Casa

“ 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. ”

“ Are the living pictures I see at home -
My aged father, with frosted hair,
And mother's face like a painting rare
Far from the city's dust and heat,
I get but sounds and odours sweet.
Who can wonder I love to stay,
Week after week, here hidden away,
In this sly nook that I love the best -
The little brown house, like a ground-bird's nest? ”

“ If it be a landscape, I at once pitch upon the spot for a cottage, a temple, or a villa; if it be a house, I instantly settle in my mind the room I would take as my own, the window I would sit beside, the very chair I'd take to lounge in; if it be a garden, I fix upon the walk among whose embowering blossoms I would always be found: and so, if the occasion be one of festive enjoyment, I have a quick eye to catch her whose air and appearance possess highest attractions for me. ”

“ 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? ”

“ To-day it is the door of our house, and when you enter it you find that the rocks below have been hollowed out by Nature in a manner so wonderful that a great house lies there with stone-cold rooms and immense corridors and pits seeming to go to the heart of the world. None but a man with my husband's romantic craving would have discovered such a place, or built himself therein a house so wonderful. ”

“ Yes, we boated him down to his home by the rapids.
His home? No, rather his house let us call it.
For how can a house be a home with naught in it?
In house that is home must be love, warm and human,
A voice that is sweet, a heart that is gentle,
A soul that is true, and beside these a cradle
That prattles and coos; and the quick-falling patter
Of little white feet that run hither and thither. ”

“ Home dwells pictured in their soul. It is an unpainted road-side house. Sweet-pinks, marigolds, and holly-hocks grow in the front-yard; morning-glories creep up the clap-boards, festoon the windows, and peep into the wren's nest under the eve-trough. ”

“ He sees his home—the cottage embowered amongst crawling honey-suckles. Every sight and sound is to his ears delightful. The wild flowers breathe delicious perfume. Then he reaches the well-known door. ”

“ The comfortable old house in the village street, all the rooms with blazing fires, and the kitchen with the flagged, uneven floor, hot and simmering with good things cooking, and the snow outside, and the horses stamping in the cold, frosty air, and the guests coming in laughing and talking. ”

“ The beau-idéal of a healthy house would be a well-plastered stone building on some eminence, remote from swamps and stagnant creeks, but surrounded by sunny slopes available for play-grounds; spring or well water; out-door cellar, kitchen in an out-house, or at least not directly below the sitting and sleeping rooms ”

“ And crept o'er the sands to a cottage-door—
Through the door, half-opened, it entered in.
A woman, ragged, haggard, and wild,
Bent a tear-stained face on her sleeping child,
Fondling its fingers pallid and thin. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now, a new house standing empty, with staring window and door, Looks idle, perhaps, and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store. But there's nothing mournful about it; it cannot be sad and lone For the lack of something within it that it has never known. ”

“ You see, this house has only got four reception-rooms and eight bedrooms, and all the washing’s done at home, and all the dressmaking, and there’s a good deal of entertaining, mostly when you’re not there, and everything has to be right up to the mark. ”

“ A house that lacks, seemingly, mistress and
master,
With doors that none but the wind ever
closes,
Its floor all littered with glass and with plaster;
It stands in a garden of old-fashioned roses. ”

“ The house is splendid, and yet homely; there is none of the burden of magnificence either in the mansion or the grounds, while ostentation seems as far removed from the lofty and munificently furnished apartments as from those which ornament a simple cottage dwelling. ”

“ In the country the sense of the house is as strong as ever, with this change—that it is the day of the little house. Of the great house in its perfect sense as a home there are but few happy instances. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You pass some of the most elegant of the houses, and notice that they are two stories high, and that the family apartments are on the upper stories, so that you miss the furtive views of the families at meals and of the ladies reclining in the broad-tiled window sills that you have in the older one-story sections of the city. ”

“ Nowadays the humblest dwelling which boasts two rooms to sit in possesses a dining-room and drawing-room, but at that period drawing-rooms were for grand houses only, and the parlor was the name of the family dwelling-place. ”

“ After a lingering inspection of the parlor, which looks so homelike because, like the dining-room, it is really lived in by the settlement residents, the visitor passes out the front door to study the exterior of the house and enjoy the old-fashioned garden. ”

“ Imagine a lonely country-house, a quiet 151 and well-ordered family seated at their evening meal, after dark, of a somewhat gloomy day, the apartment imperfectly lighted by the glowing fire, and according to such conveniences for the purpose as old times ordinarily afforded ”

“ Each house, perfumed like a parterre of flowers, opens its doors, and, during the live long day, it is between friends and acquaintance a series of happy smiles, and a mutual exchange of nosegays and hearty shaking of hands. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But a house that has done 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,
Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever your eyes could meet. ”

“ The house is the best located of all on the mountain, with woods on the north which break the heavy winds. There’s a big fireplace in the living-room, and all sorts of pretty nooks and corners, with shelves and bookracks—oh, you’ll go crazy over it, just as I did! ”

