Staircases, lobbies, and vestibules should be cool in tone, simple in color, and free from contrasts. Here the effects are to be produced by light and shadow, rather than by color. Every one must have noticed that some houses as soon as the doors are opened look bright and cheerful, while others are melancholy and dull. The difference is caused by the good or bad taste with which they are papered. Yet who shall say what events 299 may arise from such a simple thing as the first impressions of an important visitor? And these impressions may involuntarily receive their primal tone from a light, cheerful, or dull, dark hall paper.
All rooms open to the public must have a certain air of conventional arrangement; but the parlor in every home ought to be a room of character and individuality. Here is the very shrine and sanctuary of the Lares and Penates. Here is the grandmamma’s chair and knitting, and mamma’s work-basket, and the sofa on which papa lounges and reads his evening paper. Here are Annie’s flowers and Mary’s easel and Jack’s much-abused class-books. Here the girls practise and the boys rig their ship and mamma looks serious over the house books. In this room the picture papers lie around, every one’s favorite volume is on the table, and the walls are sacred to the family portraits. In this room the family councils are held and the dear invalids nursed back to life. Here the boys come to say “good-bye” when they go away to school or to business. Here the girls, in their gay party-dresses, come for papa’s final bantering 300 kiss and mamma’s last admiration and admonition. Ah, this room!—this dear, untidy, unfashionable parlor! It is the citadel of the household, the very heart of the home.
None can deny the influence which childhood’s home has over them, even unto their hoary-hairs; the memory of a happy, comfortable one is better than an inheritance. The girls and boys who leave it have a positive ideal to realize. There is no speculation in their efforts; they know that home is “Sweet Home.” But in all their imaginings chairs and tables and curtains and carpets have a conspicuous place. This life is all we have to front eternity with, therefore nothing that touches it is of small consequence. It is something to the body to have comfortable and appropriate household surroundings, it is much more to the mind. Is there any one whose feelings and energies are not depressed by a cold, comfortless, untidy room? And who does not feel a positive exaltation of spirit in the glow of a bright fire and the cosey surroundings of a prettily furnished apartment?
God has not made us to differ in this respect. A pleasant home is the dream and hope of every good man and woman. As Traddles and his dear little wife used to please themselves by selecting in the shop windows their contemplated service of silver, so also many honest, hopeful toilers fix upon the chairs and curtains that are to adorn their homes long before they possess them. The dream and the object is a great gain morally to them. Perhaps they might have other ones, but it is equally possible that the possession of this very furniture is the very condition that makes higher ones possible.
Depend upon it “A Society for the Improved Furnishing of Poor Men’s Homes” would be a step taken in the seven-leagued boots for the elevation of poor men’s and women’s lives.
People Who Have Good Impulses
There is a raw material in humanity—often very raw—called impulse, or enthusiasm; and some people are very proud of possessing this spasmodic excellence. They talk glibly of their “good impulses,” their “noble impulses,” their “generous impulses,” but the fact is that the majority of impulses are neither good nor noble; while they are, of all guides in human affairs, the most questionable. For impulses do not come from settled principles, but rather from a loose habit of mind—a mind just drifting along, and ready to accept any new suggestion as an “impulse,” an “inspiration,” a “command.” We believe far too readily the cant about emotion, and erratic genius, and suffer ourselves to be imposed upon by fussy, impulsive people; 303 for if we are at all allied with such, it is impossible to escape imposition; since we have to be patient enough for two, and so bear an undue burden of civility and good manners.