Izba

“ There are several rooms, some dark and mostly stuffy--a reception-room adorned with horsehair chairs, wool-work stools, and a stove that is never lit--German bad taste without German domesticity broods over that room; also a living-room, which insensibly glides into a bedroom when the refining influence of hospitality is absent, and real bedrooms; and last, but not least, the loggia, where you can live day and night if you feel inclined, drinking vermouth and smoking cigarettes, with leagues of olive-trees and vineyards and blue-green hills to watch you. ”

“ There is the great family bed with the flowered curtains, the massive immovable bench by the stove, the solid old table, around which young and old assemble at meal-times. There are the great cupboards for the treasures of the house, the prayer-book given to grandmother at her confirmation, the filigree ornaments, the glasses and coffee-cups, which are kept for show, not for daily use. ”

“ As we drove into the great gateway of the inn, I saw on one side the light of a rousing kitchen fire, beaming through a window. I entered, and admired, for the hundredth time, that picture of convenience, neatness, and broad honest enjoyment, the kitchen of an English inn. It was of spacious dimensions, hung round with copper and tin vessels highly polished, and decorated here and there with a Christmas green. Hams, tongues, and flitches of bacon, were suspended from the ceiling; a smoke-jack made its ceaseless clanking beside the fireplace, and a clock ticked in one corner. ”

“ In all Russian houses, as, doubtless, everybody knows, the first floor is given up to an antechambre, where guests remove their wraps and goloshes, and behind this room are the kitchen and servants' quarters. All the living-rooms of the family are generally on the floor above. ”

“ More Miseries.—At an inn, going into a bed too short, with a wooden leg, which you were too fatigued to unstrap, drawing up the living one, going to sleep with the other sticking out at the bottom, which, when the chambermaid comes in for the candle, she conceives to be the handle of the warming-pan, which she has carelessly left in the bed. ”

“ I know this place. The rooms are unspeakable—not a bedroom that isn’t a megaphone, magnifying every whisper! There is only one suitable place—the main dining-room. The proprietor leaves the oil-lamp burning in there all night. People go to bed early; they prefer to drink in their bedrooms because it costs less than treating a crowd! I shall provide a light supper, and my maid shall lay the table after everybody else is gone up-stairs. ”

“ The room, which had obviously served, apart from being a store-room, as kitchen, dining room, and, in fact, for everything save a bedroom, was in a state of chaos—chairs were upset, a table stood up-ended against the wall, aid broken crockery was strewn everywhere. ”

“ This constant stream of visitors always met in the kitchen,—a low-ceiled, old-fashioned interior, full of nooks and angles, that had for years adapted itself to everybody’s wants and ministered to everybody’s comfort,—and was really the cheeriest and cosiest room in the house. ”

“ Fig. 168.—Kitchen range. If this area is in a public inn, the office, common room, and kitchen border one side of this thoroughfare. In the common room the baby-tending, sewing, and the various duties of the family go on under the heavily-raftered and thatched roof, which blackened by the smoke from the kitchen fire, and festooned with equally blackened cobwebs, presents a weird appearance when lighted up by the ruddy glow from the hearth. We speak now of the northern country houses, particularly where the fireplace, as in the Aino house, is in the middle of the floor. ”

“ It is not into these gloomy receptacles of contraband that we would now conduct our reader, but into a far more cheerful and more comfortable locality—the spacious kitchen of the cabin, or, in fact, the apartment which served for the double purpose of cooking and eating—the common room of the inn, where around a blazing fire of black turf was seated a party of three persons. ”

“ For as this inn is no ordinary inn, this banquet room no ordinary room, and this kitchen no ordinary kitchen, so, too, is Monsieur Lemois no ordinary landlord. A small, gray, gently moving, low-voiced man with thoughtful, contented face, past the prime of life; a passionate lover of animals, flowers, and all beautiful things ”

“ The fact that I live in the kitchen merely means that I live behind the partition wall in that apartment—that I live quite alone, and spend my time in a quiet fashion compounded of trifles. For furniture I have provided myself with a bed, a table, a chest of drawers, and two small chairs. ”

