out of his own ink 
 well. He may have forgotten it, - 
 very likely somebody else takes care of 
 it, but there is a furnace in his cellar. 
 Does he, we ask him seriously, covet 
 the reciprocal affection of some beloved 
 woman start as angrily as he may at 
 our suggestion of any comparison be 
 tween her and a hot-water pipe only 
 when he can see her? Or, supposing him 
 a confirmed woman-hater, does he re 
 pudiate underwear? 
 
 He brushes aside the questions. 
 'With a fire in one's bedroom,' says he, 
 'sleep comes witchingly.' 
 
 21
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 'Unless,' say we, 'a spark or coal 
 jumps out on the rug and starts to set 
 the bedroom afire. Better,' say we, 
 pursuing the subject in our heavy way, 
 'a Philistine in bed than a. fellow of fine 
 taste stamping out a live coal with his 
 bare feet.' 
 
 And so we thank the thoughtful host 
 who safely and sanely screens the open 
 fire in his guest-chamber; but fie, fie 
 upon him if he has decoratively ar 
 ranged on our temporary hearth Wood 
 without Kindlings! 
 
 If you give it half a chance, my 
 friend, this 'joy perpetual,' as you call 
 it, will eat you up. 
 
 And yet we agree with anybody that 
 nothing else in the house has appealed 
 so long and so universally to the im 
 agination of man. It began before 
 houses. Remote and little in the far 
 perspective of time, we see a distant 
 22
 
 PRAISE OF OPEN FIRES 
 
 and awful-looking relative, whom we 
 blush to acknowledge, kindling his fire; 
 and that fire, open as all outdoors, was 
 the seed and beginning of domestic 
 living. With it, the Objectionable An 
 cestor learned to cook, and in this way 
 differentiated himself from the beasts. 
 Kindling it, he learned to swear, and 
 differentiated himself further. Think 
 ing about it, his dull but promising 
 mind conceived the advantage of hav 
 ing somebody else to kindle it; so he 
 caught an awful-looking woman, and 
 instituted the family circle. Soon, I 
 fancy, he acquired the habit of sitting 
 beside his fire when he should have been 
 doing something more active; but a 
 million years must pass before he was 
 presentable, and another million before 
 he had coat-tails, and could stand in 
 front of it, spreading them like a pea 
 cock in the pride of his achievement - 
 
 23
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 a Captain Bonavita turning his back on 
 the lion. I would have you note, for 
 what it may be worth, that praise of 
 open fires has always been masculine 
 rather than feminine. 
 
 Nowadays, I judge, many of his de 
 scendants find the open fire much like 
 a little movie theatre in the home. 
 Under the proscenium arch of the fire 
 place the flames supply actors and 
 scenery, and the show goes on indefi 
 nitely. It is better than a movie, for 
 it has color, and lacks the agonizing 
 facial contortions and interpolated text : 
 'Even a Princess is just a girl at 
 Coney Island' ; ' It is like the nobility 
 of your true heart, old friend, but I 
 cannot accept the heroic sacrifice.' 
 
 Sometimes it is useful. An author 
 sits by the fire, and smokes; and soon 
 the puppets of his next romance oblig 
 ingly appear and act a chapter for him. 
 24
 
 PRAISE OF OPEN FIRES 
 
 To-morrow he will dictate that chapter 
 to his pretty stenographer. Sometimes 
 it is consoling. A lover sits by the fire 
 and smokes; presently he sees his love 
 in the flames, and sighs as Shake 
 speare would say like a furnace. 
 Sometimes it does n't work. / sit by 
 the fire, and smoke; and I see nothing 
 but fire and smoke. 
 
 It is a pleasant place to sit and yet 
 how rapidly and unanimously, when 
 coal came into use, and stoves came on 
 the market, did people stop sitting, and 
 brick up their fireplaces! They had no 
 time for essays, but praise of stoves 
 ascended wherever the wonderful things 
 were available. A new world was born : 
 stoves! kitchen ranges! furnaces! hot- 
 water pipes! heat all over the house! 
 - invisible, to be sure, but nobody 
 seemed to worry about that. And out 
 went the open fire to be lit again 
 
 25
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 later, but never again as a cooker of 
 food and a warmer of the whole house. 
 It came back to be sat by. 
 
 There are times, indeed, speaking 
 as the spokesman of bread-and-butter, 
 - when the open fire seems to stimu 
 late amazingly our powers of conversa 
 tion. We sparkle (for us) ; we become 
 (or at least we feel) engagingly ani 
 mated; but is it really the open fire? I 
 have met those with whom it is no more 
 stimulating to sit cosily beside an open 
 fire than cosily beside an open sea or an 
 open trolley-car or an open window or an 
 open oyster. I have known others in 
 whose company a kitchen range seemed 
 just as stimulating. 
 
 Fires go out, but each new flame is a 
 reincarnation. Our open fires are but 
 miniatures of the old-time roarers that 
 set the hall or tavern harmlessly ablaze, 
 and lit its windows for the ruddy en- 
 26
 
 PRAISE OF OPEN FIRES 
 
 couragement of winter-blown travelers. 
 Reverting to the menagerie for a figure, 
 the open fires of the past were lions, 
 those of to-day are cubs. Like cubs 
 they amuse us; and so we forget what 
 grim and tragic humors of life the open 
 fire must necessarily have witnessed. 
 Was it not before an open fire that 
 Cain killed Abel? In the glow of those 
 bright flames, dancing, winking, has 
 been planned every villainy of which 
 mankind is capable: winked they have 
 at every sin that could be sinned by fire 
 light. Elemental and without morals, 
 the open fire has lived in hovels as well 
 as in palaces; it has lighted the student, 
 heels in air and lying on his belly to 
 study his book; the Puritan on his knees 
 at prayer; the reveler, flat on his back 
 and snoring in maudlin sleep under the 
 table. And now, a luxury of the well- 
 to-do, it is departing, dancing and wink- 
 27
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 ing as usual, out of the universal life to 
 which it has been as necessary as cooked 
 food and warmth in winter. 
 
 But perhaps, after all, it is not yet 
 too late for praise of bringing in the 
 wood. Let us at least provide the good 
 old song, and trust to luck that four or 
 five hundred years from now some imag 
 inative gentleman, digesting his dinner 
 before a surviving open fire, will hear 
 afar off the faint but jolly chorus: 
 
 Come, lads, all together, 
 
 And get the wood in. 
 
 This brisk zero weather 
 
 Is pleasant as sin. 
 
 Put on your warm hosen, 
 
 And shuffle a bit; 
 
 Your toes may be frozen 
 
 Before you know it. 
 
 To sit mug-a-mugging 
 
 The fire who could, 
 
 That might be out lugging 
 
 In armfuls of wood? 
 
 In armfuls of wood !
 
 FURNACE AND I 
 
 SUMMER is the favorite time to 
 advertise furnaces, for, although 
 a pacifist might argue that being pre 
 pared for cold weather encourages frost, 
 the practical persons who make and sell 
 heating plants are firm believers in pre 
 paredness. They produce diagrams 
 and pictures, showing how their furnace 
 bisects the coal bill, and how easily a 
 pretty child can run it from the front 
 hall. 
 
 But my furnace is different. I defy 
 the prettiest child imaginable to run it. 
 Indeed, in a strict sense, I defy anybody 
 to run it ; for this furnace has a mind of 
 its own and an odd ambition to behave 
 like a thermometer. On a warm day it 
 goes up, on a cold day it goes down ; in 
 zero weather it takes all the time of a 
 29
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 determined man to head it off from be 
 coming a large, inconvenient refrigera 
 tor. As for bisecting coal bills, the crea 
 ture likes coal. I have even thought 
 that it uttered strange, self-congratula 
 tory, happy noises whenever there oc- 
 cured a rise in the price of its favorite 
 edible. 
 
 Before meeting this furnace I had 
 lived in apartments, and my mental con 
 ception of a ton of coal had been as of 
 something enormous, sufficient to heat 
 the average house a month. A furnace 
 was to me a remote mystery operated 
 by a high priest called 'janitor,' whom 
 I vaguely connected with the lines of 
 Smollett, - 
 
 Th' Hesperian dragon not more fierce and fell ; 
 Nor the gaunt, growling janitor of Hell. 
 
 I took my heat as a matter of course. If 
 
 I wanted more of it, I spoke warmly to 
 
 the janitor through a speaking tube, 
 
 30
 
 FURNACE AND I 
 
 and after a while there was more 
 heat. If I wanted less, I spoke to him 
 coldly, in the same distant, godlike way, 
 and after a while there was less 
 heat. In neither case, I discovered, did 
 an ordinary tone of voice get any result 
 whatever; and, although a fat man 
 himself, he sometimes growled back 
 through the tube very much like the 
 gaunt specimen mentioned by Smollett. 
 But I gave little thought to him. I had 
 what is called an 'intelligent idea' that 
 to produce more heat he opened a 
 'draft,' and to reduce heat he closed it, 
 the effect of a draft on a furnace being 
 just the opposite to its effect on a jan 
 itor. At night he 'shook the furnace 
 down,' in the morning he 'shook the 
 furnace up.' One gathers such knowl 
 edge casually, without conscious effort 
 or realization. I had in fact no more 
 curiosity about the furnace than about
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 the sun, for I seemed as unlikely to run 
 one heater as the other. 
 
