_ I have before given an account of the difficulties we encountered
when we started out house-hunting, and it was this doleful
experience which made Euphemia declare that before we set out on a
second search for a residence, we should know exactly what we
wanted.
To do this, we must know how other people live, we must examine
into the advantages and disadvantages of the various methods of
housekeeping, and make up our minds on the subject.
When we came to this conclusion we were in a city boarding-house,
and were entirely satisfied that this style of living did not suit
us at all.
At this juncture I received a letter from the gentleman who had
boarded with us on the canal-boat. Shortly after leaving us the
previous fall, he had married a widow lady with two children, and
was now keeping house in a French flat in the upper part of the
city. We had called upon the happy couple soon after their
marriage, and the letter, now received, contained an invitation for
us to come and dine, and spend the night.
"We'll go," said Euphemia. "There's nothing I want so much as to
see how people keep house in a French flat. Perhaps we'll like it.
And I must see those children." So we went.
The house, as Euphemia remarked, was anything but flat. It was
very tall indeed--the tallest house in the neighborhood. We
entered the vestibule, the outer door being open, and beheld, on
one side of us, a row of bell-handles. Above each of these handles
was the mouth of a speaking-tube, and above each of these, a little
glazed frame containing a visiting-card.
"Isn't this cute?" said Euphemia, reading over the cards. "Here's
his name and this is his bell and tube! Which would you do first,
ring or blow?"
"My dear," said I, "you don't blow up those tubes. We must ring
the bell, just as if it were an ordinary front-door bell, and
instead of coming to the door, some one will call down the tube to
us."
I rang the bell under the boarder's name, and very soon a voice at
the tube said:
"Well?"
Then I told our names, and in an instant the front door opened.
"Why, their flat must be right here," whispered Euphemia. "How
quickly the girl came!"
And she looked for the girl as we entered. But there was no one
there.
"Their flat is on the fifth story," said I. "He mentioned that in
his letter. We had better shut the door and go up."
Up and up the softly carpeted stairs we climbed, and not a soul we
saw or heard.
"It is like an enchanted cavern," said Euphemia. "You say the
magic word, the door in the rock opens and you go on, and on,
through the vaulted passages--"
"Until you come to the ogre," said the boarder, who was standing at
the top of the stairs. He did not behave at all like an ogre, for
he was very glad to see us, and so was his wife. After we had
settled down in the parlor and the boarder's wife had gone to see
about something concerning the dinner, Euphemia asked after the
children.
"I hope they haven't gone to bed," she said, "for I do so want to
see the dear little things."
The ex-boarder, as Euphemia called him, smiled grimly.
"They're not so very little," he said. "My wife's son is nearly
grown. He is at an academy in Connecticut, and he expects to go
into a civil engineer's office in the spring. His sister is older
than he is. My wife married--in the first instance--when she was
very young--very young in deed."
"Oh!" said Euphemia; and then, after a pause, "And neither of them
is at home now?"
"No," said the ex-boarder. "By the way, what do you think of this
dado? It is a portable one; I devised it myself. You can take it
away with you to another house when you move. But there is the
dinner-bell. I'll show you over the establishment after we have
had something to eat."
After our meal we made a tour of inspection. The flat, which
included the whole floor, contained nine or ten rooms, of all
shapes and sizes. The corners in some of the rooms were cut off
and shaped up into closets and recesses, so that Euphemia said the
corners of every room were in some other room.
Near the back of the flat was a dumb-waiter, with bells and
speaking-tubes. When the butcher, the baker, or the kerosene-lamp
maker, came each morning, he rang the bell, and called up the tube
to know what was wanted. The order was called down, and he brought
the things in the afternoon.
All this greatly charmed Euphemia. It was so cute, so complete.
There were no interviews with disagreeable trades-people, none of
the ordinary annoyances of housekeeping. Everything seemed to be
done with a bell, a speaking-tube or a crank.
"Indeed," said the ex-boarder, "if it were not for people tripping
over the wires, I could rig up attachments by which I could sit in
the parlor, and by using pedals and a key-board, I could do all the
work of this house without getting out of my easy-chair."
