Home as Found / Sequel to "Homeward Bound"

by James Fenimore Cooper

"One hardly knows which is the most terrific," said Eve, involuntarily, as soon as the door closed on them--"the noise within, or the noise without!"

This was spoken rapidly, and in French, to Mademoiselle Viefville, but Grace heard and understood it, and for the first time in her life, she perceived that Mrs. Houston's company was not composed of nightingales. The surprise is that the discovery should have come so late.

"I am delighted at having got into this house," said Sir George, who, having thrown his cloak to his own servant, stood with the two other gentlemen waiting the descent of the ladies from the upper room, where the bad arrangements of the house compelled them to uncloak and to put aside their shawls, "as I am told it is the best house in town to see the other sex."

"To hear them, would be nearer the truth, perhaps," returned John Effingham. "As for pretty women, one can hardly go amiss in New-York; and your ears now tell you, that they do not come into the world to be seen only."

The baronet smiled, but he was too well bred to contradict or to assent. Mademoiselle Viefville, unconscious that she was violating the proprieties, walked into the rooms by herself, as soon as she descended, followed by Eve; but Grace shrank to the side of John Effingham, whose arm she took as a step necessary even to decorum.

Mrs. Houston received her guests with ease and dignity. She was one of those females that the American world calls gay; in other words, she opened her own house to a very promiscuous society, ten or a dozen times in a winter, and accepted the greater part of the invitations she got to other people's. Still, in most other countries, as a fashionable woman, she would have been esteemed a model of devotion to the duties of a wife and a mother, for she paid a personal attention to her household, and had actually taught all her children the Lord's prayer, the creed, and the ten commandments. She attended church twice every Sunday, and only staid at home from the evening lectures, that the domestics might have the opportunity of going (which, by the way, they never did) in her stead. Feminine, well-mannered, rich, pretty, of a very positive social condition, and naturally kind-hearted and disposed to sociability, Mrs. Houston, supported by an indulgent husband, who so much loved to see people with the appearance of happiness, that he was not particular as to the means, had found no difficulty in rising to the pinnacle of fashion, and of having her name in the mouths of all those who find it necessary to talk of somebodies, in order that they may seem to be somebodies themselves. All this contributed to Mrs. Houston's happiness, or she fancied it did; and as every passion is known to increase by indulgence, she had insensibly gone on in her much-envied career until, as has just been said, she reached the summit.

"These rooms are very crowded," said Sir George, glancing his eyes around two very pretty little narrow drawing-rooms, that were beautifully, not to say richly, furnished; "one wonders that the same contracted style of building should be so very general, in a town that increases as rapidly as this, and where fashion has no fixed abode, and land is so abundant."

"Mrs. Bloomfield would tell you," said Eve, "that these houses are types of the social state of the country, in which no one is permitted to occupy more than his share of ground."

"But there are reasonably large dwellings in the place. Mrs. Hawker has a good house, and your father's for instance, would be thought so, too, in London even; and yet I fancy you will agree with me in thinking that a good room is almost unknown in New-York."

"I do agree with you, in this particular, certainly, for to meet with a good room, one must go into the houses built thirty years ago. We have inherited these snuggeries, however, England not having much to boast of in the way of houses."