 Then, like many another man who 
 has lived in apartments, I turned sub 
 urbanite. I had a furnace, and I had to 
 run it myself. How well I remember 
 that autumn day when I started my 
 first furnace fire! 
 
 There sat the monster on the floor 
 of the cellar, impassive as Buddha, and 
 apparently holding up the house with 
 as many arms as an octopus hollow 
 arms through which presently would 
 flow the genial heat. I peeked cau 
 tiously through a little door into his 
 stomach, and marveled at its hollow 
 immensity. I reached in till my arm 
 ached and my hand dangled in empty 
 space. But my intelligence told me 
 that there must be a bottom. Crum 
 pling a newspaper into a great wad, I 
 dropped itjdown, down into the mon- 
 32
 
 FURNACE AND I 
 
 ster's gullet, where it vanished forever. 
 I crumpled and dropped another; I con 
 tinued, until at last oh, triumph of 
 mind and industry over incalculable 
 depth! I saw newspaper, and had 
 something tangible on which to erect a 
 pyre of kindlings. Where I could reach 
 I laid them crosswise, and where I could 
 n't I tossed them in at varying angles, 
 gaining skill with practice. 
 
 ' It is like a great wooden nest ! ' cried 
 I in astonishment. 'Now I know why 
 the coal I have bought for my furnace 
 is called "egg."' 
 
 I lit the fire and made a grand 
 smoke. 
 
 It rose through the kindlings; it piled 
 out through the little door; it hung like 
 great cobwebs to the roof of the cellar. 
 With great presence of mind I hastily 
 closed the little door and ran lightly up 
 the cellar-stairs. The smoke had pre- 
 33
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 ceded me; it got there first through the 
 registers ; and more was coming. 
 
 1 met a woman. 
 
 ' Is the house afire?' she asked ex 
 citedly. 
 
 I calmed her. ' It is not,' I replied 
 quietly, in a matter-of-course way. 
 'When you start a fire for the winter it 
 always smokes a little.' 
 
 We opened the windows. We went 
 outside and looked at the house. It 
 leaked smoke through every crevice 
 except, curiously enough, the chimney. 
 Ah-h-h-h-h! I saw what had happened. 
 I groped my way to the cellar and 
 opened the back damper. Now the 
 smoke went gladly up the chimney, and 
 the view through the little door was at 
 once beautiful and awful: it was like 
 looking into the heart of an angry vol 
 cano. Evidently it was time to lay the 
 eggs on the nest. 
 
 34
 
 FURNACE AND I 
 
 I shoveled the abyss full of coal, and 
 the volcano became extinct. Presently, 
 instead of a furnace full of fire, I had a 
 furnace full of egg coal. I began taking 
 it out, egg by egg, at first with my fin 
 gers and then with the tongs from the 
 dining-room fireplace. And when the 
 woman idly questioned me as to what I 
 was going to do down cellar with the 
 tongs, I bit my lips. 
 
 To the man who runs it (an absurd 
 term as applied to a thing that has no 
 legs and weighs several tons) the fur 
 nace is his first thought in the morn 
 ing and his last thought at night. 
 His calendar has but two seasons - 
 winter, when the furnace is going, 
 and summer, when the furnace is out. 
 But in summer his thoughts are nat 
 urally more philosophical. He sees 
 how profoundly this recent invention 
 (which he is not at the time running) 
 
 35
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 has changed man's attitude toward 
 nature. 
 
 I am, of course, not referring to those 
 furnaces which are endowed with more 
 than the average human intelligence; 
 those superfurnaces which are met with 
 in the advertisements, which shake 
 themselves down, shovel their own coal, 
 carry and sift their own ashes, regulate 
 their own draughts, and, if they do not 
 actually order and pay for their own 
 coal, at least consume it as carefully as 
 if they did. 
 
 With a furnace like mine a man ex 
 periences all the emotions of which he 
 is capable. He loves, he hates, he ad 
 mires, he despises, he grieves, he exults. 
 There have been times when I have felt 
 like patting my furnace; and again, 
 times when I have slammed his little 
 door and spoken words to him far, far 
 hotter than the fire that smouldered and 
 36
 
 FURNACE AND I 
 
 refused to burn in his bowels. I judge 
 from what I have read that taming a 
 wild animal must be a good deal like 
 taming a furnace, with one important 
 exception : the wild-animal-tamer never 
 loses his temper or the beast would kill 
 him; but a furnace, fortunately for 
 suburban mortality, cannot kill its 
 tamer. 
 
 \Yhen his furnace happens to be good- 
 natured, however, a man will often find 
 the bedtime hour with it pleasant and 
 even enjoyable. He descends, hum 
 ming or whistling, to the cellar; and 
 the subsequent shaking and shoveling 
 is, after all, no more than a healthy ex 
 ercise which he would not otherwise 
 take and which will make him sleep 
 better. He is friendly with this rotund, 
 coal-eating giant; he regards it almost 
 like a big baby which he is putting to bed 
 - or, at least, he might so regard it if 
 37
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 putting a baby to bed was one of his re 
 cognized pleasures. 
 
 But, oh, what a difference in the 
 morning! He awakes in the dark, 
 startled perhaps from some pleasant 
 dream by the wild alarm-m-m-m of a 
 clock under his pillow; and outside the 
 snug island of warmth on which he lies, 
 the Universe stretches away in every 
 direction, above, below, and on every 
 side of him, cold, dreary, and unfit for 
 human habitation, to and beyond the 
 remotest star. In that cold Universe 
 how small he is ! how warm and how 
 weak! Instantly he thinks of the fur 
 nace, and the remotest star seems near 
 by comparison. The thought of getting 
 up and going down cellar seems as un 
 real as the thought of getting up and 
 going to meet the sun at that pale streak 
 which, through his easterly window, 
 heralds the reluctant coming of another 
 38
 
 FURNACE AND I 
 
 day. Yet he knows that he must, and 
 that eventually he will, get up. In vain 
 he tells himself how splendid, how in 
 vigorating will be the plunge from his 
 warm bed right into the fresh, brisk, 
 hygienic morning air. 
 
 The fresh, brisk, hygienic morning 
 air does not appeal to him. Unwil 
 lingly he recalls a line in the superfur- 
 nace advertisement, - ' Get up warm 
 and cosy,' - - and helplessly wishes that 
 he had such a furnace. 'Like Andrew 
 Carnegie!' he adds bitterly. At that 
 moment he would anarchistically as 
 sassinate Andrew, provided he could do 
 it without getting up. Nevertheless - 
 he gets up ! He puts on - - ' Curse it, 
 where is that sleeve?' - the bath-robe 
 and slippers that have been all night 
 cooling for him, and starts on his lonely 
 journey through the tomblike silence. 
 Now, if ever, is the time to hum, but 
 
 39
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 there is not a hum in him : down, down, 
 down he goes to the cellar and peeks 
 with dull hope through the familiar 
 little door. 'Good morning, Fire.' He 
 shakes, he shovels, he opens drafts and 
 manipulates dampers. And the Fur 
 nace, impassive, like a Buddha holding 
 up the house with as many arms as an 
 octopus, seems to be watching him with 
 a grave yet idle interest. Which is all 
 the more horrible because it has no face.
 
 NO STAIRS! NO ATTIC 
 
 ATTICS are done for ! Listen to the 
 words of the man who has built, 
 and written about, what he calls a Serv- 
 antless Cottage : - 
 
 ' Climbing stairs is ofttimes too stren 
 uous for the happy housewife, so there 
 must be no stairs.' 
 
 Shades of our grandmothers! If we 
 can believe this enthusiastic designer 
 and builder, only a few more decades 
 at most will miserable women, unhappy 
 housewives, and, by inference, undesir 
 able mothers, continue to drag up and 
 down stairs their pitiful existences in 
 houses of more than one story. 
 
 'No stairs! No stairs!' the young wife cried, 
 
 And clapped her hands to see 
 A house as like a little flat 
 
 As any house could be!
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 And observe also, not only the van 
 ishing of stairs and attics, but the disap 
 pearance of the servant-problem. ' For 
 in this Servantless Cottage/ says the 
 satisfied man, 'milady need fear no 
 drudgery. A very few hours will suffice 
 for housekeeping and cookery. Work 
 becomes a pleasure and a maid unde 
 sirable.' 
 
