Homes and How to Make Them Part 12

Thus our good landlady, when we said our new house was beginning to look nearly ready for us. A most reasonable request, and we, always cheerfully responsive to such, replied, "By all means; certainly; quite right: we'll see the workmen to-day and find out just when the new domicile will be ready for us."

In pursuance of this object, straightway then we flew to the carpenter. "Tell us, O worthy master!" we cried, "when shall the new house be done?"

"Wal, let me see." And he scratched his head with the scratch-awl.

"It's a'most done now. Ther ain't much more to do. We've pretty much finished up. Ther's the doors to hang and trim, 'n' the closet shelves 'n' things to fix up; the stairs ain't quite done, n'r the front steps. I d'nno; ther's a number o'little jobs 'round,--don't amount to much,--coal-bin, thresholds, and one or two things you want to change; take three or four days, I guess, if the plumbers and furnace folks get out of the way; week, mebbe."

"You think, then, by a week from next Sat.u.r.day--to-day is Thursday morning--you will have everything cleared up?"

"O yes, easy!"

Alas! ingrat.i.tude is not confined to republics. We thought it a most kind and judicious thing to grant nine days, when but three or four--six at the most--had been asked. Worldly wisdom would have said, "No, sir; three days you can't have; it must all be done to-morrow night." But we are not worldly-wise; innocent, confiding, and rejoicing, we went our way,--went our way to the plumber.

"O good plumber!" quoth we, "how long will it take you to complete the work you have begun so well?"

"How long? 'Twon't take no time. Just as soon as the copper comes for the tank, I shall finish it all up. There ain't much of it, anyhow; it's all done but that."

"And when is the aforesaid copper coming?"

"When is't a coming? Any time. Shouldn't be surprised if 'twas here now."

"You can finish it then surely within a week."

"Within a week? I sh'd think likely,"--the last remark backed up by such a smile as made further question impossible.

Once more we pursued our investigating tour, saying to the prompt proprietor of the centrifugal-stove store, "Is that new furnace that is to make June of January, that never does what it ought not to do or leaves undone what ought to be done, that asks a mere handful of coal every twenty-four hours and runs itself, ready for its trial trip?"

"It is, sir."

"Registers all set and--"

"Well, no; the registers can't be set till everything else is out of the way."

"Ah, yes, of course; but 't won't take long to do that?"

"They shall all be set in the twinkling of an eye, at a moment's notice."

And now it only remained to hie away to the painter. So we hied and hailed him.

"Tell us, O man of many hues! how much time will you need to paint and stain and grizzle and grain and tint and stripe and fill and sh.e.l.lac and oil and rub and scrub and cut and draw and putty and sand-paper and size and distemper and border and otherwise exalt and glorify the walls and woodwork of our house, after the other workmen are through, making allowance for what you have already done and will be able to do while they are still at work?"

"I tell you what it is, Mr. Architect, it shall be done just as soon as possible. The fact is, we've got the heft of it done now. We shall follow the carpenters up sharp, and get through almost as soon as they do."

Outwardly serene, but smiling triumphantly within, we went to our daily roast-beef, and in the sweet simplicity of a blissful ignorance and a clear conscience a.s.sured our patient hostess that the dog-days and her unworthy guests should go out together. Yet we never told a lie or wilfully deceived any man, much less a woman.

But we antic.i.p.ate. At the close of the third day we essayed to examine progress at the new house. As we approached, a dim and doubtful but wondrous pleasant antic.i.p.ation took possession of our fancy. What if it should, indeed, be finished! The carpenter had suggested three or four days,--three had already pa.s.sed. The painter was to get through _almost_ as soon, the plumber would surely be out of the way, and there would be only the furnace registers. It was, perhaps, too good to be true, and we lingered to give the notion time to grow. Opening the door at last, we received something the same shock the traveller feels when he encounters a guide-post telling him the next town is half a mile farther on than it was three miles back. But we've not lived forty years without learning to bury our "might-have-beens" with outward composure, whatever the internal commotion. We remembered there was still a week, and resolved to keep a sharp lookout that no time was wasted; an idle resolution, for the workmen were as anxious to get through as we were to have them. Faithful industry and attention we may demand, haste we have no right to ask. But our men actually hurried. We were instant in season and out of season, and can testify, with both hands in our empty pockets, that there was not an hour wasted. Yet our full-blown hopes fell, as the roses fall, leaf by leaf; drop by drop our patience ebbed, till, ere the close of the week, we sank slowly down on a pile of black-walnut shavings in the calmness of despair.

To make a long story short, we gave up, beaten, trespa.s.sed a week on our long-suffering hostess, then went to visit our rich relations.

