Houseman

“ Each of the elder spectators remembered at once the person of Houseman, and the suspicion that had attached to his name.
"Seize him! seize him!" burst forth from twenty voices; "Houseman is the murderer!"
"Murderer!" faltered Houseman, trembling in the iron hands of Walter—"murderer of whom? I tell ye these are not Clarke's bones!" ”

“ You have seen some slim, slip-shod housekeeper, at midnight ferreting over a rambling old house in the country, startling at fancied witches and ghosts, yet intent on seeing every door bolted, every smouldering ember in the fireplaces smothered, every loitering domestic abed, and every light made dark. ”

“ The home of my childhood was bare, bare of such things. Neither cubes nor cylinders were there that I remember, nor thermatic tests, nor color-tablets, nor quadrilateral prisms; and yet—
What was there of especial value? There was, first of all, the household. "The household," to quote Emerson further, "is a school of power. There within the door learn the tragi-comedy of human life. Here is the sincere thing, the wondrous composition for which day and night go round. ”

“ The owner, a whimsical man, a lonely and eccentric bachelor of the type that always brightens English novels, would invite them in, make Father his steward and Mother his lady housekeeper. There would be a mystery in the house—a walled-off room, a sound of voices at night in dark corridors where no voices could possibly be, a hidden tragedy, and at last Father and Mother would lift the burden from the place, and end their days in the rose-covered dower-house.... ”

“ A house whose inside is as open and manifest as a bird's nest, and you cannot go in at the front door and out at the back without seeing some of its inhabitants; where to be a guest is to be presented with the freedom of the house, and not to be carefully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up in a particular cell, and told to make yourself at home there -- in solitary confinement. ”

“ CHAPTER I.—THE HALL.
In studying how to make home beautiful, we must not forget that, first of all, there must be a home; and that in a true home, the household, and not the house, is of primary importance. We have all seen careful housekeepers whose first and last thought was to keep their domains with absolute neatness, and whose domestic law was of Median and Persian inflexibility. ”

“ Like a layman, he has his own domicile and fireside, his parsonage in the country with a garden, or an apartment in town—in any event, his own home and household, a servant or housekeeper, who is often either his mother or a sister ”

“ Presently, the man who had bought the house came to him and said, ‘Look thyself out a lodging, for I have need of my house.’ So he bethought himself and considering that he had nothing requiring a house, except his wife, who had borne him a son and daughter,—for he had not a servant left,—hired a room in one of the mean lodging houses and there took up his abode, after having lived in honour and luxury, with many servants and much wealth, and came to lack of one day’s bread. ”

“ The number of men-servants in a family varies according to the wealth and position of the master, from the owner of the ducal mansion, with a retinue of attendants, at the head of which is the chamberlain and house-steward, to the occupier of the house, where a single footman is the only male retainer. ”

“ 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 house-keeping, and make up our minds on the subject. ”

“ Are they subordinated to a really intelligent sense of what a living-room should be? Or are they merely a crowd, a litter, things flung into the room pell-mell by a house-mistress bent on securing for her parlour-maid a silly hour's dusting every day of objects—not of virtue—and for herself the recognition by her neighbours that she has money enough to throw away in making her living-room a silly imitation of a shop for bric-a-brac. ”

“ The house so drearily out of repair, the occasional bow-window, the stuccoed house, the newly-fronted house, the corner house with nothing but angular rooms, the house with the blinds always down, the house with the hatchment always up, the house where the collector has called for one quarter of an Idea, and found nobody at home—who has not dined with these? ”

“ Where the patient and laborious squaw once carried on her back the slaughtered game for her own family, now wind and steam and lightning distribute our provisions around the world. Where she once erected a rude shelter of boughs or hides for her own family, now mason and carpenter, steel and iron worker, joiner, lather, plasterer, glazier, plumber, locksmith, painter, and decorator combine to house the world. ”

“ Were better for my home,
So never on its arid breeze
The voice of wrong might come.
But round my home, my cottage home,
The tyrant never treads,
And o'er the field's luxuriant wealth
No slave his sad tear sheds. ”

“ Poor Bill found very soon that his house and furniture were to be kept at such an ideal point of perfection that he needed another house to live in,—for, poor fellow, he found the difference between having a house and a home. ”

“ The house, with its exits and entrances, its properties of furniture and necessities, its dressing-tables, its warming-pans, and its tiny silver eye-bath still standing between the hair-brushes—the house demands its population. ”

“ On the other hand, suppose the labourer who lives in the next cottage were unexpectedly to fall heir to an estate of a few hundreds a year, and in consequence to get around him all the comforts and conveniences that we possess—a commodious house to inhabit, good clothes to wear, plenty of wholesome food and firing, servants to do all the drudgery of the family and the like;—how all his acquaintance would congratulate him, and what a paradise would he seem to himself to be got into! ”

“ One solitary old labourer, a dreary bachelor, inhabited, it is true, a corner of the old roomy house, calculated for the convenient accommodation of the patriarchal family of sons and daughters, men-servants and maid-servants, of which a farmer's household consisted in former days ”

“ That the art of living, so far as the body and its surroundings are concerned, can be, and often is, carried to a very high degree of perfection, the superlative housekeepers we all have known are ample proof. ”

“ In what affluence might we not all have flourished! The old homestead, a fire burning in the grate, the stern and relentless parent, and outside in the cold and wet father, the outcast son, the disowned, the homeless one, about to ride off into the night in the service of his country—never to return. ”