 Well, well! There have been a good 
 many proposed solutions of the domes 
 tic service question but to solve it by 
 giving it up seems no very crowning tri 
 umph of domestic mathematics. The 
 experience of innumerable young mar 
 ried couples with kitchenettes goes to 
 show that life can be conducted under 
 that solution, especially when the cou 
 ples are young and but recently married. 
 Then, indeed, they need neither an at 
 tic in the top of the house nor a general 
 - that brave girl capable of turning a 
 42
 
 NO STAIRS NO ATTIC 
 
 quick efficient hand to everything from 
 dusting to doughnuts all over it. 
 But why not, for that matter, admit that 
 ' climbing is of ttimes too strenuous for a 
 happy general.' She, too is human - 
 has legs gets tired - 
 
 This designer of servantless cottages 
 was, I imagine, an atticless child: he 
 climbed no stairs to that room of pleas 
 ing mystery, rich in dusty and discarded 
 things that had once been living and 
 important in the life of his family, where 
 the sunbeams streamed like a ladder 
 down through the skylight, or, on other 
 days, the drops of water pelted its nar 
 row panes and added their orchestral 
 voices to the symphony of rain on the 
 roof. His grandparents had died when 
 he was a baby; their house had been 
 sold or torn down, their attic accumula 
 tions scattered, and his family lived in 
 a new house where the attic had as yet 
 43
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 taken on no more attraction to juvenile 
 adventure than the spare bedroom. 
 He was, probably, a thoughtful child 
 who brooded over his mother's troubles 
 in securing and keeping satisfactory 
 'help.' The house in which he passed 
 those young years was very likely built 
 in the time of high ceilings and long 
 flights of stairs, how often, through 
 the banisters, had the little fellow seen 
 his mother's tired ankles lagging on the 
 ascent as he sat in the library poring 
 over some volume of architecture !- 
 and he took a childish oath that when 
 he married how little he knew about 
 that ! his wife should not have to 
 climb stairs, his wife should not have to 
 worry about servants. Yet for a long 
 time it seemed as if he would never 
 marry, for it did not occur to him to put 
 in an escalator. And then one day, in 
 his maturity, spurred perhaps by a more 
 
 44
 
 NO STAIRS NO ATTIC 
 
 understanding and ardent desire, and 
 driven harder by the unselfish thought 
 that, even while he dreamed, SHE might 
 marry somebody else and be doomed 
 for life to climbing stairs and engaging 
 new servants, he saw the solution. He 
 would build a house of only one story 
 and let HER do the work. 
 
 Now, as a matter of fact, a bungalow 
 is a pretty good thing. If this student 
 of architecture and domestic economics 
 had contented himself with a plain and 
 simple description of his servantless 
 cottage, I dare say I should have read 
 it in the most friendly spirit imaginable: 
 and certainly with no desire to criticize 
 his conclusions. It was that silly re 
 mark about 'milady' that aroused op 
 position. We live in a republic and we 
 are most of us reasonably self-respecting 
 men and women, not a milady among 
 us, unless she happens to be making a 
 
 45
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 visit in which case, one place she is 
 not visiting is a servantless cottage. 
 And so, in a word, the servantless cot 
 tage ceases to be an honest, more or less 
 successful effort to provide a home in 
 which the housewife can most conven' 
 iently do her own work, and appears a 
 neat little example of snobbish absurd 
 ity. Work becomes a pleasure to the 
 happy housewife for whom climbing a 
 flight of stairs is ofttimes all too strenu 
 ous so keen and persistent a pleasure 
 that domestic service is 'undesirable!' 
 Is anybody really expected to believe 
 it? Or is domestic service itself a phase 
 of domesticity that can be so cheerfully 
 eliminated? Has the servant and, 
 bless you! the word has often enough 
 been a term of honor no really fine 
 and enduring place in the scheme of 
 gracious and cultivated domestic man 
 agement? 
 
 46
 
 NO STAIRS NO ATTIC 
 
 For many generations, stairs and ser 
 vice have been inseparable from the 
 amenities of domestic living. One has 
 only to imagine these two essentials 
 suddenly eliminated from literature, to 
 experience a pained sensation at the 
 care-free way in which the man of the 
 servantless cottage gets rid of them. 
 And one has only to look about the 
 world as it stands at present, servant- 
 problem and all, to realize that it is the 
 value of good domestic service which 
 actually creates and keeps alive the 
 problem itself. For even if the happy 
 housewife enjoys every single item of 
 housekeeping and cookery, there are 
 times when her personal attention to 
 them is obviously undesirable. 
 
 Imagine our servantless cottage as 
 an example. Milady sings at her work. 
 The portable vacuum cleaner milord 
 keeps up with all the latest improve- 
 
 47
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 merits gratefully eats up its daily 
 dust. The fireless cooker prepares the 
 meals 'with a perfection and delicious- 
 ness unrealized in the old days.' A has 
 mother and the way she used to cook! 
 But in serving these meals of a hitherto 
 unrealized perfection and deliciousness, 
 milord and milady must needs chase 
 each other between kitchen and dining- 
 room. The guest at dinner, if he is 
 luckily accustomed to picnics, carries 
 his own plate and washes it afterward. 
 I have myself entertained many a guest 
 in this fashion, and he has carried his 
 own plate, and, being that kind of a 
 guest or I would n't have invited him, 
 he has cheerfully helped wash the 
 dishes, wearing a borrowed apron. But 
 it would be absurd to claim that this 
 performance, indefinitely repeated, is 
 an improvement upon an orderly, effi 
 ciently served dinner-party. Conversa- 
 48
 
 NO STAIRS NO ATTIC 
 
 tion at dinner is more desirable than a 
 foot-race between the courses ; nor do I 
 believe that life under such conditions 
 can possibly 'become so alluring that 
 one day the great majority of us will 
 choose it first of all.' 
 
 Concerning stairs: I perhaps have 
 more feeling for them than most; but I 
 am quite sure that I speak at least for a 
 large minority. It is the flatness of the 
 flat, its very condensed and restricted 
 cosiness, its very lack of upstairs and 
 downstairs, which prevents it from ever 
 attaining completely the atmosphere of 
 a home. The feet which cross the floor 
 above your head are those of another 
 family; the sounds which reach you 
 from below are the noises of strangers; 
 the life horizontal of the flat serves its 
 convenient use but only emphasizes the 
 independence and self-respect of the 
 life vertical, master of the floor above, 
 
 49
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 master likewise of the basement. I, 
 who have lived happily in a flat, never 
 theless feel more human, less like some 
 ingeniously constructed doll, when I 
 can take my candle in hand and go up 
 stairs to sleep. Because I have lived 
 happily in a flat, I want no bungalow. 
 There is something fine in going to 
 sleep even one flight nearer the stars 
 and away from the dining-room. 
 
 And no stairs no attic. My con 
 viction increases that this man was an 
 atticless child, without grandparents 
 himself, and without thought of his own 
 possible grandchildren. Or is the stair 
 less, servantless, atticless cottage - 
 ' truly the little house is the house of the 
 f uture '-- meant also to be childless? 
 An examination of the plan shows a so- 
 called bedroom marked 'guest or chil 
 dren,' which indicates that the happy 
 housewife must exercise her own judg- 
 
 50
 
 NO STAIRS NO ATTIC 
 
 ment. There are accommodations for 
 one guest or two children, but it seems 
 fairly evident that guest and children 
 exclude each other. Milord and milady 
 must decide between hospitality and 
 race-suicide, or two children and no 
 week-end visitor. Some will choose 
 guest; some will choose children. Per 
 sonally I hope they will all choose chil 
 dren; for, even without an attic, there 
 is plenty of playground. ' People with 
 tiny incomes' must always be careful 
 not to purchase too small a lot; and so 
 we find that the servantless cottage has 
 paths, and a lawn, and flowers, and 
 shrubbery, and a sun-dial, and an 
 American elm, and a 'toadstool can 
 opy ' between the poplars and the white 
 birches, and an ivy-covered 'cache' to 
 store the trunks in. I am glad there is 
 going to be such a domestic conven 
 ience as a sun-dial ; and perhaps, when
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 there is a guest, the trunks can be taken 
 out on the lawn and the children put to 
 bed in the 'cache.' 
 
 But I guess that, after all, stairs will 
 survive, and attics, and the servant- 
 problem. Innumerable families are al 
 ready living in servantless houses, with 
 stairs, and it does n't even occur to 
 them that they are solving any prob 
 lem whatsoever. Innumerable house 
 wives are about as happy under these 
 conditions as most of us get to be under 
 any conditions. The servant-problem 
 itself is not the young and tender prob 
 lem that many of us imagine. An exam 
 ination of old newspapers will show any 
 body who is sufficiently patient and 
 curious that a hundred years ago there 
 was much indignant wonder that young 
 women, visibly suited for domestic serv 
 ice, preferred to be seamstresses! What 
 is more modern is the grave enthusiasm 
 52
 
 NO STAIRS NO ATTIC 
 
 with which so many persons are trying 
 to decide how the rest of us shall live 
 with the maximum amount of comfort 
 and culture for the minimum expendi 
 ture. And one interesting similarity 
 between many of these suggestions is 
 their passive opposition to another im 
 portant group of critics. 
 
 'Have large families or perish as a 
 nation!' shriek our advisers on one 
 hand. ' Have small families or perish as 
 individuals!' proclaim our advisers on 
 the other. 
 
