Maids, Wives, and Bachelors

Waste of Vitality

If we come to reflect upon it, in middle age we find that the one great cause of departure from the ideal in real life is our liability to take cold. Almost all our pleasures are bound up with this probability, for when we have taken cold we are far too stupid either to give or enjoy pleasure. And there is no philosophy connected with colds. Serious illnesses are full of instruction and resignation, but who thinks of being resigned to a cold, or of making a profitable use of it?

“Chilly” is a word that of late years has come to be a frequent and pitiably significant one on the lips of the middle-aged. They have a terror of the frost and snow which they once enjoyed so keenly, and they really suffer much more than they will allow themselves to confess.

The most invigorating and inspiriting of all climates is 64°, but if the glass fall to 50°, chilly people are miserable; they feel draughts everywhere, especially on the face, and very likely the first symptoms of a neuralgic attack. At 40° – which must have been the in-door winter temperature of our forefathers – they become irritable and shivery, and lose all energy. If the temperature fall below 30°, they “take cold,” and exhibit all the mental inertia and many of the physical symptoms of influenza, which nevertheless has not attacked them.

Let us at once admit a truth: the young and robust despise the chilly for their chilliness, for there is such a thing as physical pride, and a very unpleasant thing it is in families. These physical Pharisees are always recommending the “roughing” and “hardening” process, and they would gladly revive for the poor invalid the cold-water torture of the past.

Without being conscious of it, they are cruel. Chilly people are not made better by the unsympathetic remarks of those of quicker blood. There is no good in assuring them that the cold is healthy and seasonable. They feel keenly the half-joking imputation of “cosseting,” though perhaps they are too inert and miserable to defend themselves.

Strong walking exercise is the remedy always proposed. Many cannot take it. Others make a laudable effort to follow the prescription, and perhaps during it feel a glow of warmth to which in the house – though the house is thoroughly warmed – they are strangers. But half an hour after their return home the tide of life has receded again, and they are as chilly and nervous as before.

Nevertheless, they have passed through an experience which, if they would consider it, indicates their relief, if not their cure. While out-of-doors they thought it necessary to cover their feet with warm hosiery and thick boots, the head with a bonnet and veil, their hands with gloves and a fur muff, their body with some fur or wadded garment half an inch thick. In short, when they went out they imitated Nature, and protected themselves as she does animals.

But just as soon as they return home they uncover their head and hands, replace the warm, heavy clothing of the feet with some of a more elegant but far colder quality, and take off altogether the thick warm garments worn out-of-doors. A bear that should follow the same course when it went home to its snug subterranean den would naturally enough die of some pulmonary disease. Nations which are subjected to long and severe winters have learned the more natural and excellent way. The Laplander keeps on his fur, the Russian his wadded garment, the Tartar his sheep-skin, the Shetlander goes about in his house in his wadmal. It is only in our high state of civilization that men and women divest themselves of half their clothing with the thermometer below zero, and then run to the fire to warm their freezing hands and feet.

If warm clothing protects us out of the house, it will do the same in the house; and it is no more “coddling,” and much more sensible and satisfactory than cowering over a grate. Under the head-dress a silk skullcap is a most effective protection against draughts, and would prevent many an attack of neuralgia. A silk or wash-leather vest will keep the body at a more equable temperature than the best fire. A shawl to most middle-aged ladies is a graceful toilet adjunct even in the house, and it is capable of retaining as well as of imparting much warmth. When very chilly after removal of outside wraps, or from any other cause, try a wadded dressing-gown over the usual clothing. In five minutes the added comfort will be recognized.

The secret is, then, to keep the body at its proper temperature in the house by the adoption of sufficient warm clothing, instead of trusting to artificially heated atmosphere. No one will be more liable to take cold out of the house because she has been warm in the house. There is no more sense in shivering in-doors in order to prepare the body to endure the out-door climate than there would be in sleeping with too few blankets for fear of increasing the sense of cold when out of bed.

A stuffy room, with air constantly heated to 75°, is the most efficacious invention ever devised for ruining health. But it is equally true that habitual warmth is the very best preserver of constitutional strength in middle and old age; and undoubtedly this is best maintained by a temperature of 68° and plenty of clothing.

A very important aid to warmth is a proper diet. Many women who suffer continually from a sense of chill, below the tide of healthy life, have yet constantly at hand an abundance of nourishing food. But they eat one day at one hour, the next at another; they don’t care what they eat, and take anything a flippant-minded cook chooses to send them; they wait for some one when themselves hungry, out of mere domestic courtesy; and when their husbands are from home they take tea and biscuits because it is not worth while giving servants the trouble of cooking for them alone. In all these and many similar ways vitality is continually lost, and with every loss of vitality there is a corresponding access of slow, chilly, shivering inertia.

It is a great mistake that women are taught from childhood that it is meritorious in their sex to conceal their own wants, and to postpone their own convenience to that of fathers, brothers, husbands, and even servants. For in the end they break down, and are left in a state of ill health in which all the wheels of life run slow. The trouble, in a sentence, is that women have no wives– no one to remind them when they are in a draught, or come in with wet feet, no one to get them a warm drink when chilly, and ward off the little ills (which soon become great ones) by loving, thoughtful, constant care and attention.