“ Yes, he often walked to Suffern along the Erie track, and meditated on “what a house should do, a house that has sheltered life,”
That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife,
A house that has echoed a baby’s laugh and held up his stumbling feet. ”

“ The venerable house of call, bequeathed to us by the ages, beckons all to come within its kindly shelter, out of the storms of class hatred and political prejudice. Churlish and short-sighted indeed will those be who reject the invitation. ”

“ The artisans and labourers on her land lived by her patronage. All along the muddy highroads the beggars coming to town passed word to each other that there stood a nunnery in the meadows, where they might have scraps left over from the convent meals and perhaps beer and a pair of shoes. The head of a house, indeed, was an important person from many points of view, as a neighbour, as a landlord and as a philanthropist. ”

“ Houses were invaded by perfect strangers who insisted in pointing out the rooms in which they were born and in which they had been married, and in telling the present proprietors how fortunate they were to live in dwellings thus blessed. ”

“ A glance shows its feudal relation to, and dependence upon, the great house behind which it nestles; some of the back-kitchens and offices of this great house, indeed, straggle out till they meet and merge themselves into this quadrangle. None the less, it presents to the enquiring gaze a specific character, of as old a growth, one might think, as the oak itself. Here servants have lived, it may be, since man first learned the trick of setting his foot on his brother's neck. ”

“ I will venture to say that there are at least, to speak very moderately, a hundred houses where these humble lines will be read and discussed, where there are no servants except the ladies of the household. I will venture to say, also, that these households, many of them, are not inferior in the air of cultivation and refined elegance to many which are conducted by the ministration of domestics. ”

“ It is no transient visitor which may have made its appearance by chance—a concatenation of coincidences, fortunate or unfortunate, but it is the intelligent tenant and master of a singularly beautiful and complicated house, a house which has been millions upon millions of years in the building, and yet which will be lightly laid aside when it ceases to accommodate and fulfil the needs of its tenant. ”

“ Your distinction—and with a modern house, built for someone else, you could not escape a certain prominence—would be that someone else’s. With an old house, however modernised in its unessentials—unessential except from the housewife’s point of view—you make no pretence that you are more than a life tenant. ”

“ I may go into a cottage, and find a farmer who feels that he is the man I have come to see, and fronts me accordingly. It was therefore a very natural point of old feudal etiquette, that a gentleman who received a visit, though it were of his sovereign, should not leave his roof, but should wait his arrival at the door of his house. ”

“ All, or nearly all, of the work of the home seems to be done by people from the outside—from the cleaning of the windows to the education of the children. The modern home is but a fireside around which one hardly sees the family gathered for intimate talk. ”

“ At this moment within easy range of your palatial home ten thousand determined men are assembled, awaiting the word. Once launched upon their work, not one stone of your railway buildings, not a shingle on the roofs of your elevators, not one brick in the walls of your homestead, will be left to show where once they stood. ”

“ A man's whole household may have been swept off--young and old, babe and suckling, sister and brother, and aged mother, and wife, and children, and servant, and friend--every soul of them involved in one hideous, horrible calamity. The steward of the manor was not concerned with any but the head of the house--the tenant of the manor. ”

“ But the inmost residence is in the soul, and the bodily members are made servants of righteousness, which is a great honour and dignity, in regard of that base employment they had once, and so it is most suitable that he who hath thus dwelt in both repair his own dwelling-house. ”

“ When the good man of the house returns from his labour, he peaceably goes after his wife and brings her home; meanwhile the young fellows, equally vigilant, easily find out which is the most convenient house, and there they assemble with the girls of the neighbourhood. ”

“ The house is small but comfortable, the garden is large and shady. Our household—don't sneer too much at these minor details—our household will consist of my femme de chambre, and another woman that she is to engage, and a man servant for you. ”

“ The master of a private dwelling will not allow any untidiness or unseemliness to be seen in the house, such as a couch upset, or the table littered with rubbish, or vessels of price thrown away into dirty corners, while those which serve ignobler uses are thrust forward for entering guests to see. ”

“ By yourself alone you had sustained the tottering house, and the house, overwhelming you with labours and cares, was separating your own from you. It is the penalty of material necessities,—they do not leave time enough for the guardianship of souls. ”

“ A lady who has kept house with marked success for fifty years once said to me: “My dear, there are only three things of any importance in a house. First the husband, then the nurse, then the cook, and after that it doesn’t matter.” ”

“ His household is a model of British propriety. He is cared for by a motherly housekeeper, an eminently correct man-servant, and a large hound of dignified demeanour and a sense of duty that leads him to suspect an enemy in everybody who passes his master's door. His violence in protesting against unobjectionable tenants like ourselves reconciles me to dispensing with a dog, especially as it ends with his bark. ”

“ This is in the habitation, or cottage, of the wise; and it is better to have an old-fashioned house, and have it well furnished, than a fine modern one, with sorry housekeeping. God blesses the endeavors of the wise and then their houses are replenished. ”

“ The homestead and all they possessed in the world should be his if he would but marry and settle down. They only wanted a comfortable room in some corner of the old house, where, with a knowledge of his presence and happiness, their content would be perfect. ”

“ But upon the other side, every house or little row of houses, though not always perhaps built with the best taste, shows as plainly as words could tell it, that the careful hand and eye of a liberal landlord have been over them for years. ”

“ Yes, if some one will kindly put me in the way of getting such a place for a residence I shall be his or her debtor, while for recompense, as soon as ever matters have been a bit seen to, and the place is habitable, they shall have the honour of first sleeping in the most haunted room in the house. ”