 For this servantless cottage is typical 
 of a good many other housing sugges 
 tions in which the essential element is 
 the small family; and even the possibil 
 ity that the children may live to grow 
 up seems to have been left out of con 
 sideration. Milord and milady, I imag 
 ine, have chosen children instead of a 
 guest. These children (a boy and girl, 
 
 53
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 as I like to picture them) grow up; 
 marry; settle in their own servantless 
 cottages, and have two children apiece. 
 There are now a grandfather and a 
 grandmother, a son and a daughter, a 
 son-in-law and a daughter-in-law, and 
 four grandchildren. In each servant- 
 less cottage there is that one bedroom 
 marked 'guest or children.' Granting 
 all the possibilities of the ivy-covered 
 'cache,' - and now the trunks will 
 simply have to be taken out and stood 
 on the lawn even if the snow does fall 
 on them, milord and milady, come 
 Christmas or other anniversary, can 
 entertain a visit from all their children 
 and grandchildren, one family taking 
 the 'guest or children' bedroom, and 
 the other the 'cache.' Later, as the 
 children grow older, each family will 
 come back to the old home on alternate 
 Christmases: and by utilizing the 
 
 54
 
 NO STAIRS NO ATTIC 
 
 'cache,' a son or daughter can receive a 
 short visit from the aged parents, not 
 too long, of course, or it would ruin the 
 trunks. As for any of the hearty, old- 
 fashioned, up-and-down-stairs hospi 
 tality - - I may be an old fogey myself, 
 but the servantless cottage shocks me. 
 ' Our bedroom resembles a cosy state 
 room on board ship.' Oh ! la-la-la-la-la! 
 Why does n't somebody solve the prob 
 lem of domestic living by suggesting 
 that we all live in house-boats?
 
 CONCERNING KITCHENS 
 
 MANY a man,I am sure, who never 
 in his mature life thinks emo 
 tionally of his own kitchen, still keeps 
 a tender memory of some kitchen of 
 his early youth. It may have been 
 his mother's, his grandmother's, or his 
 Aunt Susan's; and not often, but once in 
 a great while, something reminds him 
 of it. His thoughts hark back, and he 
 touches, in his own degree, the emotion 
 of Uncle Felix (whom you will reme'm- 
 ber if you have ever read 'The Extra 
 Day') alone at night in Mrs. Horton's 
 kitchen. 
 
 ' And Uncle Felix traveled backwards 
 against the machinery of Time that 
 cheats the majority so easily with its 
 convention of moving hands and ticking 
 voice and bullying, staring visage. He 
 56
 
 CONCERNING KITCHENS 
 
 slid swiftly down the long banister- 
 descent of years, and reached in a flash 
 that old sombre Yorkshire kitchen, and 
 stood, four-foot nothing, face smudged 
 and fingers sticky, beside the big deal 
 table with the dying embers of the grate 
 upon his right. His heart was beating. 
 He could just reach the juicy cake with 
 out standing on a chair. He ate the 
 very slice that he had eaten forty years 
 ago. It was possible to have your cake 
 and eat it too!' 
 
 For my own part, and no doubt 
 each backward traveler has his par 
 ticular kitchen memory, -- I ate the 
 crisp brown beans off the top of the 
 bean-pot. It was a sort of ceremonial; 
 a Saturday-night function, irrespective 
 of whatever menial might at the time 
 be in official charge of our kitchendom. 
 The baking of the beans was never alto 
 gether trusted to a menial. My mother, 
 
 57
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 last thing before bed, would go out to 
 the kitchen, lighting her way with a 
 kerosene lamp ; and I with her. We put 
 the lamp on the table; we opened the 
 oven door and all over the kitchen 
 spread the delectable, mouth-watering 
 aroma of the baking bean. We took 
 out the bean-pot. Then we scraped off 
 the crisp top layer of the beans into a 
 saucer. And these we ate ! 
 
 My mother wore a bustle, and at that 
 historic period there were no kitchen 
 ettes; nor had the Spirit of Efficiency 
 inspired the thought of planning your 
 kitchen with a route for food-prepara 
 tion which makes a flying start at the 
 ice-chest, takes in the meat, fish, and 
 vegetable shelves, touches at the cab 
 inet for dough-mixing, skirts the pan 
 cabinet, and so (as Master Pepys would 
 say) to the stove. There were no scien 
 tifically determined routes for food-serv- 
 
 58
 
 CONCERNING KITCHENS 
 
 ing and dish-washing. Each menial, 
 and my mother herself between menials, 
 followed a kind of cow path. My 
 mother had never had it figured out for 
 her that the lowest estimate of time 
 spent at the sink alone is two hours 
 daily, and that these two hours a day 
 count up to five days of twelve hours 
 each in the course of a month, or sixty 
 twelve-hour days at the sink every year. 
 And when, as the expert modern kitchen- 
 planner points out, it is realized that 
 these sixty days are spent in useless 
 stooping, and that, to this strain, is 
 added the fatigue of miles of unnec 
 essary steps, one gets an idea of the 
 kitchen which I am glad to think never 
 occurred to her. 
 
 Nor, on the other hand, do I think 
 my mother would have quite followed 
 the mental state of the rhapsodist who 
 writes of housework in general, - 
 
 59
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 'When I am about the house, taking 
 part in the work, I am of course con 
 scious, among other things, of the 
 rhythmical qualities of housework. But 
 when I stay apart from it, and listen 
 to it, it comes to seem all rhythm, both 
 in the larger sense of regular recurrence 
 of tasks, and in the repetition of sounds 
 with insistent ichthus and pause. Iron 
 ing, for example, is nearly as pleasant 
 to listen to as to watch. Not by 
 one stroke of the iron, but by many, 
 is the linen polished and the cambric 
 smoothed to a satin daintiness; the 
 blows follow one another, now slowly, 
 now fast, like the drum-beat of some 
 strange march. There is rhythm in the 
 kitchen; rhythm in the dining-room. 
 . . . Most soothing of all household 
 rhythm is the swish of the broom. It is 
 gentle and low-keyed. It takes my 
 attention from other things, and makes 
 60
 
 CONCERNING KITCHENS 
 
 me think of abstractions. I wonder 
 whether there is not some mathematical 
 calculation by which a ratio can be es 
 tablished between power of stroke, 
 length of arm, and good -will. And so 
 speculating I sink into comfortable 
 depths of nothingness.' 
 
 Oh, shade of Mary Ann, the Perfect 
 Servant Girl ! 
 
 But this digression into the 'ichthus 
 and pause' of housework I seem to 
 hear my mother, 'Who is the lunatic?' 
 - takes me away from the kitchen. 
 I hurry back to it, for, although it is 
 not a place where I wish to live, it is 
 very much a place where I like to visit. 
 Though not with the cook. When I 
 was younger, I enjoyed visiting with 
 the cook, but the years have separated 
 us; I have, as it were, grown apart 
 from her. Granting her absence, there 
 is a homely, cheery informality about 
 61
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 a kitchen; and if the lady of the house 
 will take you there herself, some rainy 
 afternoon in the country, and serve 
 tea on the clean, plain table, and 
 let you butter the toasted crackers 
 yourself, with all the butter you please, 
 why, for my part, I ask no more this 
 side of Paradise. To use a quaint old 
 obsolete word, I like to be 'kitchened' 
 - provided, of course, that I may se 
 lect my kitchener. So, I understand, 
 does the policeman: our tastes are dif 
 ferent, but we are both human. 
 
 And yet this kitchen, as we know it 
 to-day, is comparatively recent, and 
 already insidiously passing away from 
 the larger cities to, I hope, a long survi 
 val in the country and suburbs. If I 
 were of an older generation (also insid 
 iously passing away) , I would be able to 
 recall another kind of kitchen, where 
 colonial customs of cookery held sway 
 62
 
 CONCERNING KITCHENS 
 
 well into the twentieth century. To me 
 the stove seems ancient only because, 
 thank God! I am not ancient myself; I 
 find it hard to believe that when my 
 grandmother bought her stove, her up- 
 to-date spirit marched bravely from one 
 period of kitchendom into another. 
 But men still living remember how their 
 very mothers baked bread in a brick 
 oven, and have seen in operation many 
 of the queer old cooking things we 
 somewhat younger mortals wonder at 
 in museums. Only a bit further back, 
 the fireplace, at its most generous, had 
 room for a seat in the corner, and 
 grandmother sat there, it was really 
 what the kitchen-planners would call a 
 rest corner, sometimes, comfortable 
 old creature, smoking her honest pipe 
 and observing the stars by daytime as 
 she watched the smoke on its journey 
 up the big chimney. But the new- 
 
 63
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 fangled kitchen range was much more 
 convenient; the easier management of a 
 coal fire made a new day in household 
 economics; a delighted generation bus 
 ily bricked up the fireplaces. And so 
 the sturdy useful kitchen stove is not so 
 very ancient; and the homely, hospita 
 ble kitchen, even of our childhood mem 
 ory, is still so new that only to-day is 
 the Spirit of Efficiency providing it 
 with routes of travel to save those 
 wasted steps that mother used to take, 
 and a cosy rest corner, cunningly placed 
 to solace the soul of a tired cook with 
 prophylactic contemplation of the most 
 restful available scenery. 
 