All women know how hard it is to live the usual life of work and amusement in a physical condition of far below the requisite strength. Nothing induces this condition like chronic chill. In it no vitality can be gained, and very much may be continually lost. Therefore every plan should be tried which promises to raise the temperature to a healthy standard. Try the effect of a room heated to 68°, and plenty of warm, constantly warm clothing.

A Little Matter of Money

“It is unpleasant not to have money,” says Mr. Hazlitt; indeed, it has become a sort of social offence to be short of virtue in this respect; for both nationally and personally, we are loath to confess so tragic a calamity. We may assert that, having food and clothes, we are therewith content, and that we would not encounter the perils and snares of vast wealth; but are we quite sure that this humility and contentment is not a fine name for being too lazy to earn money, or too extravagant to keep it? Again, if all were content with the simple satisfaction of their necessities – if nobody wanted to be rich – nobody would be industrious or frugal, or strive to acquire knowledge. Who then would build our churches, and endow our colleges? Who would send out missionaries, and encourage science and inventions? The golden grapes may be out of our reach, but they are a noble fruit when pressed by kindly hands, and have given graciously unto the world their wine of consolation.

The fact is that we have come to a time in which the want of money is about as bad a moral distemper as the love of it. The latter position is an admitted truth; the former is only beginning to put forth its claims to the notice of professed moralists. Whatever special virtue there was in poverty seems to be in direct antagonism to the spirit of the present day; for there is no doubt that worldly prosperity has come to be regarded as one of the legitimate fruits of the gospel. The modern Church puts forth her hands and grasps the promise of the life that now is, as well as that which is to come. Why not? Money gives a power of doing good that nothing material can equal. Even “The Truth” has now to depend on the currency, and the most evangelical societies pay treasurers as well as missionaries.

The amount of money in a man’s pocket is a great moral factor. He who has plenty of ready cash and is not good-natured needs a thorough change, and nothing but being born again will cure him. But the man who is in a chronic state of poverty is a man placed in selfish relations to every one around him. How hard it is for such a one to be generous, just, and sympathetic! He is almost compelled to look on his fellow-creatures with the eye of a slave-merchant, to consider: How can they profit me? What can I gain by them? He must marry for money, or not marry for the want of it. His friendship is a kind of traffic. His religion is subject to considerations, for he will either go to church for a certain connection, or he will not go at all because of the collections.

Now, there is abundance of living strength in Christianity to meet this and all other special wants of the age. There is no doubt that money is the principle of our social gravitation, and we need preachers who will not be afraid to tell us the truth, even though nobody has ever told it just in that particular way before. We accept without demur all that has been said about the evils of loving money; will some of our spiritual teachers tell us how to avoid the evils and cure the moral and physical distress caused by the want of money? That this is a gigantic evil, we have constant proof in the daily papers; in murder, theft, suicide, domestic misery and cruelty. These criminals are far seldomer influenced by the love of money than by the want of it. If instead of being without a dollar, they had had sufficient for their necessities, would they have run such risks, incurred such guilt, staked life on one desperate chance, flung it away in despairing misery?

Of course the word “sufficient” is very elastic. It can be so moderate and temperate; and again it can grasp at impossibilities. “My wants,” said the Count Mirabel, “are few: a fine house, fine carriages, fine horses, a complete wardrobe, the best opera box, the first cook, and plenty of pocket-money – that is all I require.” He thought his desires very temperate; so also did the Scotchman, who, praying for a modest competency, added, “and that there be no mistake, let it be seven hundred pounds a year, paid quarterly in advance.” There are indeed all sorts of difficulties connected with this question, and anybody can find their way into them. But there must also be a way out; and if our guides would survey the ground a little, they would earn and have our thanks. For undoubtedly this want of money is as great a provocation to sin as the love of it. An empty purse is as full of wicked thoughts as an evil heart; and the Father who allotted seven guardian angels to man, and made five of them hover round his pockets – empty or full – knew well his most vulnerable points.

Mission of Household Furniture

Have wood and paper and upholstery really any moral and emotional agencies?

Certainly they have. Not very obvious ones perhaps, but all-pervading and ever-persistent in their character; since there is no day – scarcely an hour – of our lives in which we are not, either passively or consciously, subject to their influences. Our cravings after elegance of form, glimmer and shimmer of light and color, insensibly elevate and civilize us; and the men and women condemned to the monotony of bare walls and unpicturesque surroundings – whether they be devotees in cells, or felons in dungeons – are the less human for the want of these things. The want, then, is a direct moral evil, and a cause of imperfection.

The desire for beautiful surroundings is a natural instinct in a pure mind. How tenaciously people who live in dull streets, and who never see a sunrise, nor a mountain peak, nor an unbroken horizon, cling to it is proved on all sides of us by the picturesqueness which many a mechanic’s wife imparts to her little twelve-feet-square rooms. And it is wonderful with what slender materials she will satisfy this hunger of the eye for beauty and color. A few brightly polished tins, the many-shaded patchwork coverlets and cushions, the gay stripes in the rag carpet, the pot of trailing ivy or scarlet geranium, the shining black stove, with its glimmer and glow of fire and heat, are made by some subtle charm of arrangement both satisfactory and suggestive.