“ Certain shadows may so magnify the size of the small window of an inn that we may take it to be as large as that of a sitting room. And if we have seen just one window we think all are of the same form and are convinced that the inn is a mansion. Or again, we see, half-covered, through the woods, a distant pool, and in memory we then see the possibly,{442} but not necessarily, present river. ”

“ The invincible custom of New Canaan of using a bedroom only at night made her unheard-of inclination to sit in her room during the day or before bedtime the subject of so much comment and wonder that, feeling it best to yield to the prejudice, she usually read, sewed, or wrote letters in the kitchen, or, when a fire was lighted, in the combination dining-room and sitting-room. ”

“ The windows in the living room of the gray house are wide open, patiently exchanging the tainted inner atmosphere of liquor and smoke for the fresh drowsiness of the late hot dusk. There are dying flower scents upon the air, so thin, so fragile, as to hint already of a summer laid away in time. ”

“ Why, a room ought to be as becoming as a dress—so Mrs. Pinkerton says. You know I saw a great deal of her at the hotel; and oh, girls! her bedroom was the most exquisite thing you ever saw! She had a French toilet-table, covered with pale blue silk and white marquise lace,—perfectly lovely,—with yards and yards of robin’s-egg blue watered ribbon in bows; and on it she kept all her toilet articles, everything in hammered silver from Tiffany’s with monograms on the back,—three or four sizes of brushes, and combs, and mirrors, and a full manicure set. ”

“ After visiting the apartments which are always on view—viz., the drawing-room, dining-room, concert and ball room, library, and the small bed-room in which that almost fabulous hero was born, I asked the old gentlewoman, as a special favour, to show me the kitchen. ”

“ The family apartments are in a very antiquated taste, somewhat heavy and often inconvenient, but full of the solemn magnificence of former times, fitted up with rich though faded tapestry, unwieldy furniture, and loads of massy, gorgeous old plate. The vast fireplaces, ample kitchens, extensive cellars, and sumptuous banqueting-halls all speak of the roaring hospitality of days of yore, of which the modern festivity at the manor-house is but a shadow. ”

“ I would go to bed.
My rooms at the Manor are the best in the house. Leta will have it so. I must explain their position for a reason to be understood later. My bedroom is in the southeast angle of the house; it opens on one side into a sitting-room in the east corridor, the rest of which is taken up by the suite of rooms occupied by Tom and Leta; and on the other side into my bathroom, the first room in the south corridor where the principal guest chambers are, to one of which it was originally the dressing-room. ”

“ Pale sylphs whom one would scarcely suspect capable of an accomplished play of a knife and fork, staid matrons, blooming rosebuds, and elderly dames, all seem no less fascinated with the charms of the dining-room. It is the source and dispensator of joy when its appointments are perfect—the one room of all rooms of the house which may not be abolished. ”

“ At the window of a dull and dirty little lodging a woman sat, in this dark gloaming, gazing out at the passers-by. The house had a perpetual odor of onions and cabbage and dinner, as it is in the nature of such houses to have, and the room, "first floor front," was in the last stage of lodging-house shabbiness and discomfort. ”

“ A few words sufficed to explain everything, and in ten minutes our effects were deposited in the guest's room of the Länsman's house, and ourselves, stripped of our Polar hides, were seated on a sofa, in a warm, carpeted room, with a bountiful supper-table before us. Blessed be civilisation! was my inward ejaculation. Blessed be that yearning for comfort in Man, which has led to the invention of beds, of sofas, and easy chairs: which has suggested cleanliness of body and of habitation, and which has developed the noble art of cooking! ”

“ For this reason my house will have large verandas, and, near to the kitchen, there will be a veranda dining-room. Also, there will be a veranda fireplace, where we can breathe fresh air and be comfortable when the evenings are touched with frost.
I have a plan for my own bedroom. I spend long hours in bed, reading, studying, and working. I have tried sleeping in the open, but the lamp attracts all the creeping, crawling, butting, flying, fluttering things to the pages of my book, into my ears and blankets, and down the back of my neck. ”