 All day long on the kitchen routes 
 
 Her helpful feet have gone, 
 With never a senseless, wasted step 
 
 Between the dusk and dawn; 
 
 And now, dear soul, at the kitchen sink 
 She has washed the final spoon, 
 
 And sat her down in her rest corner 
 To look at the rising moon. 
 
 64
 
 CONCERNING KITCHENS 
 
 But the life of our larger cities is 
 growingly inimical to kitchens. In the 
 more distinguished sections, unfortu 
 nately, one must be more than ordinarily 
 well-to-do to live in a house that has a 
 kitchen : otherwise one lives in an apart 
 ment and has a kitchenette. In my 
 bright lexicon, published by the Cen 
 tury Company in 1889, there is no such 
 word. The thing did not exist. This 
 Peter Pan of domestic institutions, the 
 baby kitchen that never grows up, had 
 yet to be born. And a great army of 
 other equally unborn babies, who would 
 be shrewdly created male and female, 
 waited in the mystery of non-existence 
 until such time as they, too, should 
 enter upon life, grow up, discover each 
 other in happily surprised couples, love, 
 marry, and set up housekeeping with 
 two rooms, a bath, and a kitchenette. 
 It was then impossible though I have 
 
 65
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 since done it myself for a gentleman 
 to take his morning bath, shave, and 
 cook the breakfast all at the same time, 
 stepping with accurate judgment out of 
 his porcelain bath-tub and into the con 
 tiguous kitchenette, and so back and 
 forth, bathing, lathering, shaving, per 
 colating the coffee, and turning the 
 toast. Perhaps, also, humming a little 
 tune. 
 
 Here, too, as the rhapsodist I have 
 already quoted would say, is rhythm; 
 nor is it impossible that the same imag 
 ination would find a wild yet orderly 
 beauty in the design extemporized by 
 his wet footprints between his kitchen 
 ette and his bath-tub. 
 
 But the thing is n't a kitchen, though 
 it serves many of the kitchen's practical 
 purposes. It lacks the space, dignity, 
 comfort, and opportunity for helpful 
 conversation. I cannot imagine any 
 66
 
 CONCERNING KITCHENS 
 
 gentleman of the future recalling with 
 poignant pleasure his childhood kitch 
 enette. In fact, I cannot even imagine a 
 child in a kitchenette.
 
 THE PLUMBER APPRECIATED 
 
 DID you ever,' said he, 'know a 
 plumber who had grown rich?' 
 We stood in the kitchen. Outdoors 
 it was a wonderful winter morning, 
 snow-white and sparkling, felt rather 
 than seen through frosted windows, for 
 the mercury last night had dropped 
 below zero, and, although reported on 
 the way up, was not climbing with real 
 enthusiasm. On the floor was a little 
 sea of water, in shape something like 
 the Mediterranean, with Gibraltar out 
 of sight under the kitchen sink. The 
 stove (unfortunately) had been lighted ; 
 and a strange, impassive boy stood be 
 side it, holding in pendant hands vari 
 ous tools of the plumber's craft. The 
 plumber stood in the Mediterranean. 
 And I, in my slippers and bath-robe, - 
 68
 
 THE PLUMBER APPRECIATED 
 
 a foolish costume, for the sea was not 
 deep enough to bathe in, - - hovered, 
 so to speak, on the edge of the beach. 
 
 I suppose I wished to impress this 
 plumber with my imperturbable calm. 
 Upset as I was, I must have realized the 
 impossibility of impressing the boy. 
 Swaggering a little in my bath-robe, 
 I had said something jocular, I do not 
 remember just what, about the rapid 
 accretion of wealth by plumbers. He 
 lit his pipe. 'Did you ever,' said he, 
 'know a plumber who had grown rich?' 
 
 Now until that winter I had never 
 thought of the plumber as a man in 
 many respects like myself. One may 
 winter for years in a city apartment 
 without meeting a plumber, but hardly 
 without reading a good many humor 
 ous trifles about them in current litera 
 ture ; and my idea of this craftsman had 
 been insidiously formed by the minor 
 69
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 humorists. Summer, in my experience, 
 had been a plumberless period, in which 
 water flowed freely through the pipes of 
 my house, and gushed obligingly from 
 faucets at the touch of a finger. It 
 was like an invisible brook; and, like 
 a brook, I thought of it (if I thought of 
 it at all) as going on forever. Nothing 
 worse happened than a leak at the fau 
 cet. And when that happens I can fix 
 it myself. All it needs is a new washer. 
 I run down cellar and turn off the 
 water. I run up from the cellar and 
 take off the faucet. I put in the new 
 washer, which is like a very fat leather 
 ring for a very thin finger, and screw on 
 the faucet. I run down cellar, turn on 
 the water, run up from the cellar, and 
 look at the faucet. It still leaks. So I 
 run down cellar, turn off the water, run 
 up from the cellar, take off the faucet, 
 make some slight alteration in the size, 
 70
 
 THE PLUMBER APPRECIATED 
 
 shape, or position of the washer, put 
 on the faucet, run down cellar, turn on 
 the water, run up from the cellar, and 
 look at the faucet. If it still leaks (as is 
 rather to be expected), I repeat as be 
 fore ; and if it the n leaks (as is more than 
 likely), I run down cellar, turn off the 
 water, run up from the cellar, take off 
 the faucet, make some slight alteration 
 in the size, shape, or position of the 
 washer, put on the faucet, run down 
 cellar, turn on the water, run up from 
 the cellar, and look at the faucet. Per 
 haps it leaks more. Perhaps it leaks 
 less. So I run down cellar and turn 
 off the water - - and run up from the 
 cellar and take off the faucet. Then, 
 talking aloud to myself, I take out the 
 new washer, throw it on the floor, 
 stamp on it, kick it out of the way, put 
 in a newer washer, put on the faucet, 
 run down cellar, turn on the water, run
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 up from the cellar, and look at the fau 
 cet. If (and this may happen) it still 
 leaks, I make queer, inarticulate, ani 
 mal noises; but I run down cellar, turn 
 off the water, run up from the cellar, 
 and take off the faucet. Then I mon 
 key a little with the washer (still mak 
 ing those queer animal noises), put on 
 the faucet, run down cellar, turn on the 
 water, run up from the cellar, and look 
 at the faucet. Sooner or later the faucet 
 always stops leaking. It is a mere mat 
 ter of adjusting the washer; any handy 
 man can do it with a little patience. 
 
 Winter in the country is the time and 
 place to get acquainted with the 
 plumber. And I would have you re 
 member, even in that morning hour when 
 the ordinary life of your home has stop 
 ped in dismay, and then gone limping 
 toward breakfast with the help of buck 
 ets of water generously loaned you 
 72
 
 THE PLUMBER APPRECIATED 
 
 by your nearest neighbor, - - rarely, if 
 ever, does he carry his generosity so 
 far as to help carry the buckets, - 
 that because of this honest soul in over 
 alls, winter has lost the terrors which it 
 held for your great-grandfather. 
 
 Revisit your library, and note what 
 the chroniclers of the past thought 
 about winter - 'this cousin to Death, 
 father to sickness, and brother to old 
 age' (as Thomas Dekker bitterly called 
 it; and well would your great-grand 
 father have agreed with him), when 
 'the first word that a wench speaks on 
 your coming into a room in the morn 
 ing is, " Prithee send for some faggots." 
 It is bad enough when to adapt Dek- 
 ker's sixteenth-century phraseology 
 the first word that a wench speaks on 
 your coming into a room in the morn 
 ing is, ' Prithee send for a plumber ' ; 
 but how seldom it happens! And be- 
 
 73
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 cause we can send for a plumber, our 
 attitude toward winter is joyfully 
 changed for the better: lovely autumn 
 is no longer regarded as melancholy be 
 cause winter is coming, nor is backward 
 spring esteemed beyond criticism be 
 cause winter is over. 
 
 Those good old days, after the sun 
 had entered Capricorn, were cold and 
 inconvenient old days. Observe great 
 grandfather: all his plumbing was a 
 pump, which often froze beyond his sim 
 ple skill in plumbery; and then he drew 
 water from the well in a dear old oaken 
 bucket (as we like to think of it), emp 
 tied it into other buckets, and carried 
 it by hand, even as a man now carries 
 the water loaned him by his generous 
 neighbor, wherever the useful, unin- 
 toxicating fluid was needed. No invis 
 ible brook flowed through his house, 
 and gushed obligingly at faucets, hot 
 
 74
 
 THE PLUMBER APPRECIATED 
 
 or cold according to great-grandfath 
 er's whim; no hot-water pipes suffused 
 his dwelling with grateful warmth. 
 These are our blessings -- and it is the 
 plumber, with only a boy to help him, 
 who contends manfully against the 
 forces of nature, and keeps them going. 
 For the life of the house depends now 
 adays on its healthy circulation of 
 water; and when the house suffers from 
 arteriosclerosis, the plumber is the doc 
 tor, and the strange, impassive boy is 
 the trained nurse. 
 