In spite of all arguments about the economy of “boarding,” who does not respect the men or women who, at all just sacrifices, eschew a boarding-house and make themselves a home?

A man without a home has cast away an anchor; an atmosphere of uncertainty clings about him; he advertises his tendency to break loose from wholesome restraints. So strongly is the force of this home influence now perceived that the wisest of our merchants refuse to employ boys and women without homes, while the universal preference is in favor of men who have assumed the head of the house, and thus given hostage to society for their good behavior.

But a house is not a home till it is swept and garnished, and contains not only the wherewithal to refresh the body, but also something for the comfort of the heart, the elevation of the mind, and the delight of the eye.

If we would fairly estimate the moral power of furniture, let us consider how attached it is possible for us to become to it. There are chairs that are sacred objects to us: the large, easy one, in which some saint sat patiently waiting for the angels; the little high chair which was some darling baby’s throne till he “went away one morning;” the low rocker, in which mother nursed the whole family of stalwart sons and lovely daughters.

Ask any practised student or writer how much he loves his old desk, with its tidy pigeon-holes and familiar conveniences. Have they not many a secret between them that they only understand? Are they not familiar? Could they be parted without great sorrow and regrets? Nothing is more certain than that we do stamp ourselves upon dead matter, and impart to it a kind of life. Is there a more pathetic picture than that of Dickens’s study after his death? Yet no human figure is present; there is nothing but furniture, the desk on which he wrote those wonderful stories, and the empty chair before it.

Nothing but the empty chair and the confidential desk to speak for the dead master; but how eloquently they do it!

Our furniture ought, therefore, to be easy and familiar. We cannot give our hearts to what is uncomfortable, no matter how quaint or rich it may be. And though it is always pleasant to have colors and forms assorted with perfect taste, it is not desirable to have the effect so perfect that we are afraid to make use of it, lest we destroy it. No furniture ought to be so fine that we dare not light a fire for fear of smoking it, or let the sunshine in for fear of fading it. In such rooms we do not lounge and laugh and eat and rest and live, – we only exist.

The proper character of drawing-rooms is that of gayety and cheerfulness. This is attained by light tints, and brilliant colors and gilding; but the brightest colors and the strongest contrasts must be on the furniture, not on the walls and ceilings. These must be subordinate in coloring, or the effect will be theatrical and vulgar.

The dining-room ought to be one of the pleasantest in the house; but it is generally in the basement. It ought to be a room in which there is nothing to remind us of labor or exertion, for we have gone there to eat and to be refreshed. A few flowers, a dish of fruits, snowy linen and china, glittering glass and silver, a pleasant blending of warm and neutral tints are essentials. For ornaments, rare china, Indian vases, Eastern jars suggestive of fine pickles or rare sweetmeats, and a few pictures on the walls, representing only pleasant subjects, and large enough to be examined without exertion, are the best.

Advantages of locality, a refined diner will always perceive and appropriate. Thus I used to dine frequently with a lady and gentleman who in the spring always altered the position of the table, so that while eating they could look through the large open windows, and see the waving apple-blossoms and breathe the perfumed air, and listen to the evening songs of the birds. Bedrooms should be light, cleanly, and cheerful; greater contrasts are admissible between the room and the furniture, as the bed and window-curtains form a sufficient mass to balance a tint of equal intensity upon the walls. For the same reason gay and bright carpets are often pleasant and ornamental.

Staircases, lobbies, and vestibules should be cool in tone, simple in color, and free from contrasts. Here the effects are to be produced by light and shadow, rather than by color. Every one must have noticed that some houses as soon as the doors are opened look bright and cheerful, while others are melancholy and dull. The difference is caused by the good or bad taste with which they are papered. Yet who shall say what events may arise from such a simple thing as the first impressions of an important visitor? And these impressions may involuntarily receive their primal tone from a light, cheerful, or dull, dark hall paper.

All rooms open to the public must have a certain air of conventional arrangement; but the parlor in every home ought to be a room of character and individuality. Here is the very shrine and sanctuary of the Lares and Penates. Here is the grandmamma’s chair and knitting, and mamma’s work-basket, and the sofa on which papa lounges and reads his evening paper. Here are Annie’s flowers and Mary’s easel and Jack’s much-abused class-books. Here the girls practise and the boys rig their ship and mamma looks serious over the house books. In this room the picture papers lie around, every one’s favorite volume is on the table, and the walls are sacred to the family portraits. In this room the family councils are held and the dear invalids nursed back to life. Here the boys come to say “good-bye” when they go away to school or to business. Here the girls, in their gay party-dresses, come for papa’s final bantering kiss and mamma’s last admiration and admonition. Ah, this room! – this dear, untidy, unfashionable parlor! It is the citadel of the household, the very heart of the home.