One of the most peculiar features of the establishment was the
servant's room. This was at the rear end of the floor, and as
there was not much space left after the other rooms had been made,
it was very small; so small, indeed, that it would accommodate only
a very short bedstead. This made it necessary for our friends to
consider the size of the servant when they engaged her.
"There were several excellent girls at the intelligence office
where I called," said the ex-boarder, "but I measured them, and
they were all too tall. So we had to take a short one, who is only
so so. There was one big Scotch girl who was the very person for
us, and I would have taken her if my wife had not objected to my
plan for her accommodation.
"What was that?" I asked.
"Well," said he, "I first thought of cutting a hole in the
partition wall at the foot of the bed, for her to put her feet
through."
"Never!" said his wife, emphatically. "I would never have allowed
that."
"And then," continued he, "I thought of turning the bed around, and
cutting a larger hole, through which she might have put her head
into the little room on this side. A low table could have stood
under the hole, and her head might have rested on a cushion on the
table very comfortably."
"My dear," said his wife, "it would have frightened me to death to
go into that room and see that head on a cushion on a table--"
"Like John the Baptist," interrupted Euphemia.
"Well," said our ex-boarder, "the plan would have had its
advantages."
"Oh!" cried Euphemia, looking out of a back window. "What a lovely
little iron balcony! Do you sit out there on warm evenings?"
"That's a fire-escape," said the ex-boarder. "We don't go out
there unless it is very hot indeed, on account of the house being
on fire. You see there is a little door in the floor of the
balcony and an iron ladder leading to the balcony beneath, and so
on, down to the first story."
"And you have to creep through that hole and go down that dreadful
steep ladder every time there is a fire?" said Euphemia.
"Well, I guess we would never go down but once," he answered.
"No, indeed," said Euphemia; "you'd fall down and break your neck
the first time," and she turned away from the window with a very
grave expression on her face.
Soon after this our hostess conducted Euphemia to the guest-
chamber, while her husband and I finished a bed-time cigar.
When I joined Euphemia in her room, she met me with a mysterious
expression on her face. She shut the door, and then said in a very
earnest tone:
"Do you see that little bedstead in the corner? I did not notice
it until I came in just now, and then, being quite astonished, I
said, 'Why here's a child's bed; who sleeps here?' 'Oh,' says she,
'that's our little Adele's bedstead. We have it in our room when
she's here.' 'Little Adele!' said I, 'I didn't know she was
little--not small enough for that bed, at any rate.' 'Why, yes,'
said she, 'Adele is only four years old. The bedstead is quite
large enough for her.' 'And she is not here now?' I said, utterly
amazed at all this. 'No,' she answered, 'she is not here now, but
we try to have her with us as much as we can, and always keep her
little bed ready for her.' 'I suppose she's with her father's
people,' I said, and she answered, 'Oh yes,' and bade me good-
night. What does all this mean? Our boarder told us that the
daughter is grown up, and here his wife declares that she is only
four years old! I don't know what in the world to make of this
mystery!"
I could give Euphemia no clue. I supposed there was some mistake,
and that was all I could say, except that I was sleepy, and that we
could find out all about it in the morning. But Euphemia could not
dismiss the subject from her mind. She said no more,--but I could
see--until I fell asleep--that she was thinking about it.
It must have been about the middle of the night, perhaps later,
when I was suddenly awakened by Euphemia starting up in the bed,
with the exclamation:
"I have it!"
"What?" I cried, sitting up in a great hurry. "What is it? What
have you got? What's the matter?"
"I know it!" she said, "I know it. Our boarder is a GRANDFATHER!
Little Adele is the grown-up daughter's child. He was quite
particular to say that his wife married VERY young. Just to think
of it! So short a time ago, he was living with us--a bachelor--and
now, in four short months, he is a grandfather!"
Carefully propounded inquiries, in the morning, proved Euphemia's
conclusions to be correct.
The next evening, when we were quietly sitting in our own room,
Euphemia remarked that she did not wish to have anything to do with
French flats.