 Sometimes in an emergency he ar 
 rives without this little companion: I 
 have myself, rising to the same occa 
 sion, taken the boy's place. I was a 
 good boy. The plumber admitted it. 
 ' Fill th' kettle again with hot water off 
 th' stove, 'said he, over his arched back, 
 as he peered shrewdly down a pipe to 
 see how far away it was frozen, 'there's 
 
 75
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 th' good boy.' Thus I know that the 
 boy is not, as our minor humorists 
 would have us believe, a mere flourish 
 and gaudy appanage to the plumber's 
 autocratically assumed grandeur. His 
 strange, impassive manner is probably 
 nothing more or less than concentra 
 ted attention; it is as if he said, with 
 Hamlet, 'Yea, from the table of my 
 memory I'll wipe away all foolish, fond 
 regards, all saws of books, all forms, all 
 pressures past, that youth and obser 
 vation copied there; and thy command 
 ment all alone shall live within the book 
 and volume of my brain, unmixed with 
 baser matter. Yes, by Heaven ! ' 
 
 Even in putting in a new washer, 
 I should do better with a boy. 
 
 The most nervous and conscientious 
 
 plumber, I tell you, must at intervals 
 
 appear, to an observer unacquainted 
 
 with the art and mystery of plumbery, 
 
 76
 
 THE PLUMBER APPRECIATED 
 
 to be proceeding in a leisurely and per 
 haps idle fashion. The most method 
 ical and conscientious man, plumber 
 or not, will occasionally forget some 
 thing, and have to go back for it. The 
 most self-respecting and conscientious 
 minor humorist, after he has exhausted 
 his witty invention making a joke on a 
 plumber, will try to sell it for the high 
 est possible price. And if I, for ex 
 ample, am a little proud of my ability, 
 greater than the plumber's, to write an 
 essay, how shall I accuse him of arro 
 gance if he is a little proud of his abil 
 ity, greater than mine, to accomplish 
 the more necessary feat of thawing a 
 frozen water-pipe? 
 
 He has a heart. 
 
 When I was a plumber's boy myself, 
 I walked with my boss to his office in 
 the village to get a tool. It was a 
 Sunday afternoon: I remember that a 
 
 77
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 rooster crowed afar off, and how his 
 lonely clarion enhanced and made more 
 gravely quiet the peace of the Sabbath. 
 And the plumber said, ' I would n't have 
 felt right, sitting at home by the fire 
 reading the paper, when I knew you 
 was in trouble and I could pull you out.' 
 He had come, mark you, in his Sunday 
 clothes; he had come in his best, not 
 pausing even for his overalls, so that, 
 in our distressed, waterless home, the 
 lady of the house had herself encircled 
 his honest waist with a gingham apron 
 before he began plumbing. And in all 
 the world there was nobody else whom 
 we would have been so glad to see. 
 
 And so, bowing, with my left hand 
 over what I take to be the region of a 
 grateful heart, I extend him this 
 praise of plumber. No plumber came 
 over in the Mayflower; but think not, 
 for that reason, that he is a parvenu. He 
 
 78
 
 THE PLUMBER APPRECIATED 
 
 is of ancient lineage - - this good fairy 
 in overalls of our invisible brooks. The 
 Romans knew him as the artifex plum- 
 bar eus. Caesar may have interrupted 
 the revision of the Commentaries to send 
 for him. He disappeared, with civiliza 
 tion and water-pipes, in the Dark Ages ; 
 he came back, with civilization and 
 water-pipes, when the darkness lifted. 
 Neglected by Art, disregarded by Ro 
 mance, and unconsidered by the drama, 
 these rich and entertaining expressions 
 of life are as nothing when his presence 
 is called for. 
 
 We may live without painters 
 
 Or writers or mummers, 
 But civilized man cannot 
 
 Live without plumbers. 
 
 He, too, should have his statue, not 
 of bronze, marble, or granite, but of 
 honest lead, with two figures - - the 
 Plumber, holding aloft his torch, and 
 
 79
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 the Plumber's Boy, strange, impassive, 
 and holding in his pendant hands a 
 monkey wrench and the coil of flexible 
 tubing with which his master cunningly 
 directs hot water into the hardened ar 
 teries of a suffering house. And on his 
 pedestal I would carve the motto, - 
 
 'Did You Ever Know a Plumber 
 Who Had Grown Rich?'
 
 THE HOME OF THE PORCELAIN TUB 
 
 I AM very glad,' wrote Lord Chester 
 field to young Mr. Stanhope, July 
 30, 1749, 'that my letter, with Dr. 
 Shaw's opinion, has lessened your bath 
 ing; for, since I was born, I never heard 
 of bathing four hours a day.' 
 
 Lord Chesterfield's surprise at the 
 duration of his son's bath still leaves us 
 wondering how that daily ablution was 
 performed in 1749. Young Mr. Stan 
 hope lived a long, long time before our 
 Bath-Room Era, when every well-to-do 
 home has a bath-room, and the daily 
 bath is as natural a topic of conver 
 sation in polite society as the daily 
 weather. He might, twenty years la 
 ter, have gone to Dominicetti for the 
 famous medicated bath which led Dr. 
 Johnson to say to a gentleman who be- 
 81
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 lieved in it, 'Well, sir, go to Domini- 
 cetti, and get thyself fumigated, but be 
 sure that the steam be directed at thy 
 head for that is the peccant part.' Prob 
 ably he bathed at home: a tin tub was 
 brought by a menial into his apartment, 
 filled with hot and cold water, tested for 
 temperature, and the young man left 
 alone with it. But, although this was 
 better than no bath at all, it had serious 
 disadvantages. When the water cooled, 
 Mr. Stanhope had perforce to summon 
 the menial, and either retire to his 
 closet or remain sitting in his tub while 
 the bath was reheated. Convention 
 ally, I suppose, he was considered in 
 visible to the menial. If he splashed he 
 splashed on the carpet ; and when the 
 tub was carried away, however care 
 fully, it left a damp spot. He had to 
 hang his towel on one chair, and his 
 clothes on another. His soap must have 
 82
 
 THE PORCELAIN TUB 
 
 embarrassed him. According to all 
 modern standards it was a makeshift 
 kind of a bath. 
 
 We have changed all that. In every 
 house is a bath-room, so much like the 
 bath-room in every other house that a 
 stranger guest feels more immediately 
 at home there than anywhere else. We 
 bathe daily, and talk about it in public: 
 or, to be exact, many bathe, and even 
 more talk. We have become skilled - 
 I am referring, of course, to that impor 
 tant section of society whose members, 
 often otherwise useless, all together es 
 tablish the amenities of civilization - 
 in leading conversation tactfully up to 
 this topic. A few avoid it, but these are 
 of a passing generation, and regard even 
 the porcelain tub with disfavor. It is, 
 so they say, dangerous: a treacherous, 
 slippery contraption that you have to 
 be careful getting in and out of. The 
 
 83
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 mid-Victorian bath-room, with its 
 painted tin tub built in by a carpenter, 
 suits them better. If perchance their 
 eyes fall on this essay, they will close 
 the book hastily, perhaps destroy it, 
 for in their time nice people did not talk, 
 nor essayists write, about baths and 
 bath-rooms. It was as much as ever if 
 an author hinted, by some guarded, 
 casual reference to soap when his hero 
 came down to breakfast, that the dash 
 ing, well-groomed fellow had but just 
 risen from a tub. Only heroes admit 
 tedly took morning baths. Occasion 
 ally a heroine may have but wild 
 horses couldn't have dragged the in 
 formation out of her; and the boldest 
 novelist would have held back from 
 admitting that he knew anything about 
 it. Indeed, how could he? 
 
 But a different point of view came in 
 with the porcelain bath tub, which, as 
 84
 
 THE PORCELAIN TUB 
 
 an advertisement so justly intimates, is 
 less like a tub than like a great white 
 china dish. One had to talk about it. 
 It dignified the bath-room; it added 
 beauty to bathing (which had hitherto 
 depended entirely on the bather), and 
 at the same time struck peremptorily 
 that keynote of simplicity which has 
 since remained the bath-room's distin 
 guishing characteristic. The white pu 
 rity of the tub forbids the introduction 
 of any jarring note of unnecessary deco 
 ration : one cannot imagine a bath-room 
 with pictures on the walls, a well-chosen 
 bit of statuary in the window, and pho 
 tographs on the shelf under the neces 
 sary mirror except sometimes the 
 photograph of the gentleman who in 
 vented the talcum powder. Even the 
 rug that lies in front of the tub is always 
 inscribed BATH, yet here, if anywhere, 
 the home of the porcelain tub might be 
 
 85
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 given a touch of originality. Another 
 motto might be substituted for BATH. 
 - 'Welcome, Bather.' ' Dine and the 
 world dines with you; bathe, and you 
 bathe alone.' ' I am always 'drier on the 
 other side,' etc. But the bath-room, 
 after all, is nobody's single possession, 
 and the motto that pleased one bather 
 might seem a false note to another. 
 Perhaps it is wiser to stick to BATH, 
 and rest content with providing at 
 their best those commonplaces which 
 would have seemed such luxuries to 
 Mr. Stanhope the soap (imagine his 
 delight) that floats, and the shower 
 (imagine his astonishment) that sim 
 ulates the fall of rain from heaven. 
 I am surprised, however, that no man 
 ufacturer of porcelain bath-tubs has 
 yet thought to embellish his product 
 with the legend in golden letters: 'One 
 for All and All for One.' 
 86
 
 THE PORCELAIN TUB 
 
 I am speaking, you understand, of 
 the bath-room ordinaire. There are, I 
 believe, bath-rooms de luxe, in which 
 the bather, soap and sponge in hand, 
 gravely descends white marble steps 
 into the bath. I have never done this 
 myself; but I can see that gravely de 
 scending marble steps has more per 
 sonal dignity about it than the com 
 moner method of entering the bath by 
 climbing over the side of the tub. It is 
 like a low white wall: and only a little 
 imagination is necessary to feel that 
 there may be a sign somewhere, 
 
 No Bathing in This Tub. 
 
