Now that I come to think of it, I am compelled to admit that this practice of setting a low estimate upon the endeavors and responsibilities of others is not restricted to the workingman's class. I blush to recall how often I myself have envied the apparent ease with which Belville Rock and Bobbett Doller stem the tide of human affairs while I labor on and on, barely eking out a subsistence. So far as I can see, they toil not, neither do they spin.
The chances are, on the other hand, that both Belville Rock and Colonel Doller regard me as the luckiest of lazy dogs, who has but to lie on his back and look at sun, moon, and stars to earn both fame and fortune. The farmer's candid conviction is that the city man is a fellow who does nothing and gets rich at it; the urban resident is quite as positive that the farmer habitually loafs around and lets God do the rest. The truth of this whole matter is that all humanity is prone to discontentment of that kind which not only denies happiness to oneself but also begrudges others the happiness they achieve.
But of this frailty I shall speak no further; indeed, I do not understand how I happened to be led into this line of discourse, for it is quite at a tangent with the subject I had in mind—namely, the butler's pantry.
XXII
THE BUTLER'S PANTRY
In the good old days, which were, of course, the days when you and I were boys and girls together at Biddeford, Me., our civilization knew nothing of that miserable invention which is now foisted upon the modern house under the name of butler's pantry. In those good old days we used to have pantries and china closets and butteries and all that sort of thing, and people were contented.
At the present time, however, civilization is so curiously possessed of a desire to ape the customs of European society that every kind of innovation is seized upon with enthusiasm and without any apparent regard for the derision and contempt to which it renders us liable. In my opinion (which is sustained by such an eminent authority as Lawyer Miles) the butler's pantry without the butler is as absurd a contrivance as a carriage without a horse or a purse without gold or silver to put therein. Yet there is not, I presume to say, a tenement house in all this city that has not its butler's pantry; without this adjunct no home is considered complete, and it makes no difference whether "the lady of the house" does her own work or is able to employ female servants, the butler's pantry is a sine qua non.
I told Alice that I regarded a butler's pantry much in the light of a last year's bird's nest, and I added that since we were going to have a butler's pantry minus the butler I supposed the next move would be in the direction of a wine cellar minus the wine. But my humor is wholly lost upon Alice; since she began training with other householders that superior woman has exhibited a strange indifference to my suggestions and counsel.
I mentioned Lawyer Miles a moment ago. This gives me the opportunity of saying that my sympathies have gone out with enthusiasm toward that gifted man ever since I heard him remark, not very long ago, that he liked to have things cluttered up in his house. I am not able to define the compound "cluttered-up," but it conveys to my mind a meaning that is perfectly clear, and it suggests conditions which are pleasing to me. I, too, like to have things cluttered up. The most dreadful day in the week is, to my thinking, Friday—not because we invariably have fried fish upon that day, but because it is upon Friday that a vandal hired girl appears in my study and, under the direction of my wife, proceeds to "put things in shape." Alice insists that I am not orderly or methodical, yet amid all the so-called disorder of my study I can at any moment lay my hands upon any chart or map or book or paper I require, provided everything is left just where I drop it.