"They seem to be very convenient," I said.
"Oh yes, convenient enough, but I don't like them. I would hate to
live where everything let down like a table-lid, or else turned
with a crank. And when I think of those fire-escapes, and the
boarder's grandchild, it makes me feel very unpleasantly."
"But the grandchild don't follow as a matter of course," said I.
"No," she answered, "but I shall never like French flats."
And we discussed them no more.
For some weeks we examined into every style of economic and
respectable housekeeping, and many methods of living in what
Euphemia called "imitation comfort" were set aside as unworthy of
consideration.
"My dear," said Euphemia, one evening, "what we really ought to do
is to build. Then we would have exactly the house we want."
"Very true," I replied; "but to build a house, a man must have
money."
"Oh no!" said she, "or at least not much. For one thing, you might
join a building association. In some of those societies I know
that you only have to pay a dollar a week."
"But do you suppose the association builds houses for all its
members?" I asked.
"Of course I suppose so. Else why is it called a building
association?"
I had read a good deal about these organizations, and I explained
to Euphemia that a dollar a week was never received by any of them
in payment for a new house.
"Then build yourself," she said; "I know how that can be done."
"Oh, it's easy enough," I remarked, "if you have the money."
"No, you needn't have any money," said Euphemia, rather hastily.
"Just let me show you. Supposing, for instance, that you want to
build a house worth--well, say twenty thousand dollars, in some
pretty town near the city."
"I would rather figure on a cheaper house than that for a country
place," I interrupted.
"Well then, say two thousand dollars. You get masons, and
carpenters, and people to dig the cellar, and you engage them to
build your house. You needn't pay them until it's done, of course.
Then when it's all finished, borrow two thousand dollars and give
the house as security. After that you see, you have only to pay
the interest on the borrowed money. When you save enough money to
pay back the loan, the house is your own. Now, isn't that a good
plan?"
"Yes," said I, "if there could be found people who would build your
house and wait for their money until some one would lend you its
full value on a mortgage."
"Well," said Euphemia, "I guess they could be found if you would
only look for them."
"I'll look for them, when I go to heaven," I said.
We gave up for the present, the idea of building or buying a house,
and determined to rent a small place in the country, and then, as
Euphemia wisely said, if we liked it, we might buy it. After she
had dropped her building projects she thought that one ought to
know just how a house would suit before having it on one's hands.
We could afford something better than a canal-boat now, and
therefore we were not so restricted as in our first search for a
house. But, the one thing which troubled my wife--and, indeed,
caused me much anxious thought, was that scourge of almost all
rural localities--tramps. It would be necessary for me to be away
all day,--and we could not afford to keep a man,--so we must be
careful to get a house somewhere off the line of ordinary travel,
or else in a well-settled neighborhood, where there would be some
one near at hand in case of unruly visitors.
"A village I don't like," said Euphemia: "there is always so much
gossip, and people know all about what you have, and what you do.
And yet it would be very lonely, and perhaps dangerous, for us to
live off somewhere, all by ourselves. And there is another
objection to a village. We don't want a house with a small yard
and a garden at the back. We ought to have a dear little farm,
with some fields for corn, and a cow, and a barn and things of that
sort. All that would be lovely. I'll tell you what we want," she
cried, seized with a sudden inspiration; "we ought to try to get
the end-house of a village. Then our house could be near the
neighbors, and our farm could stretch out a little way into the
country beyond us. Let us fix our minds upon such a house and I
believe we can get it."
So we fixed our minds, but in the course of a week or two we
unfixed them several times to allow the consideration of places,
which otherwise would have been out of range; and during one of
these intervals of mental disfixment we took a house.
It was not the end-house of a village, but it was in the outskirts
of a very small rural settlement. Our nearest neighbor was within
vigorous shouting distance, and the house suited us so well in
other respects, that we concluded that this would do. The house
was small, but large enough. There were some trees around it, and
a little lawn in front. There was a garden, a small barn and
stable, a pasture field, and land enough besides for small patches
of corn and potatoes. The rent was low, the water good, and no one
can imagine how delighted we were.