“ The committee of maiden ladies are very indignant at the idea of the working man insisting on his best room, an apartment which remains hermetically closed from week-end to week-end, reserved only as a shrine for the family Bible and for the reception of a few highly-favoured visitors. ”

“ They shall make trial of the best inn along the whole length of the Queen of Ways. Such couches as they have never seen, save, doubtless, in their magnificent homes, fit for the gods to lie upon!—such dishes!—such cooking! ”

“ The little word inn stands apart from those other two, hotel and boarding-house, and its charm lies as much in its literary aroma as its actuality. We visit inns oftener in books than in life, but in both they have the same characteristics. ”

“ The noble dining-hall, with its delicately tinted walls, its pillars and gilded roof, with neatly dressed waiters, and the master of ceremonies patrolling the room seeing to the comfort of the guests, the arrangements of their places, and that each servant did his duty, gave a zest to one’s appetite which the tempting viands increased a hundred fold, and the soups, fish, relèves, entrées, game, relishes, vegetables, pastry, and dessert of the menu differed from the bill of fare of the previous day as does light from darkness, sweet from bitter. ”

“ There our own particular horrors were pretty well realized: dirty rooms over a saloon and lounging toughs on the corner; uneatable hunks of food at a table in a barroom, our dinner put in front of us on a platter, and no plates used at all. And the bedrooms! I slept on top of my bed wrapped in an ulster with my head on the lining of my coat. ”

“ How often when we have been doomed to spend the night in some wretched inn or house, half-stifled by the heat and bad smells, tormented beyond endurance by swarms of mosquitoes, sand-flies, fleas, or perhaps worse, have we sighed for the little cabins with their comfortable elastic mattresses, the fresh clean sheets, and the cool night wind that would have been fanning us as we rocked in our dear Claymore! ”

“ The State Dining-room, an elegant apartment, has a richly decorated geometric ceiling and a recessed buffet, the recess being formed by well-proportioned Corinthian columns. The rich cornice, the gilt festoons that adorn the walls, the mirrors between the windows, the antique Venetian crystal-glass chandelier and side lights, and the silver-gilt service on the buffets give a sumptuous air to the room, while the four magnificent Snyders, and the other fine old paintings which adorn the walls, add materially to its beauty. ”

“ The houses, although small, are warm and substantial, mostly with double windows, and a little vestibule in front of the door, to create an intermediate temperature between the outer and inner air. The beds, even in many of the inns, are in the family room, but during the day are either converted into sofas or narrow frames which occupy but little space. At night, the bedstead is drawn out to the required breadth, single or double, as may be desired. ”

“ But unlike in a theatre, we see no naked walls behind the scenes—no tattered draperies—no floors strewed with sawdust. This fine apartment is the kitchen—spacious as a ball-room, kept in the finest order, and white as a young bride. ”

“ We have the kitchenette, and a bathroom with two kinds of showers, and a bedroom apiece, though mine is really a closet, and two sitting-rooms, so two of us can have beaus the same night. If we feel the need of an extra sitting-room—that is, three beaus a night—we draw cuts to see who has to resort to the park, or a movie, or the ice-cream parlor, or the kitchenette. Our time is up next week and we shall return modestly to our boarding-houses. It is great fun, but it is expensive, and we are so busy. ”

“ The double windows are up for
the still dallying winter, and, as the drops of dirty moisture which
stand on the panes testify, they are hermetically closed. The kitchen
leads out of the room by what is apparently the only open door in the
house, every other being jealously closed lest peradventure a whiff of
fresh air should get in. ”

“ I have a vision of those sixty houses, each with its dining room and drawing-room, its four to eight bedrooms, and its basement. There are sixty drawing-rooms in this street, and at 11 A.M. there is not a single human being in them; and at 3 P.M. there is nobody in the sixty dining rooms, except on Sunday, when a few men are asleep in them. ”

“ Another door opens out of it into the dining-room, which is separated from the kitchen by the well of the staircase, the steps being constructed partly of wood, partly of tiles, which are colored and beeswaxed. Nothing can be more depressing than the sight of that sitting-room. ”