 Police Take Notice. 
 But the gain is temporary. Sooner or 
 later, in either case, the bather must sit 
 down and where then is his personal 
 dignity? I have read also of bath-tubs 
 made of glass: but here the effort to 
 attain distinction is too transparent. 
 
 87
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 And then there is a patent combination 
 kitchen-and-bath-room : quite rare: I 
 hardly know how to describe it : perhaps 
 an excerpt from the unpublished novel 
 ' Mary Brogan ' : 
 
 'Mary felt tired, too tired to go out 
 to the movies. The "words" that had 
 passed between her and Mrs. Mont 
 gomery that morning, justified as Mary 
 felt in her unwillingness to have another 
 woman's child messing about in her 
 kitchen although smacking little Al 
 bert had perhaps been a too objective 
 way of expressing this natural disincli 
 nation had distressed a native refine 
 ment which it would have surprised 
 haughty Mrs. Montgomery to be told 
 was greater in her cook than in herself. 
 Albert had been properly smacked, and 
 there should have been an end of it. 
 Nevertheless Mary Brogan felt tired. 
 Was this all of life smacking Albert 
 88
 
 THE PORCELAIN TUB 
 
 and "rowing" with his mother? She 
 finished washing and wiping the dishes 
 slowly, put them away in the pantry, 
 and sat down by the stove. It seemed 
 as if there was really nothing left in 
 the world that a girl could do to amuse 
 herself. 
 
 'All at once, as if the friendly stove 
 had suggested it, Mary remembered 
 that this was her night to take a bath. 
 
 ' Mary Brogan's kitchen was pro 
 vided with a remarkable invention to 
 economize space and encourage a hy 
 gienic habit. Most of the time it was a 
 sink for Mary to wash the dishes, Mon 
 day it was a couple of convenient laun 
 dry tubs for Mary to wash the clothes, 
 and once a week it was a fine large por 
 celain bath-tub for Mary to wash her 
 self. Mary called it the "Three in 
 Wan." She locked the doors and pulled 
 down the window shades, so that she 
 89
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 could neither be interrupted from within 
 the house nor observed from without. 
 And then, going to the sink, she turned 
 the cosy kitchen into a laundry, and the 
 laundry into a bath-room.' 
 
 Such bath-rooms, fortunately, re 
 main exceptions to a desirable rule of 
 uniformity. The bath-room de luxe is 
 rare: it is possible that you, gentle 
 reader, may gravely descend those mar 
 ble steps, but it is very unlikely. Mary 
 Brogan's bath-room (which, by the 
 way, revives the colonial custom of 
 bathing in the wash-tub) is a tour de 
 force of invention that is obviously in 
 convenient for general family use. The 
 glass tub is more dangerous. It appeals 
 to the fancy with its indirect suggestion 
 of Cinderella's slipper. Here and there 
 already a householder has installed one ; 
 and the stranger guest feels stranger 
 than ever when he takes a bath in it. 
 90
 
 THE PORCELAIN TUB 
 
 One might get used to it, much as one 
 would at first feel like a goldfish with 
 out room enough to swim; but there 
 should be no rivalry between glass and 
 porcelain. The tin tub passes: let the 
 bath-tubs of the future be all of porce 
 lain or all of glass. 
 
 Let us then tacitly agree to preserve 
 the fine and simple integrity of the 
 bath-room, with its slight, almost un- 
 noticeable variations in wall-paper and 
 the choice and arrangement of its nor 
 mal impedimenta. Surely we do not 
 want the home of the porcelain tub to 
 express any single, compelling, indi 
 vidual personality: to say, in effect, 'I 
 am H. Titherington Lee's bath-room,' 
 or 'Betty Martin's,' rather than, as 
 now, 'I am the Bath-Room.' Let Mr. 
 Lee, if he will, have his initials, H. T. L. f 
 in gold on his tooth-brush: but let him 
 not have them lettered on the white
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 porcelain of the tub, or woven, instead 
 of BATH, into the rug in front of it. 
 Uniformity, indeed, might comfort 
 ably be carried a little further, so that 
 all bath-rooms should be equally warm 
 and sunny of a winter's morning. One 
 might think, sometimes, that people 
 who build houses had considered the 
 bath-room after everything else. The 
 plans seem complete, and yet there is a 
 vague conviction that something im 
 portant has been left out. They go over 
 them again and again, room by room: 
 surely everything is as it should be 
 but the vague conviction still haunts 
 them, and they have to put it out of 
 their minds by force. The house is 
 built: they move in, and somebody 
 decides to take a bath. He starts for 
 the bath-room. Presently his voice is 
 heard, annoyed, astonished, and finally 
 alarmed, anxiously shouting for the 
 92
 
 THE PORCELAIN TUB 
 
 rest of the family. Together they go 
 over the house from top to bottom. 
 There is no bath-room! Luckily, on 
 the coldest side of the house and far 
 away from the furnace, there is a small 
 hall bedroom intended for an emer 
 gency. The emergency has arrived : the 
 hall bedroom is called for. In the short 
 est possible time the nearest plumber 
 and carpenter make it over into a home 
 for the tub. 
 
 But the ideal bath-room will have a 
 southeasterly exposure, and the new- 
 risen sun, that saw young Adam bath 
 ing in the Garden of Eden, will look 
 cheerily in and add a sun bath. Place 
 it not too near the guest chamber, for 
 your guest is not sorry to be met on his 
 way thither, clad in that gorgeous and 
 becoming robe in which otherwise you 
 will never see him. And do not clutter 
 it, as some do, with extraneous objects. 
 
 93
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 I remember a bath-room in which stood 
 incongruously a child's rocking-horse. 
 It gave the tub a kind of instability: 
 and every time I looked at the rocking- 
 horse, it seemed to rock.
 
 AT HOME IN THE GUEST CHAMBER 
 
 ABOUT twenty-five years ago the 
 late F. Marion Crawford came 
 to lecture in a New England city: he 
 was entertained in one of the most 
 charming houses, given an afternoon re 
 ception, and led to the guest chamber, 
 where he was left alone to rest until it 
 should be time to appear at the lecture 
 hall. It was an impressive guest cham 
 ber, furnished in rare colonial mahog 
 any; but the day after, the family 
 looked at it and suddenly wondered, 
 with misgivings, how Mr. Crawford had 
 managed his resting. He was an un 
 usually tall, large man. Had he, they 
 asked each other, rested on the digni 
 fied four-poster bed? and if so, how 
 considerately he had removed all traces 
 of his little holiday! Or had he rested 
 95
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 on either of the rare old colonial chairs 
 - or both together, using one for his 
 feet? They were a joy to look at, but 
 hard, straight-backed, and unpromising 
 resting places for a large literary man 
 storing energy to deliver a lecture. Had 
 he rested on the floor? It was a reful- 
 gently polished floor, but Mr. Crawford 
 might have softened it by putting two 
 of the rugs together and rolling up a 
 third for a pillow. If so, how courte 
 ously he had restored the rugs to their 
 normal positions! The final conclusion 
 was that he had rested sitting bolt up 
 right on one rare old colonial chair 
 until he could bear it no longer, and 
 then sitting bolt upright on the other. 
 He never came back ; but it was deci 
 ded in the family that the next distin 
 guished person left alone to rest in the 
 guest chamber should at least have a 
 rocking-chair. 
 
 96
 
 THE GUEST CHAMBER 
 
 At that period guests were not ex 
 pected to stay in a guest chamber longer 
 than was necessary to sleep, wash their 
 faces and hands, brush their hair, and 
 change their clothes. It was, literally, 
 a spare room. If you came to visit, you 
 were supposed to come because you 
 wished to be with the family as much 
 as possible, and only the most needful 
 provision was made for your separate 
 existence. If you were a lady, you 
 might retire for a while in the daytime, 
 and lie down on the bed. But no gen 
 tleman had this privilege: only at bed 
 time could he go to bed, unless unexpect 
 edly taken so ill that he had to be put 
 there, and the doctor sent for. The 
 guest who left behind a suspicion of to 
 bacco smoke in the lace curtains left 
 also the suspicion that this was no gen 
 tleman still more, no lady! Stern 
 neatness and tidy utilitarianism char- 
 
 97
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 acterized the guest chamber : its double 
 bed must be comfortable, its bureau 
 commodious, its wash-stand provided 
 with fresh towels and a new cake of 
 pleasingly scented soap. As for pic 
 tures and bric-a-brac it was a fine 
 place to store a present without offend 
 ing the kind-hearted giver. 
 