We did not furnish the whole house at first, but what mattered it?
We had no horse or cow, but the pasture and barn were ready for
them. We did not propose to begin with everything at once.
Our first evening in that house was made up of hours of unalloyed
bliss. We walked from room to room; we looked out on the garden
and the lawn; we sat on the little porch while I smoked.
"We were happy at Rudder Grange," said Euphemia; "but that was only
a canal-boat, and could not, in the nature of things, have been a
permanent home."
"No," said I, "it could not have been permanent. But, in many
respects, it was a delightful home. The very name of it brings
pleasant thoughts."
"It was a nice name," said Euphemia, "and I'll tell you what we
might do: Let us call this place Rudder Grange--the New Rudder
Grange! The name will do just as well for a house as for a boat."
I agreed on the spot, and the house was christened.
Our household was small; we had a servant--a German woman; and we
had ourselves, that was all.
I did not do much in the garden; it was too late in the season.
The former occupant had planted some corn and potatoes, with a few
other vegetables, and these I weeded and hoed, working early in the
morning and when I came home in the afternoon. Euphemia tied up
the rose-vines, trimmed the bushes, and with a little rake and hoe
she prepared a flower-bed in front of the parlor-window. This
exercise gave us splendid appetites, and we loved our new home more
and more.
Our German girl did not suit us exactly at first, and day by day
she grew to suit us less. She was a quiet, kindly, pleasant
creature, and delighted in an out-of-door life. She was as willing
to weed in the garden as she was to cook or wash. At first I was
very much pleased with this, because, as I remarked to Euphemia,
you can find very few girls who would be willing to work in the
garden, and she might be made very useful.
But, after a time, Euphemia began to get a little out of patience
with her. She worked out-of-doors entirely too much. And what she
did there, as well as some of her work in the house, was very much
like certain German literature--you did not know how it was done,
or what it was for.
One afternoon I found Euphemia quite annoyed.
"Look here," she said, "and see what that girl has been at work at,
nearly all this afternoon. I was upstairs sewing and thought she
was ironing. Isn't it too provoking?"
It WAS provoking. The contemplative German had collected a lot of
short ham-bones--where she found them I cannot imagine--and had
made of them a border around my wife's flower-bed. The bones stuck
up straight a few inches above the ground, all along the edge of
the bed, and the marrow cavity of each one was filled with earth in
which she had planted seeds.
"'These,' she says, 'will spring up and look beautiful,'" said
Euphemia; "they have that style of thing in her country."
"Then let her take them off with her to her country," I exclaimed.
"No, no," said Euphemia, hurriedly, "don't kick them out. It would
only wound her feelings. She did it all for the best, and thought
it would please me to have such a border around my bed. But she is
too independent, and neglects her proper work. I will give her a
week's notice and get another servant. When she goes we can take
these horrid bones away. But I hope nobody will call on us in the
meantime."
"Must we keep these things here a whole week?" I asked.
"Oh, I can't turn her away without giving her a fair notice. That
would be cruel."
I saw the truth of the remark, and determined to bear with the
bones and her rather than be unkind.
That night Euphemia informed the girl of her decision, and the next
morning, soon after I had left, the good German appeared with her
bonnet on and her carpet-bag in her hand, to take leave of her
mistress.
"What!" cried Euphemia. "You are not going to-day?"
"If it is goot to go at all it is goot to go now," said the girl.
"And you will go off and leave me without any one in the house,
after my putting myself out to give you a fair notice? It's
shameful!"
"I think it is very goot for me to go now," quietly replied the
girl. "This house is very loneful. I will go to-morrow in the
city to see your husband for my money. Goot morning." And off she
trudged to the station.
Before I reached the house that afternoon, Euphemia rushed out to
tell this story. I would not like to say how far I kicked those
ham-bones.
This German girl had several successors, and some of them suited as
badly and left as abruptly as herself; but Euphemia never forgot
the ungrateful stab given her by this "ham-bone girl," as she
always called her. It was her first wound of the kind, and it came
in the very beginning of the campaign when she was all unused to
this domestic warfare. _