They were glad to see us when we came, and wondered how long we were going to stay. We thought best to let them wonder, which they did for the s.p.a.ce of a few weeks, when we folded our nightgowns and silently stole--not the spoons, but ourselves--away.

We mentioned the calmness of despair. From that depth it is often but a single step to the serenity of faith, on which sublime height not the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds hath power to vex or make afraid, much less a few pine shavings and the want of a little paint.

Despair is never endless; it's a short-lived emotion at the worst, a selfish one at the best. Moralizing thus, it was by some means revealed to us that people are happy in paying twenty-five dollars a week at Martha's Vineyard and Mount Desert for the blessed privilege of living in unfinished and unfurnished rooms,--breathing plenty of fresh air, typhoid malaria thrown in,--and eating such food as the uncertain winds and waves may waft thither. If at Mount Desert why not at Rock Rimmon, especially as the cost is somewhat less, the fresh air equally abundant, with nothing more malarious than the pungent perfume of the pines, and all the products of the civilized world within easy reach? Moreover, our third, fourth, and fifth stories--the floor of the latter just above the ridge pole, its ceiling just beyond the stars--were, for all purposes of use and comfort, ready for occupation. So we entered, hung up our hats, and told the busy builders we had come to stay.

Which we have done; and now it's the first of October. The leaves are falling, the rooks are calling, the crickets are crawling, and the katydids are--well, squalling. There's a work-bench bigger than Noah's ark in the drawing-room, another in the library, next size larger, five tool-chests in as many different rooms, a thousand feet of lumber in the front hall, and nine hundred and thirty-seven different colored paint-pots in the guest-room,--more or less. We pry into cupboards and drawers with our finger-nails, we keep next the wall going up stairs, draw water through a straw, and to open doors we thrust a square stick through a round hole and twist and turn till the stick breaks or the door opens. Generally the stick breaks.

But we are no longer desperate. The sound of the builder's axe and hammer mingles harmoniously with the rattling of dishes and the drumming of the piano. A profound peace possesses our souls, for Nature's own infinite glory is around us, and we go from our castle in Spain to our cottage by the sea, from our house of active industry to our restful home in the New Jerusalem, with the opening and the closing of a door. We are not anxious or impatient, being well a.s.sured that steadfast industry will finally conquer and our house be finished as far as mortal house should be. Which leads us to remark just here, that a man ought never to think his house is quite complete; he will not, if he is wise, and grows as long as he lives.

Our present point is the inevitable delay in the outward finishing to which home building is especially subject,--a difficulty familiar to all who have tried it, but which people cannot always get out of by jumping squarely into it as we have done.

There are various reasons for it. A superficial view of building is one. The masons are scarcely noticed before the foundation-walls are laid; the walls shoot up in a single day; the roof spreads its saving shelter as easily as though it were a huge umbrella; the windows open their eyes in new-born wonder; the chimneys breathe the blue breath of home life out into the world; the painter touches the clapboards with his magic wand; and, with one accord, all men cry out, and especially all women, "Wal, I do declare! That air house goes up in a hurry, don't it? Guess there hain't much but green lumber gone into that. Folks'll be movin' in 'n a few days. Ketch me goin' into a house like that! I'd a good deal druther live in an old house than die in a new one."

But, for some reason, the folks don't move in. Week after week pa.s.ses without visible change till we hear no more of haste, but owner and neighbors grow impatient, and can't for their lives see why that house wa'n't done weeks and weeks ago! In point of fact, when it appeared almost wholly built, it was hardly begun. The work thus far had been of the sort that can be quickly executed, much of it done by machinery. Even after the plastering is dry, the floors laid, the windows in, and perhaps the greater part of the interior woodwork in place, the actual labor of finishing is but fairly begun.

Changes always cause delay more or less serious. Whoever makes alterations in his house builds four houses. There is the first doing it, which is one; then there is the "cussing and discussing," the hesitating and final deciding to make the change, equivalent, at least in time and nervous wear and tear, to the original work, which is two; the undoing is three; and the final adjusting it to your mind is four.

Woe to him by whom the change cometh, but come it will. It can be wholly avoided only by having things done as you do not want them and will never be satisfied to leave them. Of course, the want of plans is a fruitful source of alterations. We are too modest and too sensible to say all plans should be drawn by an architect, but carefully prepared they must be, and, what is commonly more difficult, thoroughly understood by the party most interested, that is, the owner.

Another reason why the lengthened sweetness of finishing is so long drawn out comes from the constant increase of "modern improvements,"--accessories deemed essential to the completeness of home comfort and convenience. Nowhere is the fertility of inventive genius more apparent than in these household appliances, to all of which the apostolic injunction applies, "Prove and hold fast the good." Hold fast and be grateful, for they are the world's best benefactors whose work makes happier homes.

THE END.