“ The keeping-room of the family is remarkable for its large square window, built out so as to afford a delightful retreat for reading or working in the summer, or whenever it is not too cold to sit away from the fireplace. ”

“ In the enumeration of the parts of a house given in the English edition of Comenius’s “Janua Linguarum,” in the middle of the seventeenth century, there is no mention of a hall. “A house,” we are told in this quaint book, “is divided into inner rooms, such as are the entry, the stove, the kitchen, the buttery, the dining-room, the gallery, the bed-chamber, with a privy made by it; baskets are of use for carrying things to and fro; and chests (which are made fast with a key) for keeping them. The floor is under the roof. In the yard is a well, a stable, and a bath. ”

“ At the back of the house are hot-houses and a walled garden in beautiful order, both connected with the sitting-rooms,—so that you live in the midst of flowers, tropical plants and fruits, without leaving the house. ”

“ To an open house in the evening Home shall men come, To an older place than Eden And a taller town than Rome. To the end of the way of the wandering star, To the things that cannot be and that are, To the place where God was homeless And all men are at home. ”

“ Let us wait, rather, until all our dear friends shall be gathered, to partake of their first evening meal here in the new home; for the present let us go on with our description of this glorious structure.
And yet, how shall we describe it? The most vivid fancy fails to do it justice. The corridors, whose floors are inlaid with tile; the marble staircases; the painted walls; the carved ceilings; the cozy private rooms—each in itself a gem; books and music to be found in them all; each a sanctum for the owner thereof. ”

“ Husbands and wives, fathers and daughters, sons and mothers, lovers and sweethearts, meet after the week whose separating days have seemed like weeks, and visit the houses whose pierced walls and roofs, that let the white-hot sunshine in through many jagged holes, may one day, so they whisper, holding one another closely, shelter them again in peace. Home has become a sweet word, even to those who thought little of home before. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And in the fullest connotation of the word, it is a home, with old chairs to fit you, bright cretonnes at the windows, and friendly things about you to rest your eyes upon—the sort of a home that a lad like Charles Carroll the Ninth, who isn’t much interested in ancestors, likes to take refuge in when strangers grow inquisitive. ”

“ Physiognomy of a house.
Houses have their physiognomy as much as persons. There are commonplace houses, suggestive houses, attractive houses, mysterious houses, and fascinating houses, just as there are all these classes of persons. There are houses whose windows seem to yawn idly—to stare vacantly; there are houses whose windows glower weirdly, and glance at you askance; there are houses, again, whose very doors and windows seem wide open with frank cordiality, which seem to stretch their arms to embrace you, and woo you kindly to come and possess them.... ”

“ The houses, indeed, were solidly built, and the rooms of the well-to-do people were comfortable and clean, and often spacious. "Nothing could form a stronger contrast than the difference between the outside and the inside of the door." ”

“ In the sitting-room, where the family gathers for the evening, and where some members of the household spend a good part of each day, put all the comfort you can. Let it be one of the largest and brightest rooms in the house. ”

“ A laborer's cottage in a cleanly condition; the husband or wife having a babe in arms, looking at two or three older ones, playing between the flower borders, going from the wicket to the door, is, according to my taste, the most interesting object that eyes ever beheld ”

“ For every house had its private garden, large or small. Every householder garnished his dwelling-rooms with flowers, instead of ornaments of potter's ware or metal: the floors were still strewn with leaves and grasses, and the doorways often decked with boughs. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ We have a word for home, and our home is often a moated grange, an island, a castle with its drawbridge up, cutting us off from all but our own home-circle. In France and Germany and Italy there are the boulevards and public gardens, where people do their family living in common. ”

“ The disposition for change, which is inherent in the family, has produced very strange effects upon their place of residence. The house was originally a good stout old-fashioned house, remarkable for nothing but the antiquity of its pictures and the size of its dining-hall. But its name and character have shifted considerably since it came into the possession of my worthy friends. It has been alternately a Hall, an Abbey, a Castle, and a Lodge; nay, during the life of the late Sir Adonis Weathercock, it became, for a few months, a Cottage. ”

“ It was the kind of house that the wind dearly loves to howl around—forsaking all the other houses in the neighborhood for a chance to clatter its windows and rattle its boards and whoop in its chimneys. ”

“ He looks upon it as a house, or habitation, a dwelling-place, a resting-place, a hiding-place, our Father's house, where there are many mansions, and our everlasting home. It is a house in the heavens, in that high and holy place which as far excels all the palaces of this earth as the heavens are high above the earth. ”

“ Our house is not in the least beautiful, but it is well situated and comfortable, perfectly still in the middle of a garden surrounded by fields and meadows, and yet within reach of shops and civilization. ”

“ The fortune of our couple continuing to develop with pleasing rapidity, the building of a country house is next decided upon. A friend of the husband, who has recently started out as an architect, designs them a picturesque residence without a straight line on its exterior or a square room inside. This house is done up in strict obedience to the teachings of the new sect. The dining-room is made about as cheerful as the entrance to a family vault. The rest of the house bears a close resemblance to an ecclesiastical junk shop. ”