 But this period is passing away: a 
 new thought has come in, that the guest 
 should feel at home, day or night, in the 
 guest chamber, and human ingenuity 
 is making the place so comfortable that 
 it may soon be difficult to tempt guests 
 out of it except at meal-times. Already, 
 in some cases, it has become necessary 
 to serve breakfast in the guest chamber. 
 It is a home within a home, an apart 
 ment (with breakfast) of one or more 
 rooms and bath, in which the temporary 
 tenant pays no rent, lunches and dines 
 with the family, and is expected (follow- 
 98
 
 THE GUEST CHAMBER 
 
 ing the apartment hotel custom) to tip 
 the house servants. There is, to use a 
 shocking but expressive figure, one fly 
 in his ointment the extra and super 
 fluous twin bed. He cannot escape from 
 it. In the daytime it is a constant re 
 minder that he is, after all, a stranger 
 in a strange place; nor can he deceive 
 himself with the idea that he keeps this 
 extra cot for company. He is the com 
 pany. In the night, if he happens to 
 -awake and turn on that side, it sur 
 prises and startles him with its sugges 
 tion of a ward in a hospital. 
 
 But do not try to eliminate the extra bed 
 by rolling the twins together. Sleeping, 
 you will forget. And when, instinctively, 
 you seek the middle of your luxurious 
 zouch, the twins (ttnless you have thought 
 to bind them leg to leg with a couple of 
 neckties} will separate, and you will be 
 rather emphatically reminded of what you 
 
 99
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 have done, by falling out of bed between 
 them. 
 
 I remember a guest chamber of the 
 earlier regime in which the literary inter 
 ests of the guest were catered to by an 
 engraving of the desk at which Dickens 
 wrote as it looked after Dickens was 
 dead. Nowadays this is not sufficient. 
 Books there must be, as well as a desk 
 for the guest to write at while he is still 
 alive, with plenty of stamps and sta 
 tionery, ink, pens, pencils, rubbers, cal 
 endar, blotters, a bottle of mucilage, 
 sealing-wax, candle, seal, dictionary, 
 Thesaurus, and Mr. Bartlett's Book of 
 Quotations. Here, indeed, is a little 
 library in itself; but the books unfor 
 tunately are not such as the average 
 guest is likely to pick up, with an ex 
 clamation of delight, and take to the 
 fireside. Nor, if we confess the truth, 
 does the guest often take much pleasure 
 100
 
 THE GUEST CHAMBER 
 
 in the classical literature which his host 
 often provides for him: he prefers his 
 own meditations to those of Marcus Au- 
 relius. Many persons can not read class 
 ical literature; and there is no little 
 truth in the conclusion of the poet (first 
 published in 'The Mother's Assistant, 
 The Young Lady's Friend, and Family 
 Manual,' Boston, 1852), 
 
 When Caesar was a conqueror the Giraffe first 
 
 was tamed, 
 And for processions long and gay this creature 
 
 then was famed; 
 But no domestication kind could make him fit 
 
 for use, 
 And Nature's laws for us to thwart is manifest 
 
 abuse. 
 
 Sooner or later some enterprising 
 publisher will bring out the Guest- 
 Chamber Book-Shelf, or Twenty-five 
 Best Books for the Best Bedroom. 
 Such a list would, of course, begin with 
 the Bible and Shakespeare, and could 
 101
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 then conscientiously settle down to bus 
 iness with twenty-three places left. A 
 book of home exercises, illustrated with 
 photographs of the same persistent 
 gentleman in forty or fifty more or less 
 ridiculous and amusing positions, is al 
 ways interesting. A book of nature 
 essays will hit some guests, and miss 
 others. A book of poems to digest will 
 sometimes entertain a guest. There 
 should be several books of short stories 
 by authors who appeal to different pub 
 lics. And (I should say) the book you 
 are now reading. Humor and novels 
 might wisely be omitted. In the one 
 case the guest may yield to a natural 
 temptation, and retell at dinner, in his 
 own words, the humorous narrative he 
 has just been reading; and in the other 
 there is a possibility that the visit will 
 end before the novel. It becomes more 
 difficult than ever to get the guest out 
 1 02
 
 THE GUEST CHAMBER 
 
 of the guest chamber. As for maga 
 zines, they are desirable but not too 
 many of them, or the first glimpse of 
 your guest chamber may unhappily re 
 mind the newcomer of the waiting 
 room at his doctor's or dentist's. 
 
 'My chamber,' wrote Washington 
 Irving, describing in the 'Sketch Book' a 
 contemporary English home, 'was in an 
 old part of the house, the ponderous 
 furniture of which might have been fab 
 ricated in the days of the giants. The 
 room was panelled, with cornices of 
 heavily carved work, in which flowers 
 and grotesque faces were strangely in 
 termingled, and a row of black-looking 
 portraits stared mournfully at me from 
 the walls. The bed was of rich, though 
 faded damask, with a lofty tester, and 
 stood in a niche opposite the bow-win 
 dow. . . . The moonbeams fell 
 through the upper part of the casement, 
 103
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 partially lighting up the antiquated 
 apartment.' 
 
 It is an odd thing about the guest 
 chamber of the past, as we enter it 
 by the door of literature, that it was so 
 often gloomy: it is almost as if there 
 has been a historic sequence of guest 
 chambers: (i) those in which the guest 
 was afraid to sleep; (2) those in which 
 he was willing to sleep; (3) those in 
 which he was delighted to sleep. If 
 there was a ghost on the premises, it 
 was always likely to butt in (as we say 
 nowadays) in the guest chamber. If 
 there had been a particularly undesir 
 able ancestor in the family, they always 
 hung his portrait (probably to get rid 
 of it) over the guest-chamber fireplace, 
 where the moon could light it, and his 
 sinister eye, too natural to be painted, 
 could watch the guest trying to count 
 himself to sleep. The guest-chamber 
 104
 
 THE GUEST CHAMBER 
 
 chimney was peculiarly constructed: 
 always the wind, carefully imitating its 
 idea of a lost soul, sighed and wailed 
 and shrieked in it. The floor was laid 
 with a board that creaked aloud if but a 
 mouse stepped on it; and the ivy was 
 trained to tap-tap-tap like a finger 
 on the window-pane. Often the guest 
 chamber was the ghost chamber: and I, 
 for one, am glad that it is not so any 
 longer. For in proportion as the guest 
 feels at home in the guest chamber, the 
 ghost doesn't. And the complete at- 
 homeyness except for that one fly in 
 the ointment, the extra twin bed of 
 our modern guest chamber makes the 
 guest ghost-proof. He goes to bed and 
 sleeps without a thought of ghosts, just 
 as an English lady visiting an American 
 family put her shoes outside the guest- 
 chamber door, slept, and took them in 
 again, with never a thought of her kind 
 
 105
 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 host polishing them in the cellar. He is 
 haunted only by the thought that every 
 minute brings him nearer the end of his 
 visit. 
 
 For go he must! The hour was set, 
 the train selected, even before his ar 
 rival; and, to make assurance doubly 
 sure, another guest was probably in 
 vited. Truly I spoke without thinking 
 when I said there was but one fly in his 
 ointment: this Inexorable Fact is an 
 other and bigger one. Formerly the 
 length of the visit took care of itself. 
 The guest, always with the family ex 
 cept when asleep or dressing, reached 
 the human limit of visiting at about the 
 same time that the family reached the 
 human limit of having him visit. Now 
 and then an exception caused pain and 
 embarrassment; but ordinarily they all 
 reached their human limits with reason 
 able unanimity. A day came when the 
 1 06
 
 THE GUEST CHAMBER 
 
 guest said he ' must go ' to-morrow : the 
 family said 'must he go' to-morrow - 
 and to-morrow he went. 
 
 It is not so nowadays. The guest 
 being settled in the guest chamber, 
 with its private bath and probably, 
 sooner or later, its kitchenette, he 
 and the family are merely pleasantly 
 conscious of each other: he might stay 
 on and on, in a kind of informal and 
 happy adoption, until death or matri 
 mony intervened and took him away. 
 But the family, unless they kept on add 
 ing to the house, would have no guest 
 chamber: and other things being equal, 
 constant building is an annoyance. And 
 so, wisely, the host or hostess specifies 
 in advance the length of the visit; and 
 the extra little twin bed is a useful sym 
 bol and reminder of its impermanency.
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 Box 951388 
 
 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. 
 
 SEP 7 2001 
 
 SRLF 
 2 WEEK LOAN