Henry Edward Warner

“ When you're sitting on the porch of your own house doing nothing but listening to the ebb and flow of grape-fruit juice, you can't help noticing the strings of Japanese lanterns over yonder, and listening to the gay laughter of young people as they madly hurl bean-bags into a hole in a plank, shrieking the while and guying each other apace. ”

“ Buying a house and lot is not so much a physical or financial transaction as a philosophical conclusion. You need the house and lot; you must argue yourself into a mental attitude toward that house and lot that simply knocks the props from under every obstacle. The man who is afraid to own his castle is a good citizen, perhaps, in every other respect. But the very best citizen is he who has the courage to own something and pay taxes on it, help support the community, and be useful to himself and to the world that holds him trustee of his possessions. ”

“ Every day the business of buying the house looks more possible and less of a financial mountain. Why, I can even afford to joke with the Duke, who asked me what I intended to plant in our front garden against the porch.
"I think," I said, "I'll plant a nice little row of mortgage vines and let 'em grow up and crawl all over the house. A mortgage vine, Duke, has flowers on it all the year round, and it's the most homelike thing I know." ”

“ What a time the baby has watching Big Brother, and admiring his strength as he performs miracles, not only pulling and backing the tiny red wagon all by himself, but actually turning it around and running the other way, without so much as getting caught in the cracks or stuck in the sod! ”

“ Anything is worth while, friend, if the goal is a nest of your own, where you can have your friends out and nobody can tell you to keep off the grass or wipe your feet on the mat—excepting your wife!
Not at all apropo of The House, there's a thought I want to get out of my system. What a lot of braggarts we men are, anyhow—and what a queer old world it is! There are two classes of people in the world—those who are doing something worth while and those who are trying to steal the credit. ”

“ There are church bells and wedding bells, bells that cry the joy of a new birth or toll the sorrow of the huddled family, bells that ring victory in war and bells that scream the hilarity of la fiesta! ”

“ You curl your lip in a sneer and tilt your nose and snort, and make yourself superior.
"Atlantic City! Do I look easy? Atlantic City, boardwalk, red hot sun, skinny bathers, flies in the dining-room, at $7 a day? Not on your life! I'm going to stay home and take the rest cure—that's me! I'm going to sleep late, eat four meals a [Pg 106] day, spade my garden when I feel like it and enjoy life right. I'm going to take a shower bath every thirty-six minutes and no company—not a blooming visitor—the whole week. What I want is absolute rest." ”

“ Nearly every one of your Intimates comments on the fact that your yard looks like a quarry, but you assure each one that William is going to put on a top soil and seed it down and you are going to plant a turnip and substitute a peach tree for the oak that was struck by lightning. You work yourself up into a human catalogue of advantages as you describe your wonderful plans, [Pg 103] and then your Intimate shakes her head smilingly. ”

“ When my wife was a little girl with braids down her back, Murphy used to see her in the excited crowd in front of the neighbor's door, as he toted a grand piano to the waiting van. Many a time Murphy has started to give that little girl a penny because she was so cute. Many a time he has reconsidered and kept the penny himself!
It was Murphy who moved us. He is anywhere from seventy to ninety years old now—a stalwart, [Pg 19] steel-muscled young fellow who runs his own wagon and lifts his end of the heaviest burden with a heart as light as his chest is deep and his back broad. ”

“ Trills that can be written only in spirit composition—long notes that sometimes salute a saint, sometimes absolve a sinner—sibilant sighs that bring up memories—all these things we have in our choir, and upon them there is no mortgage!
There's a nasty little fat robin outside our kitchen door, though, who is some day going to meet disaster. ”

“ Some people think cleaning up around a new house is pie for papa, but it isn't. There is none of that glamour you read about in "The Delights of Home" articles, and it isn't a thing on earth but a case of chuck the cuffs and collars and yield your soul to perspiration and persistence. ”

“ After all, a fellow isn't capable of appreciating to the full a little possession until he has gone the route of silly extravagances and been pulled together by some sudden impulse to be a better citizen. ”

“ Hasn't a fellow a right to whistle and sing when he comes home from foraging and finds the lady bird dancing around the new nest?
There was a thermometer on top of the furnace in the basement, and beside it a round thing to tell how much water we were catapulting into the radiators. When there is too much water it overflows from a tank upstairs; when there isn't enough you turn some in downstairs. ”

“ I went into the house and—well, yes, I might as well admit it—sat at the window where I could command a clear view of the parlor opposite. This affair was getting to be personal with me. And then I think a fellow ought to show an interest in anything that is close to his wife's sympathies. So while she watched on the porch, I watched from the window. ”

“ The astonishing lot of garbage they used to make the ground you stand on is bad enough, but with the things you've thrown out added to it the situation is exasperating.
You run your lawn mower over a nail, pick it up, and then wonder why providence ever let you get away from an early death, for sheer imbecility. It was the nail you picked up in the third floor and didn't know how to dispose of it. Pulling up a little bit of ground with your hands, to make a place for some dwarf [Pg 113] nasturtium, you cut your finger with the piece of glass you threw out the side window. ”

“ Getting acquainted is part and parcel of buying a house. There is something in the human chest that yearns for speaking terms, at least with the fellow who is liable to lend you his lawn mower or by whose wife you may some day be called upon for emergency aid in the culinary department. ”

“ She has built her nest and she has the mother instinct. When she has hatched her little family I'm going to be Uncle Henry to every one of them.
And that is what I've been trying to get to. If the nasty little fat robin [Pg 89] butts into Kadott's family relations, there will be a murder. My hands will be red with the blood of a bandit.
When you come out to That House I Bought, stay all night and listen to the birds in the early morning. It seems to me that a man who listens to the birds in the right spirit ought to make a fairly decent citizen, in time. ”

“ Our porch is one of those accommodating porches with plenty of room, a standing invitation to company. Whenever company comes I have to convert myself into a moving van and tote all the furniture out from the parlor.
The Duke of Mont Alto, and the Duchess, dropped in one evening with the Purdys, and I began to move the parlor. What with spade pushing and furniture moving, I've got Sandow backed off the board. It's wonderful what a little regular training will do for a fellow! ”

“ The Lord never intended any man made in His image to be afraid of anything that walks on hind legs or all fours, crawls or flies, or flops dismally over the Slough of Despond on a carrion-hunt. And just about the best way to mend this defect, I reckon, is to get married early and start right out buying a house and lot. If a fellow's an invertebrate he'll get past the first payment with a struggle. ”

“ This nasty little fat robin, who is going straight into trouble, is a hog on wings. All the others will be cheerfully setting about their dinner, when he will rush in, nibble a single bite and then stand guard over the rest, to keep them from it. ”

“ Hereafter we will burn our coal as long as it will burn, and the ashes may go hang! I could have earned $50 at my profession in the time I was trying to beat an honest coal dealer out of $6.60.
Well, when we finally got the furnace working I hopped into the shower bath.
May good fortune attend the man who thought of putting a shower bath in That House I Bought! The water comes from overhead for one thing, and shoots into the delighted legs of the languorous for another, from the sides. It invigorates, cleanses, and tickles. ”

“ If we would put a gas range and sink in the red room, open up the wall in the front room and build a sleeping porch for his baby, furnish refrigerating plant for all the baby's milk and allow him the free use of the telephone, he would take our four rooms for three months at $18 a month. ”

“ We had a wire stretched to mark our lot line and keep people off the grass seed and the garden. On the heels of the rain came one of the company drivers, took down the wire with deliberation and criminal purpose, and drove two goldarned mules and a [Pg 115] wagon right through that yard, cutting ruts six inches deep and scattering parsnips, parsley, beans, peas, and lettuce all over the place. In a new development you have to stay at home twenty-four hours a day and yell at such people, or they'll have you rutted out of your possession. ”

“ It's a cinch to burn the shavings and little pieces of wood and that kind of material, but you've got to deal again with bits of putty and glass and bent nails and tacks and other unburnable debris, and you hate to throw them into the bathtub because of the plumbing. You finally throw them out the window.
Later you realize that you threw them out unwisely. That's when you [Pg 112] start to work on your lawn and side yard, and every time you stick in the trowel where you are setting out plants you fetch up a quart of junk. ”

“ All sorts of dreams romped through the long stillness and entertained us. The Duke of Mont Alto was in one of mine, and he was telling me something about taxes and water rent. But before his conversation got disagreeable I was awakened by a racket on the roof.
There's a fool woodpecker that comes there every morning at six o'clock and tries to drill through the slate. He's after a nest. It must be hard work. But if he ever gets [Pg 149] through I know how he'll feel. He will have hustled some, but it will have been worth while. ”

“ The groceryman, milkman, iceman, paper boy, the plumber, carpenter, stableman—all manner of men who circulate—learned that Lydie had the whooping cough. It wasn't long before our neighbors began to take notice—I mean our neighbors several houses removed, and across the street. We already knew our nearest neighbors, and their stout little red-haired heir and the little baby that sang miserere in the stilly night. But the niece with the whooping cough made us talked about and observed. ”

“ I got the rake, shovel, spade, hoe, hand cultivator, lawn mower, trowel, and a couple of things you lift young plants with and assembled myself on the lawn to put in a good day's work. With the rake I started to rake off the side yard, and got about halfway through when I discovered that the lawn needed mowing. Halfway through with the mowing job my eye spotted certain thick spots of weeds, and so I started weeding. ”

“ The smell of sod is strong in his nostrils, and he is a handy man with a hoe. Campbell is an agent for the Duke, but time hangs on his hands at moments and he dropped around in a casual sort of way to look at our back yard.
"I'm thinking of planting a turnip and some onions," said my wife pleasantly.
Campbell smiled.
"In that soil," he said, "you'll never make them completely happy. They'll [Pg 127] be crying for home all the time."
"What's the matter with the soil?" demanded my wife.
"Well, it wasn't built for farming. You always have to put in richer soil. ”

“ Halfway [Pg 117] through with that I stopped to pick up sticks and stones and throw them, as usual, over my neighbor's lot. Then it was this thing and that thing, never finishing anything, until finally I chucked all things and started something new.
That's the way with enthusiasts. For finishing a job, give me the plodder whose imagination is subordinate to his hoe. You see, he is a one-idea man, and the idea may not be his own; but the fellow with the genius for starting things is very seldom there at the finish. He dreams large and turns the details over to more successful men. ”

“ It's funny how a man bowls sixteen-ounce balls until his ribs crack and sits in a Turkish bath until each pore is a geyser, and yet when that same result is obtained by means of honest labor and by pushing a spade, he complains. ”

“ Ballington Booth says man is regenerated by soup, soap, and salvation. But I would say, at first blush, that no man can get the full effect of regeneration on anything short of a shower bath in his house. ”

“ I imitated a pouter pigeon with my chest.
"The extent of my murders," I replied, "would be limited only by the supply of burglars."
[Pg 76]
It does a fellow a lot of good, when he is just moving into the responsibilities of a real citizen, to perform mental assassinations like that. I piled up my dead and we passed on.
We found, by pushing another button, that the Consolidated Gas and Electric Light Company had provided the chandeliers in both parlor and dining room with as many globes as could be crowded into the set. The man who put them in left them all turned on. ”